7 Best Free Keyword Research Tools [2020]

 

Are you looking for the best and free keyword research tools for your SEO and content marketing strategy?

Ah! Why am I asking this? That’s the only reason why you landed on this page, right?

Keyword research is one of the most crucial elements of SEO and content marketing.

You can’t build a solid SEO and content marketing strategy without keywords.

It’s very important to understand what exactly your target audience is searching for.

Once you understand that, you can easily start using quality keywords which is the most efficient way to attract quality traffic to your website.

But, how can you find quality keywords?

You need to get yourself a powerful keyword research tool which will help you collect tons of relevant and profitable keywords.

There’s plenty of keyword research tools available these days and choosing the reliable one is always a challenging task.

That’s why to help you choose the most reliable keyword research finders, here’s a list of 7 best free keyword research tools.

1. Google Keyword Planner
2. Rank Tracker
3. Soovle
4. Wordtracker Scout
5. Answer The Public
6. Google Trends
7. Keywordtool.io

These tools will help you find the best keywords, learn more about your competition, and boost your rankings in search engines.

Let’s get started.

 

#1. Google Keyword Planner

 

 

Google, the most popular search network and this is the search engine we’re most likely to target in our SEO efforts.

Also,

The data it offers comes directly from Google.

So, Google Keyword Planner is an obvious choice when it comes to choosing the best keyword research tool.

This keyword tool shows the following stats along with keyword suggestions:

• Average monthly searches
• Competition level (Low, Medium, and High)
• Top of page bid (Low and High range)

Google Keyword Planner is super easy to use. You just need to log in to your Google Ads account and click on the “Tools and Analysis” tab.

Then enter your keyword or keywords and click “Get Ideas”.

You can also access the historical number of search data (12-month average search volumes).

Though it doesn’t provide exact keyword suggestions, it does provide you with more synonyms and variations than many other tools.

This tool offers a limited number of keyword suggestions – not more than 2000 keywords.

 

#2. Rank Tracker

 

 

One of the best free SEO tools for keyword research, Rank Tracker was created by SEO PowerSuite’s team. It has helped over one million users grow their business.

It boasts 24 keyword finding tools and 7 methods of search.

All the major keyword research tools are integrated into the Rank Tracker keyword rank tool including Google Ads Keyword Planner, Search Console, and Google Analytics. This will help you make the most out of its keyword research module.

Using these sources together will give you thousands of keywords.

Rank Tracker will automatically group these keywords by topic which will help you in analyzing and targeting entire keyword groups. You don’t need to go through bulks of terms one by one.

Its ranking keyword research method helps in identifying the keywords that already bring organic traffic and finding your competitors’ top-performing keywords.

You also have the opportunity to do research and find keywords for different locations. Just choose the preferred search engines and localizations and you’ll be able to research places all around the world.

Why is Rank Tracker better than other keyword research tools?

Its autocomplete features cover 7 search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, YouTube.

Obviously,

You get plenty of opportunities to do your SEO research.

When you get multiple sources, you can compile a perfect selection of keywords.

This is what Rank Tracker does.

It allows you to use a combination of keyword suggestion tools and collect tons of relevant long-tail keywords. You can also conduct search trends in your niche. And you don’t need to be a pro for that.

To identify your competitors and see what keywords they already rank for, use its competition checker module. It also provides you with all the relevant SEO metrics for those keywords such as keyword difficulty and estimated traffic.

If you want to take a closer look at your competitors’ high-ranking content, you can use its Competition TF-IDF Explorer. It does this by researching 10 of your top competitors and collecting their top-performing relevant keywords.

Rank Tracker lets you analyze the keyword phrases you use by giving you an estimation of keyword difficulty, the accurate search volume data (monthly exact match searches), CPC, competition, etc.

With the help of its Keyword Sandbox feature, you can store all the keywords in one place, group them by theme and semantic similarity, do filtering and tagging, etc.

And after deciding on the best keywords to include in your campaign, move them to Rank Tracking and proceed with checking rankings.

Though the tool is desk-top based, it’s worth giving it a try. With its help, you’ll be able to collect big amounts of data.

Best of all,

It supports all Google domains, languages, and countries and provides all the parameters you need to pick the best-performing keywords.

 

#3. Soovle

 

 

Soovle allows you to get keyword ideas from lots of different search engines such as Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and Answers.com.

It’s simple and easy to use.

Just enter some keywords into its main search bar and you’ll get a lot of suggestions from relevant search engines.

For example, let’s enter the keyword “search engine optimization”.

 

 

Besides Google search, you should collect keywords from all the other search engines. This will help your content if it has different goals.

For instance, if your goal is to generate more sales, then the keywords suggested by Amazon will be more relevant than those of Google.

Using its Saved Suggestions feature, you can easily drag and drop your favorite keyword ideas and save them.

And then download those keywords to a CSV file by clicking the download button in the left upper corner.

 

#4. Wordtracker Scout

 

 

Wordtracker Scout is a simple and high-powered Chrome extension to discover high-performing keywords in seconds. And you can download it for free.

The key features of Wordtracker Scout are:

• Easy to use and understand.
• Keyword ideas from any site at the click of a button.
• Access to Big Keyword Data from Wordtracker’s huge database of real search terms.
• Keyword performance metrics at a glance.
• Keywords are organized by page elements and tags.

It helps you get keyword ideas from any page just at a click of the mouse.

After installing the extension, simply visit a webpage and get the high-performing keywords to attract targeted traffic to your site with a click of a button.

You’ve access to Big Keyword Data. It helps you find opportunity-rich keywords and figure out the level of competition for a particular keyword.

You also have the option to view data from different countries and territories.

The best part?

You can copy this data and paste it into a Google sheet.

And, their huge database, according to Wordtracker, is made up of literally billions of real searches by real people.

 

#5. Answer The Public

 

 

Built by the team behind Coverage Book, Answer The Public is a keyword visualization tool.

It combines the auto-suggest results from Google and Bing and organizes them into what could be called the search cloud.

When you enter your keyword, Answer The Public will find Questions, Prepositions, Comparisons, Alphabeticals, and Related Searches for that keyword.

This is a free and great keyword research tool when you optimize your content for voice search.

Optimizing your content for voice search is a must if you want to gain an edge over your competitors. This is because more and more searches are using voice search.

Related: How To Optimize Your Content For Voice Search?

By 2020, 50% of the searches are expected to be voice search.

And Answer The Public helps you in finding the long-tail keywords and the questions in your users’ natural language they use when they ask about your niche.

How does it work?

Just enter a keyword and click on “Get Questions”.

It’ll suggest content ideas in seconds.

Let’s enter “lose weight”.

First thing you’ll see an image called search cloud which contains questions.

These questions are search queries in the categories of who, what, where, why, how, which, when, will, can, and is/are.

For example, “what are lose weight pills?”

 

After questions, it gives suggestions based on prepositions such as for, is, without, with, near, to, and can.

For example, “lose weight without dieting.”

 

Then come comparisons – versus, vs, like, or, and.

For example, “lose weight or build muscles first.”

 

Next, it gives alphabeticals which are Google Autocomplete Suggestions.

 

And finally, there are related suggestions. The number of related suggestions is around 20 for almost all the seed keywords you enter.

 

With its free version, you can perform searches for up to 3 keywords per day. For unlimited searches, you need to upgrade to its pro version.

It also allows you to export keyword ideas in CSV format.

 

#6. Google Trends

 

 

Google Trends is another useful free keyword research tool from Google.

It measures the popularity of a given search query. The popularity score ranges from 0 to 100, the most popular keywords getting 100 points.

It allows you to download, embed, and share all of the data visualizations that result from search – Interest over time, Interest by sub-region, and Related Queries.

Google Trends is a simple and feature-rich tool for keyword research.

Just enter your keywords, and pick a region, timeframe, categories, source (web, image, news, shopping, or YouTube).

For example, let’s enter the keyword “SEO”

 

 

The “Interest over time” graph will show you whether the popularity is growing or declining over time.

When you drop down to the bottom, you’ll see the “Related Queries” box.

 

 

Related queries are the queries the users search for when searching for your term.

Note: Click the question mark icons in this box to learn more about the top and rising related queries.

You can also search for multiple terms on Google Trends.

Let’s compare the search terms “SEO” and “PPC”.

 

 

The graph shows that “SEO” is growing in popularity and fewer people are searching for “PPC”.

 

#7. Keywordtool.io

 

 

The keyword tool is also one of the best free keyword research tools.

The source of data employed by the Keyword Tool is Google Autocomplete.

What is Google Autocomplete?

According to Google,

Autocomplete predictions are automatically generated by an algorithm without any human involvement based on a number of objective factors, including how often past users have searched for a term.

When you start typing anything into the Google search box, Google automatically shows some suggestions. Those suggestions are Autocomplete suggestions.

The keyword tool claims to be extremely reliable and working 99.99% of the time.

And the best part?

You can use this tool even without creating an account, absolutely for free.

It lets you find long-tail keywords for other websites such as YouTube, Bing, Amazon, PlayStore, Instagram, and Twitter.

For every search term, its free version generates 750+ long-tail keyword suggestions.

So, how to use Keywordtool for free?

The keyword tool is very easy to use and helps you find valuable long-tail keywords.

Just enter your keywords in the search box and click the search button. That’s it!

You’ll get hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords for that topic.

For example, let’s enter the keyword “lose weight”.

 

 

and you’ll get 611 unique keywords.

 

Conclusion:

 

These are some of the best free keyword research tools.

These tools will help you discover new keywords, the keywords your competitors are ranking for and then build your SEO and content marketing strategy.

I recommend you to try as many tools as possible and choose the ones that best fit your needs and are best for your goals and business.

Did I miss any cool free keyword research tool?

Feel free to let me know in the comments.