Keyword Research & Suggestion Tools

Overview: These are free and paid tools which will help you find which keywords to target and how competitive they are. Here is a video offering an introduction to keyword research

At the bottom of this page are a link to a free keyword research PDF and a few more free background videos about understanding keyword research and using keyword research tools.

Variety is the Spice of Life

SEO Toolbar - Free toolbar that adds a dozen cool keyword research tools right in your browser. :) Pick your favorites amongst them and search all of them with 1 click whenever you want to do keyword research.

Traditional Keyword Suggestion Tools

• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - our keyword tool showing top keyword phrases.
• Google AdWords Keyword Planner - recommends keywords based on a keyword you enter or a URL you have the tool analyze. Has a traffic estimator feature which shows the estimated bids prices and ad clicks for the top ranked AdWords ad. Allows you to check for [exact match], "phrase match", or broad match. In the past YouTube had a separate keyword research tool for it, but Google took that offline & folded the feature into their Display Planner.
• Bing Ad Intelligence - brilliant extension for Microsoft Excel which puts a load of great keyword research data directly into Excel. Bing also offers an online keyword toolset here.
• Google Suggest Tool - shows frequently search for phrases starting with the words and letters in your query. Uber Suggest is a more feature-rich tool which uses Google Instant keywords to generate suggestions. KeywordTool.io is similar to Uber Suggest.
• WordStream Keyword Tool - allows you to export a list of thousands of keywords for free.
• Wordtracker Free Keywords - free keyword suggestions from Wordtracker. Wordtracker also has a more advanced paid version, and sells top keyword reports.
• Keyword Discovery - free keyword tool from Trellian. Trellian also has a more advanced paid version of Keyword Discovery.
• Wordze - nice for generating decently large keyword lists quickly and inserting them into paid search campaigns.
• 7Search - smaller database from their smallish PPC ad network
• Grep Words - API-based keyword tool.

Keyword Valuation Tools

• Both Bing & Adwords offer CPC estimates in their ad platforms
• SEO Book keyword database - US-focused database built from the now defunct Google search-based keyword tool.
• many competitive research tools like SemRush, SpyFu, SearchMetrics & KeywordSpy offer similar databases.

Installable Keyword Databases / Desktop Software

These tools offer downloadable databases that you can install on your computer. One issue with these types of databases is most of them end up being broad matched data, so you might need to: build your initial seed keyword list, run things through a permutation generator & then use the Bing Ad Intelligence tool to clean up the data.

• Xedant
• Actual Keywords

Keyword Extensions

• SEO Book Keyword & Competitive Research Gadget - use almost any and every useful keyword tool from our free gadget that you can put on your site or on iGoogle.

More Abstract Keyword Sources

• eBay Marketplace Research - this paid tool allows you to see what items are selling on eBay and for how much
• Dependency-based Word Similarity - shows words which are often found in the same documents in a corpus of news articles.
• Google Sets - creates a set of keywords based on a keyword you enter
• Google Correlate - shows words with similar search behavior
• Google Related Keywords - highlights words that Google considers as being related to a keyword, as displayed when you search Google for ~keyword
• Keyword Density Analysis Tool - finds common words and phrases on your site.
• Page Comparison Tool - tool compares the page titles, meta information, and most common two and three word phrases between different pages.
• Quintura - visual search service which shows related modifiers clustered around your search
• Thesaurus.com - find related keywords using a traditional thesaurus
• Wordtracker Keyword Questions - shows questions people searched for that contain the root keyword you type in.
• Yahoo Term Extraction - delivers a list of most important keywords contained inside a piece of text.
• Google Global Market Finder - highlights estimated search volumes for related keywords in foreign languages in foreign markets
• Google Contextual Targeting - clusters similar keywords & shows what websites they feel are relevant to those clusters
• Wikipedia traffic stats

Trend Related Keywords

• Amazon.com - offers category based best sellers, new releases, & movers & shakers
• eBay Pulse - keywords that are currently hot on eBay, organized by category.
• Google Correlate - draw a shape or plug in a keyword & Google will show you other keywords with similar patterns.
• Google Hot Trends - shows keywords that are recently hot . Also archives older hot keywords, and Google Trends shows seasonal search trends for most popular keywords.
• Google Search Insights - shows keyword trends, hot keywords by cateogry, and top geographic regions for a keyword.
• Moz popular searches - combines and archives results from many of the tools in this section and a few others

Bulk Keyword Editing Tools

• Keyword List Generator - allows you to quickly create large lists of keyword phrases using keywords and modifiers
• Keyword List Cleaner - allows you to quickly create a functional keyword list from most any publicly available keyword source.
• Keyword Misspelling Generator - allows you to generate various misspellings of a keyword or phrase to match common typing errors. Useful for creating keyword lists around your most important keywords to bid on.
• Microsoft Ad Intelligence Excel plug in - a suite of highly useful and easy to recommend keyword tools that interface with Microsoft Excel.

Keyword Modifiers

• Keyword Modifiers - Spreadsheet showing common keyword modifiers organized by categories such as price, location, and other common variables.
• keyword tools review post - a couple year old blog post offering a free comparison of different keyword research tools, also showing how keyword modifiers work in a real world example

Background Information on Keywords

50 minute Keyword research video by me...a bit long, but hopefully you find it useful :)

• Dan Thies video on keyword strategy
• Dan Thies video on using my keyword permutation generator tool
• emarketingperformance.com keyword research [PDF]

Retired Keywords Tools

Related Categories

• Analytics Tools - track what keywords you are ranking for and how well they are performing
• Competitive Research Tools - compare your marketing strategies and progress to competitors
• PPC Tools - tools to build your pay per click marketing campaigns
• Rank Checkers - track your rankings

Know Any Other Tools Worth Suggesting?

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