Trying to rank for keywords without doing any research is like going on a road trip without a map— you might get lucky and end up at your destination, but chances are you’ll get lost along the way.

Keyword research is an essential part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and even for market research because it gives you insights into what people are actually searching for when they visit your website.

When you identify your target keywords, your website’s organic traffic potential becomes more predictable because you will have insights about your keyword’s monthly search volume. This allows you to create a more precise SEO forecast, including your ROI from organic traffic.

Last year, I worked as an SEO for Removal.AI – an AI background remover SaaS tool.

In just a few months of our SEO campaign, the results exploded from ZERO to 400,000 monthly organic traffic (and grew even more up to 2M currently).

There are no secrets to this. We just simply ranked #1-5 for major keywords that have high monthly search volume.

If you want to get serious about SEO and attracting relevant organic traffic to your website, you need to target specific keywords. The right keywords can help you attract the right audience, rank higher in search engines, and get more traffic. That’s where keyword research comes in.

In this article, we’ll share tips about keyword research and the best keyword research tools that you can use to improve your SEO.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing keywords that are relevant to your business or website. This research helps you identify the terms that people are using to search for products or services like yours, in order to determine which ones might be worth targeting with SEO efforts.

Understanding the Type of Keywords

There are different types of keywords that you can target, each with its own purpose. Here is a quick overview of the different types of keywords:

• Short tail keywords: These are general, one or two-word terms with a high monthly search volume. They’re usually more difficult to rank for because there is a lot of competition. If you’re a marketing company, short tail keywords include “SEO services,” “digital marketing,” and “content marketing.”
• Long tail keywords: These are more specific, three or four-word terms with a lower monthly search volume. They’re usually easier to rank for because there is less competition. Examples: “SEO tips for beginners,” “SEO agency for SaaS” and “affordable digital marketing services.”
• LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords: These are terms that appear to be semantically relevant in relation to a primary keyword. If your page’s major term is “SEO,” LSI keywords would include key phrases like “SEO keywords,” “SEO keyword research tools,” “SEO tips,” and “SEO interview questions.”

• Short-term fresh keywords: These are keywords that people are searching for right now or trending. They can be related to current events or hype. Examples: “gift ideas for Christmas,” “labor day deals,” “father’s day gifts,” and “black friday discounts.”
• Long term evergreen keywords: These are keywords that people are searching for on a regular basis. They’re usually related to timeless topics or evergreen content. Examples: “how to start a blog,” and “SEO strategy.”
• Product defining keywords: These are keywords that describe your product, product features or service. Examples: “backlink checker”, “content analytics” and ” SEO tools.”
• Customer defining keywords: These are more specific search terms used by customers to find the items they want. Examples: “SEO services for SaaS,” “digital marketing agency for SaaS,” “men’s apparel” and “shoes for kids.”
• Geo-targeting keywords: These are keywords related to a specific location or country. For example, if you’re a business in the Philippines, you might want to target keywords like “Filipino content writers,” “Best marketing agency in the Philippines” and “SEO services Philippines”.
• Search Intent keywords: These keywords show what the user is intended to do. These are classified into 4 types:

1. Navigational: These are keywords that people use to find a specific solution to their needs. For example, if someone wants to find the Removal.AI website, they might type in “remove background from image” and “remove image background.”
2. Informational: These are keywords that people use when they want to learn something. For example, if someone wants to learn how to remove the background from an image, they might type in “remove background from image tutorial,” or “how to remove image background online.”
3. Transactional: These are keywords that people use when they’re ready to buy something. For example, if someone wants to buy a solution to help them remove image background, they might type in “background removal tool,” and “background removal software.”
4. Commercial: These are keywords that people use when they want to find a business or company. For example, if someone is looking for a company that provides background removal services, they might type in “Removal AI,” “Removal AI pricing” and “background removal company.”

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is important because it helps you:

• Understand what people are looking for. By understanding the terms that people are using to search for your product or service, you can tailor your content to better meet their needs.
• Identify the right keywords to attract the right audience. If you use the wrong keywords, you could attract people who are not interested in what you have to offer.
• Connect with your target audience. If you use the right keywords, you can attract people who are more likely to convert.
• Improve your website’s ranking in search engines. Keyword research can help you identify the terms that you should be targeting to get the best results.
• Get more relevant organic traffic to your website
• Generate new ideas for content
• Decide the best strategy for your SEO
• Have insights about your traffic potential (monthly search volume)
• Measure costs and ROI from your SEO efforts – keyword difficulty (KD) and cost-per-click (CPC)

What is a Keyword Research Tool?

A keyword research tool is a software that helps you discover relevant keywords in the form of key phrases, search terms, or topic suggestions that people are looking for on search engines like Bing, Google, Amazon, and others. This helps you discover ideas for content that your consumers might be searching for.

Some common features include:

• Search Engine Results Page (SERP) analysis: This is a process of looking at the search engine results pages to gain insights about top-ranking pages for a keyword, including their domain rating, referring domains, backlinks, traffic, rank tracking, rich snippets, and more.
• Keyword analysis: This gives you insights about search volume, keyword difficulty (competition), cost, interest trends, often separated by organic vs paid, and more.
• Keyword difficulty (KD) score: This is a metrics that indicates how difficult it would be to rank for a keyword.
• Monthly search volume (SV): This is the number of times people have searched for a keyword in a month. You can check this by county or by global.
• Cost per click (CPC): This is the amount you would pay for each click on an ad if you were to run a paid search campaign for that keyword. CPC is important because it can help you estimate your potential return on investment (ROI) from running a paid search campaign.
• Keyword gaps: This gives you data about keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not.

How to Choose the Best Keyword Research Tools?

There are many available tools for keyword research. However, not all of them are created equal. Here are some factors to consider when choosing a Keyword Research Tool:

• Pricing: There are many free and paid options available. You should choose the option that fits your budget and needs.
• Ease of use: The user interface should be intuitive and easy to navigate. The tool should also provide clear and concise instructions on how to use the features.
• Key features: Some of the features to look for include SERP analysis, keyword difficulty score, monthly search volume, cost per click, and keyword gaps.
• Integrations: The tool should integrate with other software you are using, such as Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Google Search Console. This will help you track your progress and see how your keyword research is impacting your website traffic. The data provided by the keyword research tool should be accurate and reliable.
• Customer support: This is important in case you have any questions or need help using the features of the tool.

Best Keyword Research Tools in 2022 

These keyword research tools will simplify your workflow and make it easier for you to find the right keywords that you need to rank better for SEO and your SEM campaigns.

Free Tools 

If you’re looking for winning keywords to target but don’t have the budget for paid tools, never fear! There are plenty of great keyword tools available for free. Here are some of the best ones to try:

1. Google Keyword Planner (for discovering keywords for PPC and Ads)

Although it is primarily designed for advertising, this free tool is also helpful for SEO. It provides data on monthly search volume, CPC, and competition level. You can also use it to find keyword ideas, and keyword ad groups.

• Price: Free but requires a Google Ads account to work. You have to provide payment details, but you do not need to pay for anything, like running an ad.
• Ease of use: The user interface is clean and simple. Ideal for both beginners and experts.
• Key features: It has an option for exploratory keyword research where you search for keyword ideas from a seed term and another for in-depth analysis to check for search volume and forecasting.
• Integrations: Using the Google Ads API, you can interact with other programs for automated account management, custom reporting, ad management, and managing intelligent bidding strategies. It can work with several languages, including Java, C++, PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python.
• Support: Many marketers use Google Keyword Planner, so there is an endless resource that can help you out when using it. You can explore the Community, where there are many experts, or directly contact the developers.

2. Answer the Public (for keyword mapping)

An excellent tool for those who are new to keyword research. It presents keywords in a visual format or a list form.

• Price: The free plan is suitable for a few searches, but you will get access to the best features with its paid plans that start at $99 to $199 a month.
• Ease of use: Although the visual data looks nice, it can lead to neck injury if you use it to analyze data for a long time. There is an option to export the files into spreadsheets for easier viewing and more opportunities to work on the available data.
• Key features: Aside from the unlimited daily searches and search listening alerts, it also allows you to create a Collections folder to organize research.
• Integrations: AnswerThePublic gathers its keyword results from Google and Bing’s auto-suggest features.
• Support: Priority customer support is available for premium users.

3. Google Trends (for finding keywords that are trending)

A wonderful keyword research tool to understand trending searches made on Google. It is easy to use and gives exciting insights about keyword popularity.

• Price: Free.
• Ease of use: Fill in any keyword into Google Trends and see their popularity, compare it against other keywords, and find suggestions for related keywords from the original search query.
• Key features: Excellent insights into search seasonality, provides local and regional interest results. It also helps you understand how the keyword trends change over time.
• Integrations: It has an API connector to enable cross-channel analytics.
• Support: You can browse the help topics for troubleshooting, FAQ, and other related queries.

4. Soovle (a fun way to discover keyword on different search engines)

Suited for SEO beginners to keyword strategy to research and get keyword ideas. It is super user-friendly and customizable.

• Price: Free.
• Ease of use: You can use Soovle in three ways: by searching for a term, clicking through the suggestions, or clicking on new phrases to update the results.
• Key features: It has country-specific search volume data and an option to find all keywords from any webpage to generate the volume metrics. You can save and export keywords in bulk.
• Integrations: Soovle integrates with many products, including Google, YouTube, eBay,Keywords Everywhere, and more.
• Support: You can contact the support team through the email form on their website.

5. Keywordtool (find great keywords using Google autocomplete)

A free tool that pulls out hundreds to thousands of keywords from Google searches. It works 99.99% of the time, which is why it is considered one of the highly reliable keyword tools.

• Price: You can use it for free, but the Pro features are awesome at only $79 per month.
• Ease of use: It automatically generates hundreds of relevant keyword suggestions after keying in a focus keyword. It is the easiest way to uncover popular keywords that will help you get better rankings on Google.
• Key features: Generates keyword suggestions in seconds. It also gives accurate search volume data, including the search volume for the next 12 months.
• Integrations: It gathers data from Google Trends but lets you save time by presenting it in a more straightforward and comprehensible format. There is also a Keyword Tool API to speed up keyword research by allowing you to extract data seamlessly.
• Support: Fast customer support through email or the website message form.

Other free tools:

6. Ahrefs – Free Keyword Generator

7. Keyword Sheeter

8. Keyworddit

9. Google Search Console

10. Bulk Keyword Generator

Premium Tools

Paid or premium tools offer incredible features and benefits that free tools can’t keep up with. If you want to take your keyword research to the next level, then consider investing in one of these paid options:

11. Rank Tracker by SEO PowerSuite

Link Assistant offers a powerful link building tool that can help you with your SEO campaigns. The software provides you with a wide range of features that can help you with your link building efforts. Overall, Link Assistant is a great tool for managing your SEO campaigns.

• Price: You can try it out using a free account. Full access to all of its features starts at $299/year (professional plan) and $499/year (enterprise plan).
• Ease of use: The software is available as a desktop application and a web-based app. The desktop app is more comprehensive, but the web app is still pretty powerful.
• Key features: This software has a ton of features, including rank tracking, competitors’ analysis, content ideation, link building, site auditing, and more.
• Integrations: The SEO PowerSuite Backlink API is used by its partners to power their own tools and they are able to resell SEO PowerSuite data within their software and client reports.
• Support: The customer support team is responsive and helpful. They offer live chat, email support, and a comprehensive knowledge base.

12. Moz Keyword Explorer (for the best all-around free SEO keyword research tool)

One of the best SEO tools is where you can do keyword research faster and give high-impact suggestions so your site can rank higher.

• Price: You can try it out using a free account with ten free monthly searches. Full access to all of its features starts at $179 a month.
• Ease of use: You can use it as a keyword planner and prioritize keywords by topic through the comprehensive scoring feature.
• Key features: It has most features of popular keyword tools plus two unique features: the Organic CTR score and Priority score for smart targeting. You can use it to target long-tail keywords by finding keywords in question format. This will help you get highly-relevant keywords in broad topics.
• Integrations: Export data into well-formatted CSVs.
• Support: You can contact the help team or connect with over 500,000 digital marketers on the Moz Community page.

13. Semrush Keyword Research (for advanced SEO professionals)

A complete SEO tool suite designed to improve SEO rankings through cutting-edge keyword research.

• Price: It has a range of plans suited to the company’s needs, depending on how big the organization is. The Pro plan at $119 per month is excellent for newbies and small teams, while the Business plan at $449 per month will fit larger companies.
• Ease of use: It is popular among marketers because it has a full suite of SEO tools that are handy for content marketing, social media, digital marketing, and keyword research.
• Key features: Has a keyword overview tool that shows the monthly search volume, the trend, organic search terms, and more. You can also use it to research the competition and check out their search engine ranking positions, traffic value, and other related traffic metrics.
• Integrations: Finding more related keywords from WordPress is easier since SEMRush can integrate with the All in One SEO plugin.
• Support: A free training session for a demo will be in order upon signing up. There will also be a dedicated point of contact who will be assigned to help you out with all Semrush-related queries.

14. KWFinder (for SEO agencies)

Not all keyword tools can help you find the best long-tail keywords for effective targeting. KWFinder is efficient at identifying high search volume and low competition keywords.

• Price: Subscriptions start at 29.90 for Basic, 39.90 for Premium and 79.90 for Agency.
• Ease of use: Very intuitive to use with its simple interface.
• Key features: Identify seasonal keywords based on historical data. Find long-tail and competitor’s keywords, do local keyword research, and filter unproductive keywords.
• Integrations: Process more keywords per request and make high-priority requests with the KWFinder API.
• Support: There are many resources to learn how to use its various keyword tools, such as the Mangools Blog, KWFinder guide, SEO guide, and keyword research guide.

15. Growth Bar Keyword Research 

A valuable keyword research tool for digital marketing companies. It can generate billions of keywords, determine search volumes, evaluate competitiveness, and more.

• Price: Get Started with the standard plan at $29 per month. There is also a Pro plan at $79 a month and the Agency plan at $129 per month.
• Ease of use: Compact and easy to use as it eliminates repetitive actions of analyzing websites using different SEO tools.
• Key features: Advanced keyword research for related long-tail keywords, keyword difficulty score, Google Ads cost-per-click estimate, and value of position 1.
• Integrations: Works with SpyFu for accurate keyword data.
• Support: Although everything about it is straightforward, you can contact the team through email for other information and support.

16. Spyfu

It is one of the easiest keyword tools to find advanced insights, SEO and PPC metrics, and Related Questions/ Transactional Keywords.

• Price: The Basic plan starts at $33 per month, and the Pro plan starts at $79 per month, but you can also choose the simple pricing plan at $0.50 per 1000 rows.
• Ease of use: The results are displayed right after searching a keyword in the search bar. It shows the top domains, ranking, and search links.
• Key features: More than the search results and data exports, SpyFU also gives you six months- worth of historical data and weekly tracked keyword rankings. There are also bonus features for SpyFu members, like services and tools for improving reach, automating SEO monitoring, optimizing PPC spending, and more.
• Integrations: The SpyFu API can be used to customize marketing solutions by integrating the gathered data into the software or workflow.
• Support: The SpyFu Team put up a resource page for advice and answers when using the app.

Other Premium Tools

17. LSI Graph

18. Ubersuggest Keyword Tool

19. Keyword Insights

20. Keyword Revealer

21. Keyword Discovery

22. Serpstat SEO

23. Questiondb.io

24. Jaaxy

25. WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool

26. Microsoft Keyword Planner Tool

27. Majestic

28. Longtailpro

29. Getkeywords

30. Seo-explorer

Keyword Tool Extensions:

31. Surferseo

32. Keywords Everywhere – Keyword Tool

33. PPCexpo Keyword Planner

34. SERP Keyword Scraper

There are a number of different keyword research tools available, both free and paid. And while each tool has its own unique features, they all have one goal in common: to help you find the right keywords for your business or website.

What are your favorite keyword tools? Share them with us in the comments below!