Keyword research before determining your blog's topic does sound cliché.
Nevertheless, it's a must-do-task for all SEO and Content Marketing practitioners.
The big goal, of course:
A high volume of organic traffic.
The problem is, most of us are just starting out and don't have a big budget to subscribe to a sophisticated SEO tool.
But don't be discouraged, there are lots of SEO tools that you can use for free keyword research, without spending a dime at all.
In this article, I have compiled 10 tools (9 Websites and 1 Chrome Extensions) that you can use for free keyword research.
So without further ado, let's get started with this list of free keyword research tools.
1. Google Trends
For those of you who are diligent in writing blogs, surely this tool is familiar, right?
With this Google tool, you can start your free keyword research process.
Although it doesn't show exactly how many searches, Google gives a scale of the popularity of the keywords you're looking for. On a scale of 0-100.
Comparison of Multiple Keywords
You can also compare several keywords, to see which one is being searched the most.
Now, after finding the most trending keywords, you can choose them and move on to the next research process.
For example, we choose the keyword "konten marketing" huh?
Jump, to the next point.
2. Google Search Suggestion
This free keyword research method is fairly easy.
You only need to type the word "konten marketing" that we have chosen earlier, into the search field.
Ta-da. You already have a series of selected keywords directly from Google.
That's why this process is called “Google Search Suggestion”.
Here you can choose several keywords, then you can process them again
3. Google Search Console
If your website already verified with Google Search Console, you can also look for keyword ideas from here.
The way you do this is to just log into your Google Search Console account, then select Performance.
It placed on the right taskbar of your GSC display.
You can also define the period. Whether it’s in the last 3 months or 1 year.
After that, you will see any queries or keywords that make your website appear in Google Search.
Choose Keyword with Most Impression, but A Few Clicks.
In my experience, I choose keywords that have a lot of impressions but few clicks.
Because it means, that you have the opportunity to develop your content with keywords that have never crossed your mind before.
This used to be known as, “keyword opportunies”
You can update your web content with these displayed keywords.
I will discuss it in my later article.
4. Ahrefs Keyword Generator
Well, YILD Creative Marketing uses paid tools from Ahrefs.
But you can use this Singapore-based SEO tool for its free keyword research too.
It called Ahrefs Keyword Generator.
It's very simple, just type in the keywords you choose.
We're stick in "konten marketing".
Immediately you will get a series of keywords that contain the phrase "konten marketing".
It completed with its search volume and KD (Keyword Difficulties) or the competition level from the keyword mentioned.
Remember, choose the one with a small KD score with a quite big search volume, okay?
5. Keyword Surfer
The next SEO tool is Keyword Surfer.
Actually, this is a Chrome Extension that you can download for free on Chrome Web Store.
After you add it to your Google Chrome browser, Keyword Surfer will appear automatically every time you access Google Search.
This is how it looks like;
Monitoring Top 10 Competitors
In addition to those series of keyword ideas, you can also see who your Top 10 competitors are for the keyword you are looking for.
You can monitor their:
- Their monthly traffic forecast
- The word that is in their content, and
- The number of exact keywords or keywords that match exactly the keywords you are looking for.
Pretty dope huh?
6. Answer The Public
The sixth SEO tool for keyword research is Answer the Public.
Unfortunately, although you can set the location in Indonesia, keywords in Bahasa Indonesia are still not available in this tool.
So I tried to use "content marketing" for the keywords I chose.
You can get the keywords visualization as above. Or you can download the search results in CSV format.
The cool thing about this SEO tool is that you can get dozens of keyword phrases in the form of:
- Questions; phrases that contain the words “how”, “what”, “who”, etc.
- Prepositions; phrases containing conjunctions such as “is”, “can”, “to”, “with”, etc.
- Comparison; comparing 2 different objects, such as “content marketing vs social media”
- Alphabet; phrases that contain words other than the main phrase based on letters, as you can see for example below;
7. Ubersuggest
Well, this one SEO tool may already be familiar to some of you.
This tool developed by Neil Patel is called Ubersuggest.
As usual, you just type your search word, then set the location to Indonesia. After that press the "search" button.
You can enjoy the results right away.
In addition, you can also get a series of other keyword ideas. So you can carefully choose keywords with lower level of competition.
To see the competition level score, you can look in the SD (SEO Difficulties) column.
All you have to do is click the "View All Keyword Ideas" button.
So, you have a backup content phrase when it appears like this.
You can also see some content ideas if you scroll down again.
Uniquely, you can also check the keywords contained in some of the content lists that appear.
Just click the “keywords” button in the “EST. VISITS." column.
Then you will get results like below.
In addition to Keyword Research, it can be used for Website Analysis
In addition to free keyword research, you can use Ubersuggest to monitor your website and your competitors' websites too.
As a free SEO tool, Ubersuggest is really worth being listed as your primary keyword research tool.
8. Keyword Sheeter
The next SEO tool is the Keyword Sheeter.
This tool is really simple. You can get a lot of keyword and title ideas with just one button press.
As you can see from the screenshot above. To search for one keyword phrase "marketing content", you can immediately get 61 related keywords.
All done in less than a minute.
However, because the other analytical tools are only available in the paid version, you can check these keywords using another tools explained above.
9. Wordstream Free Keyword Tool
Next, you can check this free SEO tool from Wordstream.
This tool is actually suitable for those who are planning to advertise on Google Ads.
Because after you enter keywords in the search table as above, you will get the detail of average CPC (Cost-per-Click) and search volume on Google Ads.
As you can see an example below.
If you only see a few keywords among the large results, don't worry!
You can get all of them by email.
Just press the “Email All My Keywords” button, then enter your email address.
Immediately you will get a file containing a series of keywords for your Google Ads Campaign.
10. Keywordtool.io
The last free keyword research tool on this list is Keywordtool.io.
Unfortunately, the keyword details are only open in the pro version or the paid version, so you can combine the results obtained from this tool with other tools.
You can see the keyword list generated by keywordtool.io as below;
YouTube Keyword Research and Instagram Hashtags
You can also research Instagram hashtags and YouTube keywords too by using this tool.
It think this is a quite complete tool.
Maybe next time I'll try the pro version.
YouTube Keyword Research
Instagram Hashtag Research
So, those were the Top 10 Website SEO tools that I used when I want to do keyword research for free.
Do you have other tools that are not on my list? Leave it in the comments, okay?
Happy research!
