You will need to do a little bit of keyword research if you ever want your content or webpages to see the light of day: Page 1 Search Results. There are many tools to choose from, but these are a few of the best…
Most popular keyword research tools:
- SEO Book Keyword Tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/ (free)
- Wordtracker http://www.wordtracker.com/ (paid)
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer (free)
The SEO Book Keyword Tool is free and pulls information from Wordtracker, a paid service that supposedly also allows you to ping the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Google has a couple other tools that are useful as well:
- Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends (free)
- Google Insights http://www.google.com/insights/search/ (free)
Google Trends shows how frequently a term is searched for by region or language and allows users to compare keywords.
Google Insights is a similar tool that shows slightly different information and incorporates a map for locations.
All of these free tools are helpful for different aspects of keyword research, but I haven’t fully explored any of the paid resources yet.
They all offer free trials to test out their services:
- Serp IQ http://serpiq.com/ (paid)
- Wordstream http://www.wordstream.com/ (paid)
- Keyword Discovery http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ (paid)
Serp IQ is a new tool on the market that looks very promising and they offer a monthly plan.
Wordstream appears to be mostly focused on PPC and they, unfortunately, only seem to offer a yearly subscription for their keyword research tools. (A monthly subscription for this tool seems like it would attract a lot more users.)
Keyword Discovery seems to be the most expensive of the bunch and – considering all of the other free (and paid) options – may not be worth the price.
