Doing keyword research on a budget
Not everyone can afford to spend hundreds of dollars every month to use a top tier keyword research tool. Are there any options for the rest of us? Here I show you a few free tools to use for keyword research to get you started. Learn the basics of doing keyword research first before shelling out huge amounts of money on more expensive tools.
Table of Contents:
1. Ahrefs free keyword generator
Keyword Generator finds up to 150 keywords ideas or 50 question like queries for any seed keyword or phrase ranked by search volume.
The first 10 results show the Keyword Difficulty (KD). KD is a number from 0-100 indicating how difficult it is to rank for that phrase, higher numbers will require more backlinks.
This tool is great but only showing ten KD scores makes it difficult to know how easy it will be to rank for each keyword. Especially when beginning it will only be possible to rank for low competition keywords (KD scores less than 30).
Search results are relative to the country so select the appropriate country first.
Try it here: https://ahrefs.com/keyword-generator
2. QuestiondDB
QuestionDB is a basic keyword research tool. Type in a keyword or two and press the search button.
Find untapped content ideas. It pulls data from a database of 48M questions sourced from Reddit. You can switch between question and keywords.
Try it here: https://questiondb.io
3. Ubersuggest
Provides hundreds of suggestions for keywords. Shows volume, competition and even seasonal trends. Ubersuggest has a nice looking interface. You can switch between suggestions, related, questions, prepositions and comparisons.
Also provides content ideas for the keyword. Content ideas are collected from Facebook, Pinterest and Reddit. This report gives you ideas for similar articles you can write.
https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
4. Wordstream
Simple tool, just enter a keyword to find suggestions. You can enter a URL to find keywords the website ranks for, this is useful if you know a website that is similar to your own. This tool uses Google search data to deliver it’s results.
Wordstream free keyword tool gives you keyword results, competition level and estimated CPC (Cost Per Click) data. Use a website url to research a competitor website to find what keywords they rank for. 25 keywords displayed for free – that’s more than most other free keyword tools.
https://www.wordstream.com/keywords
5. Google
Just use Google. Take advantage of the “People also ask” box in the search results. This will tell what other keyword phrases people are searching for on Google. As you click on any of the results Google will load more results at the bottom. Keep clicking until you have plenty of suggestions!
6. SpyFu
Type in a keyword and get data on ranking difficulty, similar keywords and questions containing the keyword. You can also type in a website address, your own or a competitor’s website to see what keywords they rank for.
Conclusion
Okay, those are a few of the free tools you can use to get started on keyword research. Are free tools the best for SEO? No, paid tools will give you much more information plus reports, backlink checkers and more. Only a small number of keywords shown for the free tools, many of which will be too difficult to rank for a beginner. Still, you can start with a free keyword research tool and then move on to a paid tool later.