Keyword research tools are to SEO professionals what a scalpel is to a surgeon. An extension of themselves, an obsession that wakes them up at night. What keyword will improve their website ranking, trigger the click on the ad attached to that word or group of words. Finding relevant keywords is crucial to online businesses, whether they need customers, subscribers or viewers. Time being, as we know, money, any tool that makes the research part easier is a must have.
THE AWARD FOR BEST OF KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS GOES TO SEMRUSH
SemRush is an easy to use online resource for keyword research and analysis that provides comprehensive features. In fact, this solution lets you do, know and see everything imaginable pertaining to keyword performance and relevancy.
The search tool on specific keywords produces a quick overview of volume of queries, result pages, CPC and competition. That only is very valuable to measure the pertinence of your keywords for SEO purposes and what to expect if you launch PPC campaigns.
Research ToolsYour content is only as good as how well it matches users queries. SemRush goes on to list search phrases associated to keywords. From an SEO point of view, the number of matches, the keyword difficulty (how hard it would be to rank well on that particular keyword) and how tough the competition is are essential information.
The feature Ads history is a powerful keyword search tool functionality.. You can see what your competition is doing on a given query from estimated amount spent to date specific data. Should you see a slot that seems crowded, you can refine or adjust your keyword strategy and optimize budget distribution.
But SemRush is not great just to stay ahead of your competition. In one place, you can manage all your domains and track the performance of your SEO and PPC strategy. It is the swiss army knife of keyword research tools.
FIRST RUNNER UP: MOZ
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Moz is well know in the digital marketing world and with good reasons. They are all about the metrics. Their solution is fairly exhaustive in what SEO and PPC gurus need, especially when it comes to keyword research tool.
In a matter of seconds, Moz delivers insights on keyword rankings for you and your competitors with filtering options so you get only the info that matters to you: time frame, search engine, type, label and even how it performs on mobile.
The Analyze Keyword feature provides details on keyword difficulty and performance, again comparing you and your competition. Eventually, Moz keyword research tool presents an SERP basic report, suggesting what sites may be easier to compete with. And because productivity depends on staying organized, it offers the possibility to keep track of your keywords. With one click, you can access metrics about your list.
The Moz keyword research tool is user friendly and comprehensively covers what you need to know before you make a decision. Especially when you examine the data provided by the landing pages report. This feature is calculating an estimated volume of organic traffic for a keyword. A very handy trick to circumvent the “not provided” results from Google analytics.
SECOND RUNNER UP: KEYWORD TOOL
As runner ups go, this keyword research tool does not wear a tiara but is sufficient if you don’t need to manage multiple sites. The concept is to provide long tail keywords based on actual user queries. Using the Google suggested autocomplete search frame, you can get a list of what users really key in.
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The Pro Plus version ($88/month) gives you access to the basic and relevant information you need, such as search volume, CPC on Adwords, competition along with twice as many results.
While it doesn’t let you execute and manage SEO and PPC campaigns all in one place, Keyword Tool is interesting because it’s fast, it puts focus on long tail keywords (that are often difficult to use but efficient) and it is accurate.
Rumor has it that Google Keyword Planner hides keywords to favor advertisers, this keyword research tool solves the problem and saves you a lot of time.
Keyword research tools that are effective for SEO and PPC professional marketers, or for online business owners are dime a dozen. Not all are created equal, not all provide useful information (though most do) but the 3 presented here cover your tracks. Finding the best keyword research tool is only possible by testing several and pick the one(s) that best fit your objectives and needs.
