Keyword research is at the core of digital marketing. Whether it is used for SEO, PPC (Google Adwords), or content marketing, you cannot succeed in any initiatives without doing the proper keyword research first. If you are not bidding on or using the right keywords, you are not serving the right content to the right audience at the right stage in the buyer journey. This means less traffic, leads, customers…and less money going into your bank account. Here are the top keyword research tools that you should be using to spearhead your SEO and digital marketing campaigns.
1. SEMRush.COM
SEMrush is powerful, versatile, accurate, and the most up-to-date keyword research tool. It is most popularly used to find out the best keywords for ranking in Google in over 26 countries. You can also use it to spy on competitors and the keywords they are targeting. As well, if you type your domain address [or any domain] in the search bar, the tool will bring up all the keywords you are ranking for as well as inform you of any drops/increases in SERPS for each keyword.
All results show keyword ideas, estimated search volumes, estimated CPCs, keyword difficulty scores, current ranking domains for a keyword as well as historic rankings trends.
2. Google Trends
Google Trends is an online search tool that allows you to see how often specific keywords, subjects and phrases have been searched for over a period of time. It not only allows you to make comparisons between the popularity of one keyword and another, it also tells you which keywords are rising in search volumes in your industry. This will come into good use when determining which keywords can be better used in blogs, websites, news articles etc.
I particularly like how Google Trends provides alternative phrase ideas that very often bring more traffic than the original keyword idea that the online marketer searched for.
3. Google Suggest
Google Suggest is great for coming up with trending long-tail keywords. All you need to do is search for your given keywords on Google and scroll down to the bottom of the page to view related searches. Save them because these keywords are algorithmically generated as a result of other popular and productive searches.
4. 7Search
Works much like the Google Keyword Planner, the 7search tool is extremely easy to use and generates high quality results. Upon entering the 7search landing page, click the “Advertisers” button in the top navigation menu. A box will appear that will ask you to enter your keywords; use commas to separate multiple keywords. In addition to the keyword suggestions, pay close attention to the number of monthly searches. This gives you a clear picture of which long tail keywords can generate the most traffic to your website. When used intermittently with Google Keyword Planner, there is no reason why you will ever run out of keyword suggestions to use.
5. Moz
Moz, a leader in search marketing and online marketing tools, officially launched their foray into keyword research in 2015. The goal of this tool, dubbed Keyword Explorer, is to guide users through the entire research process while providing metrics and scoring to aid users in their keyword selection.
What I like most about this tool is that it provides accurate data using anonymous clickstream data from 1 million + real searchers. As well, it provides unique features and metrics that are not visible in other keyword research tools. From Opportunity scores, which tells how many positions are available in SERPs, to Importance, which allows marketers to input feedback on which keywords are more important to them, Keyword Explorer is a great tool that gives online marketers unique insight as to which keywords are ideal for their search campaigns.
6. MarketMuse
This is a tool that’s just taking off, but it’s AMAZING. It basically crawls your website and/or your competitors’ website and finds keyword gaps using pretty sophisticated topic modeling algorithms. It works extremely well.
Keyword research is one of the fundamental steps in building a quality website which receives high-quality traffic from search engines. If you don’t use powerful keyword research tools, it will become hard work to compete with your competitors, especially if you are in a competitive niche.
There are many more keyword research tools that you could use for your digital marketing campaign than the ones listed on here. We have selected the few that we feel outrank the others.
For a free SEO analysis and a more detailed overview of which keyword research tools will be best for you and your industry, contact us now.
