The best SEO keyword research tools make it simple and easy to identify important business keywords for your website and optimize for them.
1. Best overall
2. Best for analysis
3. Best for beginners
4. Best for suggestion
5. Best free
6. FAQs
7. How we test
When it comes to SEO, Keyword research is probably among the most crucial aspects of the industry, and there is no doubt that there are hundreds of tools available online to do this. Now, these tools broadly fall into two categories– Complete SEO-optimization toolkit including a keyword research feature or Specific Keyword research tools that just do a single legwork. In any case, there are certain criteria that you must keep while looking for the best keyword research tool for your website.
Like, go for a tool that has reliable and accurate keyword data, offers a wide range of keyword suggestions, including long-tail keywords, and should offer a competitor analysis feature through which you can analyze your competitor’s keyword strategies. Along with this, such tools should be capable of getting integrated with other tools and come with a user-friendly interface to make them easily accessible.
Yes, we know, it’s a lot. That’s why we have created this detailed guide, where you will find the best keyword research tools on the internet. Each tool has its own USPs. So, let’s get started and find the ideal tool for your needs.
We've also featured the best free SEO keyword research tools.
The best SEO keyword research tools of 2024 in full:
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Best overall
If you're looking for a tool with a large data library, Ahrefs should be at the top of your list. Its database is spread across 10 different search engines and lets you get detailed insights into keyword difficulty, search volumes, and competitive analysis for crafting effective SEO strategies.
For expanding your content reach and visibility, it even has a keyword suggestions tool that helps find related terms and questions through its deep understanding of search intent and relevancy.
Moreover, the Keyword Explorer offers tons of metrics and useful data to help your keyword study. For instance, it offers a "Return Rate" metric, which tracks how often people are searching for a specific keyword again. You can also analyze the total number of clicks for a specific keyword on the search engine through Ahrefs “Click” data.
Even its interface is pretty easy to navigate and you can get used to its toolset quite easily. However, the plenty of features and data might be slightly confusing. Despite this, you can easily overcome any problem with the help of its extensive documentation and Ahrefs' responsive customer service.
With a starting price of $99/month for the Lite plan, Ahrefs may sound costly. However, this plan provides access to a variety of essential tools. This includes the keyword research tool, which comes with 500 tracked keywords and ample keyword and content exploration.
All in all, Ahref's data accuracy, user-friendly interface, and support structure make it a standout choice for keyword research, especially when it comes to keyword insights and strategic SEO planning.
Read our full Ahrefs review.
Best for analysis
Semrush comes with gigantic data of over 25 billion potential keywords under it. It does deep keyword research for you and offers crucial figures related to search volumes, user intent classifications (informational, commercial, navigational, transactional), and competitive density scores on a scale from 0 to 1.0. Its large database offers critical information on important metrics like search trends, keyword volumes, keyword difficulty, and cost-per-click (CPC) rates. All this helps you find the right keywords and understand competitors' activities.
During our tests, we found its competitive analysis feature quite impressive as it didn’t just mention our competitor's ranking keywords but even went a step ahead and noted down the visibility score of keywords. This score shows the keyword’s prominence on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Plus, you can further compare your keyword profile with up to five different competitors through Semrush’s Gap Analysis feature. Along with this, if you want to know the “not provided” keywords, Semrush seamlessly integrates with different Google tools like Google Analytics and Google Search REASONS TO AVOIDole (GSC) to show these keywords comprehensively.
To easily let you find your way around the vast amount of tools and data, Semrush has designed its interface to be powerful and user-friendly. For the times you get stuck, its support system provides live chat, email support, and a wide range of tutorials and resources to help you.
You might say that $119.95 per month for the pro plan is too much. But with full access to its features, including tracking for up to 500 keywords and in-depth reports in the keyword analytics section, it's worth it.
Read our full Semrush review.
Best for beginners
Keyword Tool.io’s straightforward approach to keyword research makes it the perfect starting point for beginners. Its clean and user-friendly interface lets you quickly generate long-tail keyword suggestions across various platforms, including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and more. It does this by using Google Autocomplete, which finds popular and relevant keywords and delivers crucial data beyond the one available on Google Keyword Planner.
It further provides essential keyword data like search volume, trends, CPC, and competition levels with its Pro version and that too without making the process difficult. What makes it a great keyword research tool is its support for over 192 different types of Google domains and 83 different languages which helps in targeting both global and local SEO strategies. Under this, you can find the localized search volume data and trends, which prove whether your SEO strategy is effectively curated to different markets and search behavior or not. Through this, you can boost your traffic and engagement across diverse and specific audiences.
However, if you’re looking for in-depth competition analysis, you may find the features lacking compared to more advanced tools. Plus, the absence of direct phone support or chat could be a downside when you need immediate assistance. However, the platform's straightforward design and online resources ensure this doesn’t happen. Another great thing about this tool is its starting price of just $89/month for the Pro plan. This makes it an accessible option for those just starting in SEO.
Read our full Keyword tool.
Best for suggestion
Exploding Topics is an AI-powered trend-analyzing tool that excels in offering keyword suggestions that have the potential to gain volume in the future. It does this by going through millions of datasets from various mentions, searches, and conversations. This makes it a valuable resource for marketers, content creators, and business owners looking to capitalize on emerging trends. Thanks to its simple and straightforward interface, the tool makes discovering and analyzing upcoming trends easy.
While the basic plan is free, you must subscribe to a Pro plan to unlock its full potential and access comprehensive insights. If you're wondering about the price, it is customized based on individual or business needs, so you have to pay for what you need. Despite all its amazing features, there are a few drawbacks worth pointing out.
Firstly, not all predicted trends gain the predicted popularity. Additionally, its focus on industry-specific trends means that not all suggestions will be applicable or useful for every user. However, Exploding Topic's user-friendly interface and unique focus on emerging trends make it a powerful asset for staying one step ahead in your online game.
Best free
If you’re looking for a free tool to help you in keyword research, you can always bet on Google Keyword Planner. The best thing about this tool is that it seamlessly integrates with Google Ads and gives you a straightforward interface that simplifies keyword research.
Besides this, you can uncover information regarding search volume, competition level, and cost-per-click (CPC) estimates for your keywords of interest, which tap into the source of over 3.5 billion daily searches.
The Keyword Planner also helps you filter and refine your keyword list based on various criteria, such as search volume, competition, keyword type (broad match, phrase match, or exact match), and more. This helps you focus on the most relevant and valuable keywords for your campaign. If you want to plan your budget for Google Ads, The tool allows you to estimate the potential cost and performance of your ad campaigns based on your selected keywords, bid amounts, and budget.
Furthermore, support for Google Keyword Planner users is mainly available through comprehensive online help documents and active community forums. While these resources are informative, lacking direct support channels might leave you seeking more personalized assistance.
However, while it delivers essential data, the tool does not provide trend analysis, making it difficult to identify emerging keywords or seasonal changes. Additionally, if you’re not investing in Google Ads, you’ll receive ranges instead of specific numbers for keyword volume data which might not be very useful for you when it comes to detailed analysis.
We've also featured the best onpage SEO tools.
SEO keyword research tool FAQs
How to choose the best SEO keyword research tool for you?
When deciding which SEO keyword research tool to use, first consider what your actual needs are, as budget options may only provide basic features, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a more expensive platform is better suited to you.
Additionally, higher-end SEO software usually includes a range of ranking and content tracking options, along with a comprehensive tool box to suit every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require from your keyword research tool.
How we tested the best SEO keyword research tools
To test for the best SEO keyword research tools we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, then we tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each keyword research tool to see how useful its basic features were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced SEO options.
Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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