Basically, strategic keyword research tools help you to find important words/concepts found in your research question or thesis. A quick and dirty way to pull keywords from a research question/thesis is to choose the most important nouns; all other words are irrelevant. Using keywords to search will always retrieve more results than phrases or sentences.
Not forgetting, keyword research is a fundamental part of search marketing, whether you’re primarily running Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Paid Search marketing campaigns, or you’re looking to improve your organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) results. In order to successfully market through search you’ll need to learn how to research keywords.
So the question becomes: How do you, the search advertiser, go beyond a static list of keywords to create a continuous stream of keyword phrases that improve your bottom line? How do you discover and research keywords that will drive relevant traffic to your business? By discovering new keywords and performance data to use in your website content.
As well as in your Google Ads campaigns and more. We rarely get excited about SEO and SEM tools… But, when it comes to keyword research it is virtually impossible to produce a quality worksheet without software. When we have to perform the same task for my customers, the process is even more daunting and time-consuming…
What Are Keywords And Keyword Research In SEO Marketing?
According to MOZ, keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into the search engine also, called “search queries.”They are also known as search terms or even focus phrases — these are words or phrases that are, basically, submitted to search engines.
Any time you type a word or phrase into a search box—on Google, for example—you are using keywords. In that case, while trying to find relevant images, videos, or information. So, in other words, Keywords are basically terms that we send to search engines. Whenever we’re on the prowl for answers, knowledge, products, or services.
As an example, if you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords. At all times, as a website owner or even content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant. So, with that in mind, it’s good we now answer this: What is Keywords Search all about?
Related Resource: A Strategic Keywords Search Plan + Tools To Beat Competitors
To enumerate, a keywords search plan looks for words anywhere in any given record especially when it comes to online digital marketing. On a clear note, keyword searches are a good substitute for a subject search. Particularly when you do not know the standard subject heading. Keywords may also be used as a substitute for a title or author search.
In addition to sending search results traffic to your blog or even other specific website landing pages. You may also use the guided keyword search option to combine search elements, group terms, or select indexes or fields to be searched. And there is a variety of keyword suggestion tools that new businesses can use to target the best keywords for their niche.
With these tools, you can:
- learn more about your competition,
- create a content calendar that’s based on related long-tail keywords,
- know which keywords on your targeted list have the highest search volume,
- boost your overall search engine ranking position,
- choose the best keywords, based on your industry, monthly searches, and more…
Equally important, you should also be able to continuously discover quality, and targeted new keyword opportunities to gain a competitive advantage. It’s also a great way to effectively and continuously turn your keyword research into action. The end goal is to try and make keyword research a supporting piece of your overall search marketing efforts.
So that your researched keywords actually lead to profits for your business. Although you can pay for access to a variety of high-level keyword suggestion tools, this isn’t something you have to do. Instead, you can rely on a combination of free tools to compile a quality list that’ll bring you results. Before you begin, make sure you have some basic research answers.
Some questions to consider:
- Is the keyword relevant to your website and content?
- And, will online users find what they intended to look for when using the keyword?
- Will users be satisfied with what they find using the keyword?
- Further, will this traffic result and accomplish the goals you intended to reach?
If the answer is YES to all of the questions above, it is time to find the keyword in leading search engines. And a simple trick to finding the value of your established keyword(s) is discovering other websites or businesses. But, of course, that also must be ranking well for your chosen keyword. This gives greater performance insight into the competition.
As well as a clear understanding of how easy or how difficult it is to rank for that specific keyword. Another thing to look out for is search result advertisements. To explain further, these ads are usually displayed on the top or right-hand side of organic results. And they usually indicate that a high-value keyword is being used.
While, similarly, multiple search ads are an indication of website conversion rate in regard to the target ads — as a result of a proper plan for the keywords search and their unique utilization in any given web-based marketing campaigns. Now that you have an idea of the role of keyword research in your SEO and marketing, let’s learn more about the useful tools.
Why Are Keyword Research Tools Important
Fortunately, there is now a better way to manage huge keyword lists using an array of tools. Perse, keyword research tools facilitate your SEO planning in multiple ways. They can help you generate keyword ideas, reveal how many people actively use a search term, identify trends, and show you how much competition you face to rank for a specific phrase.
Not to mention, Search Engine Marketing is growing as an industry, so it’s inevitable that new technology will evolve to fill in the gaps where current solutions fall short. A case in point is that there are many SEO tools out there. As well as SEM tools that specifically help raise productivity for handling, assembling, and segmenting your keyword list.
A Free Keyword Tool such as the one by WordStream utilizes the latest Google search data to deliver accurate, targeted advertising ideas. WordStream’s software and services, including their award-winning Google Ads Performance Grader, help businesses and agencies take the guesswork out of pay-per-click advertising — so you get more from your marketing budget.
WordStream Helps You:
- New Keywords: Enter a keyword or URL to get hundreds of relevant keywords, tailored to your industry/location.
- Priority Research: Accurate keyword volume and CPC data to find the right focus terms to maximize the ad budget.
- Utilize Keywords: Download your full keyword list so you can use it in your SEO content and search ads campaigns.
By all means, WordStream’s Keyword Research Tools make researching profit-driving keywords easy. You can quickly and easily find new keywords for your business, organize long lists of keywords into workable groups, and even evaluate the performance of your existing keywords, all using WordStream’s new and improved Free Keyword Tool in that case.
WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool is a smarter, more actionable tool that allows you to conduct advanced keyword research. It leverages targeted data that you can use in your search marketing campaigns, both organic and paid. While using keyword tools is an essential part of any keyword research strategy, the free tool will help you become a keyword research pro.
Whilst, guiding the way for analysis so that you can boost your business in enormous ways. Be that as it may, there are many other free keyword research tools for paid search marketing that you can utilize in your next campaigns. Specifically, these are keyword research tools that can help you craft a successful SEO strategy — all at no cost.
It’s, important to realize, that without the right keyword research tools in place, finding the right terms to incorporate into your blog or online store content to help it rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) would be like throwing darts in a dark room. Every once in a while, you would hit the target, but many darts would land on the floor.
They include:
- Keyword Surfer
- AnswerThePublic
- Keyword Sheeter
- Keyword Tool Dominator
- Keyword Tool
- Keyworddit
- QuestionDB
- Soovle
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ahrefs Keyword Generator
- SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
- Ubersuggest
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Google Trends
- KWFinder
As you can see, there are a surprising number of fantastic and free keyword research tools out there — that you can use to gather vital information for marketing and SEO. Furthermore, some of the above-mentioned among other many keyword research tools are easy to use and full of valuable data. You can use them to filter your results by 24 business verticals like:
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If it’s a Google partner, a free keyword research tool and keyword finder will benefit you from a direct line to Google’s API, so you can ensure that the data you receive is verified and credible. At the same time, the keyword finder will expand on Keyword Planner’s offering by bringing Bring data directly into the fold.
So that while you’re mining for Google keywords, you don’t neglect the augmentative impact the likes of Microsoft keyword searches can have on your overall website performance.
How Do These Free Keyword Research Tools Work?
Well, to get started, all you’ll need to do is just enter a keyword on the specific web-based application tool of your choice. And then, thereafter, choose your industry and country (if desired). As a result, you’ll get a list of related keyword suggestions, quite fast and easily. Including long-tail keyword variations, as well as their search volume on Google and Bing.
By the same token, you can also enter a website URL – such as a competitor’s homepage – to get contextual keyword suggestions and ideas to help you compete against similar businesses. Some of these tools will even show you the top 25 keywords right away. To get the full list of keywords, just enter your email address to get the full keyword list by email for free.
Markedly, some of these free keyword research tools will offer you a variety of unique features. For instance, as an SEO, you don’t just want keywords – you want competitive, industry-specific information and keyword analysis features that help you prioritize and make the most of your marketing budget. Specifically, use free Bing and Google keyword research tools.
Whilst, keeping in mind, that they are designed to arm paid search marketers with better, more complete keyword information to inform their PPC campaigns. Including but not limited to competition and cost data, tailored to your country and industry — so that you’ll know if your keyword list is super-relevant to your specific business or not.
Moving on, once you’ve got your keyword list, you can download it as a CSV file to make it super-easy to upload directly into your Google Ads or Bing Ads account. Put your keywords to work! We think these tools are some of the best keyword research helpers out there for PPC marketers. Just make sure you use them effectively for your SEO keyword research plan.
How To Get Started With Your Market Research
There is nothing more valuable than having great market research data performance and analytic results. To enumerate, this is a reference block where you will list all the keywords you have generated, the search volume, and the type of the keyword. This is a critical step because you can get hundreds of keywords related to your topic, audience, and industry.
However, if you do not group them correctly, finding the best keywords for your campaign may be very difficult. So, in layman’s language, it means that grouping your keywords effectively after you are done with your research is quite essential. Perse, you can group by keyword difficulty, organic search volume, revenue, or any search validation factor.
In this case, you’ll try to answer market research (industry research) questions so as to generate a seed keyword list. These questions are important to answer when doing keyword research for a particular industry. As a matter of fact, you will answer some of the most important questions to get the right keyword ideas.
Such questions as what:
- is your industry?
- are the pain points of your audience?
- are the main interests & discussions in this industry?
- does your audience go for information or spend time?
- are the solutions in the market you can offer?
- is your target audience located?
- is the demographic of your audience?
- are your competitors doing?
The next thing is to find seed keywords using the right tools. If you are looking for a free and straightforward SEO keyword research spreadsheet template, then you can go ahead and download the free Excel keyword research template sheet — it will work with Microsoft Excel, and Google sheets as well — to help you track keyword research data quickly and easily.
Eventually, in this sheet, you will generate seed keywords using the above questions and all the mentioned data sources. What’s more, the creators of this free downloadable keyword research template sheet have also listed some great sources for you — so that you can easily and quickly get a seed keyword list with an interactive checkbox.
Some of these sources include:
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In a nutshell, the idea is to get seed keywords related to your topic, audience, and industry. Whereby, you will have all the keyword ideas on one sheet; this is very useful for keyword research or making a PPC campaign.
Once you have seed keywords, you can generate a list of keywords with the help of free keyword research tools and software. Overall, it is a simple keyword research template sheet that will help you generate seed keywords and prioritize them for an SEO keyword research template.
The idea is to find the best keywords for your campaign, and you can use this sheet as a saving tool. That said, there are many keyword research tools and focus topic terms software applications in the market today — that will help you find the most relevant keywords for your campaign.
Using Keyword Research Tools To Find The Right Focus Terms
Some of the above-mentioned keyword research tools are powerful keyword generators for Google and other search engines. Others provide targeted data for e-commerce websites like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. The most comprehensive of these tools include essential SEO data like the monthly search volume and intensity of competition for your target terms.
There are an array of keyword types that you can focus on. For instance, there are Mid-Tail Keywords that fall between short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords that are part of a great keyword research strategy. Although mid-tail keywords have a relatively minor traffic volume, they have higher conversion rates and little competition than other keywords.
What about Transactional Keywords, also referred to as “do” keywords? Buyers use them when they have already decided to purchase a particular product or service. They use transactional keywords at the conversation stage of the purchasing process. For example, a user might search “buy running shoes online” when they are ready to make a purchase.
There are also Phrase Match Keywords that look for precise matches within a search engine’s search parameters to start an ad. For example, you may search for a site with content such as “dentists who install dental crowns.” Some ads might pop up showing you dental products. These ads are a result of a phrasal match which usually happens in the background.
Phrase match usually contains multiple variations to help account for synonyms, misspellings, paraphrases, and implied terms. You can also learn more about how to use Resume Keywords to get an interview (with tips and examples). With that in mind, below are a few more keyword types that can help you to narrow down your keyword search journey by far:
1. Market Segment Keywords
These keywords are generic words associated with a specific brand or industry. They target audiences searching for general information, though they can be more specific for niche marketing needs. For example, someone looking to buy shoes for running might search for the general phrase “running shoes” rather than a more specific brand.
With WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool, you also have the option to filter your results by industry, which specifies your results and other data. Including search volume, competition level, and estimated CPC so they’re all maximally relevant to your industry. Let’s say you search for keywords related to “cars” while selecting “Arts & Entertainment” as the industry.
Well, you’ll see results like “cars movie,” “Disney cars,” and “Pixar cars.” However, if you input the same term and change the industry to “Finance & Banking,” you’ll see results like “new car incentives” and “new car lease.”
2. Customer-Defining Keywords
These keywords are intended for a specific category of customers. For example, you might consider the age of your target audience while using these keywords. You can then research their gender, occupation, and place of residence in order to target a specific group for advertising. Your customer-defining keywords can address your target audience.
If you deal with sportswear products, for instance, a customer-defining keyword to use could be “adult sports enthusiast.” Try to find customer-defining keywords that reflect your brand’s target market demographics.
3. Product-Defining Keywords
These keywords describe and explain a product. Customers use product-defining keywords for particular search results, such as specific items. Your brand needs to use product-defining keywords to outline the business’s exact products or services. Buyers search for product-defining keywords when they are at the initial stage of making a purchase.
The best way to use these keywords is by first analyzing your product list and then coming up with a thorough explanation of every product on your list. After that, check the descriptions of your products and select at least two relevant keywords. Use these keywords as your product-defining keywords. Also, learn more About Job Keywords in detail.
4. Consumer Product Keywords
Product keywords are keywords that relate to specific brands’ offerings. These keywords are phrases or terms that directly refer to a company’s services or products. Every brand needs to identify product keywords for all its services and products to help its existing and prospective clients find its products via search. For example, let’s say you search for a word like “copier.”
You will most likely get results from a reputable brand. Whatever phrase you type, you will get results from brands that offer those products or services in the industry. The sports industry, for another example, usually leverages product keywords since companies in this industry link to important sporting events and sportspersons.
Someone searching for a prominent person is likely to come across a wide array of products from their sponsor on the first search page, making their name function as the product keyword.
5. Business Competitor Keywords
These are the keywords that your competitor uses in their marketing strategy to get high search engine rankings. Perform keyword research to uncover the competitor keywords other businesses are using to generate traffic to their websites. Identifying the right competitor keywords helps you understand the specific keywords that are working for your competitors.
It further gives you opportunities to draft new content, ultimately boosting your brand’s search engine rankings.
6. Long-Tail Keywords
As for long-tail keywords, these are usually the longest search keywords, targeting a specific audience or topic. These keywords have low-competing keywords. The keywords also have limited search traffic, making it easier to rank them. Since long-tail keywords are more specific than other keywords, they may have higher conversion rates than most keywords.
A good example of a long-tail keyword might be “best running shoes for injured knees.” Similarly, there are also what we call long-term evergreen content keywords in this category as well. These are evergreen content keywords that remain relevant indefinitely. While search volume might fluctuate, it won’t affect these keywords.
Long-term evergreen keywords remain relevant months and even years after publishing because people will search for content related to these keywords for a long time. Long-term evergreen keywords require updating very rarely, perhaps annually.
7. Short-Tail Keywords
These keywords are also known as generic keywords. The popular, broad search keywords lead to tons of search traffic. This type of keyword comprises less than two words. Furthermore, they rank competitively compared to most keywords. Short-tail keywords are brief and contain one or two phrases. A good example of a short-tail keyword may be “running shoes.”
8. Intent Targeting Keywords
These keywords match the intention of the user while they are searching for a particular phrase. These keywords are an essential part of paid search. Marketers can use it to conduct intent-driven marketing. Intent targeting keywords help marketers drive more traffic to their websites, generate more leads, and attract better prospective customers.
9. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
As for LSI Keywords, they are conceptual phrases that search engines use to understand a website’s content. For instance, you could write an article about “The Benefits of Eating Eggs.” From the topic, you are writing for an audience that wants to know more about the specific benefits of eating eggs. However, you might forget to mention ” food” somewhere in between.
Many search engines will still be able to identify and rank your article as a food-related article.
10. Exact Match Keywords
Exact match keywords are most similar to short-tail keywords. Marketers usually use these keywords to target advertisers whose adverts open up when an internet user searches for a specific phrase on a search engine. Advertisers typically bid on these keywords, and search engines use them to target specific audiences with particular ads.
Your brand can use these keywords to target people who search for particular terms. Ultimately, these keywords can increase your chances of getting a conversion. Exact match keywords form part of some paid search services.
11. Negative Match Keywords
These keywords are the opposite of exact match keywords. They prevent ads from popping up once the user searches for a particular term, usually referred to as negative matches. Some search engines consider words like “free” as negative keywords. This means if a user performs a search using this negative word, they might not see certain business results.
12. Related Vertical Keywords
These keywords usually offer a more detailed perspective on your business’ content. Let’s say you have a firm that specializes in selling computer hardware, for example. “Computer hardware dealer” could be a horizontal keyword in this context. The related vertical keywords, in this case, might be something like “selling printers” or “RAM for sale.”
13. Locational Keywords
These keywords cover anything that relates to a specific location. Locational keywords are instrumental for locational-based businesses. They might be something like “towing services North Carolina.” Locational keywords can include words or phrases that aim to show ads that have businesses near the person who is searching. In this case, the locational keyword might be something such as “towing firm near me.”
14. Informational Keywords
Informational keywords are keywords that clients use while searching for general information about a particular topic, product, or service. Buyers usually use these keywords in the awareness stage of the buying process. Buyers are aware they want a specific product or to solve a particular problem.
Thus, they need relevant information before they make a purchasing decision. One excellent example of informational keywords might be “what are the best fishing rods?”
15. Navigational Keywords
These keywords are also referred to as “go” keywords. People use these keywords when they want to navigate to a specific brand’s website. People using these keywords already know why they need to buy a product.
They also know where they will get those products. Thus, they use specific buying keywords to find the right place to buy what they want. As an example, a user might enter the navigational keywords “[brand] running shoes,” using the specific name of the brand of shoe they want to buy. In this case, the person searching for these keywords wants running shoes.
And, as such, they have decided to get them from a particular company. They are using navigational keywords to navigate to a site that will help them find exactly what they need.
Summary Notes:
Realistically, keyword research is one of the first – and most crucial – steps in any search marketing campaign, organic or paid. But, most free keyword suggestion tools offer limited results and limited utility, especially when it comes to keyword research for PPC. Suffice it to say, you need the right keywords to drive search engine traffic back to your website.
Whether, through organic search or paid search advertisements, plus a process to expand your keyword lists over time. That’s where some of the above-mentioned free keyword research tools come in. Tools that will give you hundreds of relevant keyword results, plus additional, actionable information like competition level and estimated CPC, all for free!
Essentially, we’ve revamped some of the popular Free Keyword Research Tools as well as the topmost keyword types that you can focus your efforts around given the nature of your business. And, it’s better than ever, with more features, more data, and exclusive information to help you manage, optimize, and expand your search marketing campaigns.
Unfortunately, some keyword research tools can be quite a slog for many webmasters, SEOs, and even content marketers, right? Luckily, as you can see, there are free keyword research tools that make it fast and easy to find the keywords your business needs to drive website traffic through both organic search and paid search. The choice now is totally yours!
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