There’s no shortage of tools specifically designed for keyword research (literally hundreds of them), and they offer the full range from basic to very advanced. They also range from completely basic and useless to very valuable.
When used properly, the best keyword research tools simplify and streamline the process. your workflow: they make it easy to find the right keywords to target and give you the data you need. need to really classify them. But they shouldn’t require you to empty your bank account to access this data.
After years of working with several clients who use different tools for research keyword and SEO content optimization, we’ve seen the best (and worst) of them – and we know how important it is to choose the right keyword planner. To help you, we’ve reviewed many tools that offer free options for keyword research. After extensive testing, here are the four best free keyword research tools, including the best all-round tools and apps designed for more specific use cases.
Best Free Keyword Research Tools
List of 10 best free keyword research tools for SEO in 2024 to conduct keyword research process effectively and get the best keywords to start On-Page SEO.
- Keyword Generator to find ideas for popular keywords.
- Answer The Public to find keywords formulated as sentences ask.
- ChatGPT to find seed keyword ideas.
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to find easy-to-find keyword opportunities.
- Google Keyword Planner to find keywords related keywords.
- Google Search Console to find declining keywords.
- Google Trends to find declining keywords.
- SERP Checker to analyze traffic potential keyword access.
- Keyword difficulty checker to check the difficulty ranking of a keyword.
Moz Keyword Explorer
Moz’s SEO platform offers a number of different tools designed for keyword research. While Moz doesn’t include as many data points as some other comprehensive SEO tools (like SERP position history or the total number of keywords a competitor ranks for), we consider this an advantage. This makes the user experience less overwhelming for those who aren’t professional search marketers without considering the metrics you really want.
With the Explorer tool keywords, you can search for any keyword of your choice and see that keyword’s monthly content. volume, difficulty, and organic click-through rate (CTR). From there, scroll down to see analysis of current result rankings and suggestions for similar keywords.
Keyword research features are available for free for up to 10 queries. queries per engine per month, along with up to 1,000 keyword suggestions and 10 SERP scans per query; Moz Pro plans start at $99/month for 150 keyword queries per month
Ahrefs Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool shows up to 150 keyword ideas. Simply enter a general topic, select your target country, and click “Find keywords.”
Each list also has a Keyword Difficulty (KD) score for the top 10 keywords. The closer this is to 100, the harder it’ll be to rank for the keyword (more on this in point #9).
Semrush
If you’re looking for something more advanced, Semrush shares a ton of keyword data and makes it easy to dig into the details, like SERP features (featured snippet, reviews, site links, image pack, and so on) and granular analysis of current results. Semrush offers a broad range of keyword research tools, too, from the standard traffic and search volume data to content-driven keyword research and competitive keyword gap analysis.
That range is what really sets Semrush apart, including the standard Keyword Overview, the Keyword Magic Tool for exploratory keyword research, a Keyword Manager and position tracking, competitive Keyword Gap analysis, and Organic Traffic Insights, which—when connected with your Google Analytics or Search Console account—can uncover those famously tricky “not provided” keywords.
As an added bonus, the SEO Content Template tool lets you automatically create a content brief and optimize content as you write by grading your content in real-time for readability, originality, tone of voice, and SEO: it uses a handy bullseye graphic to help you strike the right balance. Plus, the tool visually checks off SEO recommendations (like using your target and related keywords and adding relevant links and images) as you go.
All of this means that upgrading will cost you a pretty penny—but you can use it for free at low volumes to start.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public uses autocomplete to find the questions people are searching for. Just enter a general topic, select your target country and click “Search”.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t show search volume by keyword. However, the red circles next to each (called) keyword tell you whether that keyword generates a high, average, or low number of monthly searches.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a chatbot from OpenAI. This is not very useful for general keyword research but is useful for finding seed keyword ideas.
Not all of these keywords are good seed keywords because they are too general and have many meanings, but some do.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools shows all the keywords you’re currently ranking for in the top 100. Just go to the organic keywords keyword report in Site Explorer. There are many ways to use this report for keyword research, but one of my favorites is to find easy rankings on the second page. To do this, filter for keywords in positions 11-20 and turn on the “Primary positions only” switch. Since almost no one clicks on results on the second page, improving your rankings for these keywords just a few positions on the first page can often increase traffic significantly.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool for advertisers. But you can also use it to find keywords for SEO. This is especially useful when finding related keywords that don’t contain your root keyword. Unfortunately, Keyword Planner only provides search volume ranges rather than exact volumes (unless you’re running search ads). However, you can always copy and paste ideas into Ahrefs’ free keyword generator for a more accurate estimate.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) says How your website is performing for the top 1,000 organic keywords. study. Just navigate to the search results report. There are many ways to use this report for keyword research, but one way is to find declining keywords that you need to pay attention to.
Google Trends
Google Display Trends the relative popularity of a keyword over time. It also shows related searches are increasing and exploding. This is very useful for finding trending keywords.
There is often a delay before trending keywords like these appear in traditional keyword research tools. This makes Google Trends a great way to conveniently find new popular topics before your competitors.
SERP Checker
SERP Checker shows the top ranking pages for (almost) all keywords, as well as useful SEO metrics for the first three pages. This is especially useful for understanding a keyword’s traffic potential. Estimated search traffic to top ranking pages is often a better indicator of a keyword’s true traffic potential than search volume. So it’s worth integrating promising keyword ideas into the SERP Checker to better understand how much traffic you might get by ranking.
Keyword Difficulty Checker
Keyword difficulty test (KD) estimates how difficult it is to rank in the top 10. That said, KD is based solely on backlinks. It doesn’t take into account anything else that might affect ranking difficulty, like content quality. For this reason, a high KD score simply means you will likely need a lot of backlinks to compete. You should always investigate ranking difficulties in more detail before doing keyword research.
The features that make for a great keyword research tool are pretty straightforward – You search for a given keyword and the tool will notify you. However, there are so many different ways to use keyword data that we wanted to find tools that could handle a variety of use cases, as well as some that were designed for several uses. most popular of the word study courses.
During testing, we primarily looked at the factors below to determine which apps made our initial list.
Data included – The best keyword research tools give you all the data you need to rank for your chosen keywords. All of the apps we selected included traffic, keyword difficulty, and competitive SERP analysis as a minimum.
Data Sources – You need to be able to trust that your keyword data is free of errors and bias. Therefore, determining the data source of each keyword research tool is an important step for us. Each tool we include pulls data from Google Analytics or Google Search Console at a minimum.
Keyword optimization guidance – You don’t have to be a 10-year SEO industry veteran to use keyword research tools: the best ones provide simple, straightforward suggestions for keyword optimization. your. There are tools (like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz) that perform a full SEO analysis on your site, checking everything from site speed and technical details to domain authority and topic clusters. That’s not what we’re looking for here. We’re looking for tools that any business owner or marketer can use to quickly understand target keywords and optimize their website to rank for that keyword. >
Free plan allowances and upgrades – Some tools include very limited free results and call it a “free plan”. Or, they put a time limit on the free plan, making it more like a trial. We only include tools that have a forever free plan, are large enough to be truly useful, and they also won’t cost a lot of money to upgrade.
Standalone functionality – Since you’re looking for something free, your keyword tool should be a one-stop shop that doesn’t require additional tools or extensions to work for you, especially those which you will have to pay for.
Final Thoughts
If you are new to SEO, free keyword research tools will be enough to discover keyword ideas or for your website. But once your site grows and the value of your time skyrockets, paid keyword research tools will be worth every penny.
That’s because paid keyword tools give you more data and enable more efficient workflows, so you can come up with keyword ideas better in less time.
Once you have done keyword research, you should be moving on to on-page and off-page SEO with the help of the best free SEO tools.