Are you looking for keyword research tools to plan your website? If you are, then good job!
You already know how important the right keywords are, and how they can do more than just direct relevant traffic to your website.
What is keyword research?
Before we identify the best keyword research tools to plan your website, let’s talk about what keyword research is, exactly. It simply means researching and identifying the words and phrases that people generally enter into their search engines. This gives marketers insight into the popular keywords. This, in turn, can then help them plan not just their content strategy, but their overall marketing strategy.
Why you need to research keywords
Keyword research isn’t just a big part of SEO. It plays a vital role in content marketing. It can help you find out what your audience is looking for, and answer those needs through your website or blog posts. Eventually, it helps you plan targeted content which will drive the right kind of traffic – the kind that will convert – to your website. You can read our article to learn how content marketing and SEO can boost your website traffic.
Keywords tell you where your organic traffic comes from. They also establish what your business is known for. Once you determine the right keywords, you will immediately know what content to market. In fact, the importance of keyword research cannot be understated. It forms the basis of your entire online marketing efforts and drives every decision you take.
There are various keyword research tools to help you identify relevant keywords. Use one or a combination to give you quality keywords that will have a definite effect on your digital marketing.
- SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the top keyword research tools to plan your website. Use this tool to find keywords that will help increase your website traffic as well as sales. SEMrush helps you discover which keywords your competitors are using to rank their blog or website in top positions on Google.
But why should you analyze your competitors’ keywords?
– To use and tweak the same keywords to optimize your blog.
– To use already proven keywords to increase your website traffic.
How to use SEMrush:
– Visit semrush.com.
– Enter your main competitor and start the search.
– Scroll down the results to see the top paid keywords. These are all the keywords that businesses are paying money for because they are driving up their traffic and sales. Which means, you should be using them too!
– Repeat the search with your top three competitors and choose your keywords.
Apart from providing you with great keywords, SEMrush also gives you updates, extensive reports about the keyword summary, CPC distribution and search trends for your keywords. All these help in strategizing.
SEMrush also offers its Keyword Magic Tool, a powerful research tool that offers access to a vast database of over 9 billion keywords.
- Google Keyword Planner
The Keyword Planner has been a popular choice for many years. It is part of the Google AdWords platform. So, you’ll need to have a Google AdWords account in order to access it. It leans heavily towards paid search too. Perhaps, this is why you should use this in conjunction with another tool for your keyword research. However, the best part is, it can draw information directly from Google, the search engine you’ll most likely target when optimizing your website.
This tool helps you research:
– Keyword ideas
– The average monthly search volume for any given period
– Search volume trends for one or more keywords over a particular time period
First, enter a seed keyword, a URL or product category into the keyword suggestion tool. It generates a list of keywords, search volume, and trend data. The seed keyword is the initial keyword that you would use to define your topic or describe your product or service. It’s a good idea to start with at least 3-5 keywords. Once you’ve entered this information, you can get started.
You also have the choice of selecting the location you’re marketing to, so that the data you obtain pertains to only the city or country of your choosing. You can also fine-tune your search results using filters.
The results page will list out the keywords, the average monthly searches for those keywords, the number of advertisers bidding for them (competition), and the suggested bid (if you’re using AdWords). You can choose your keywords by evaluating:
– Search volume: The higher the search volume, the better the keyword.
– Competition: Higher the competition and suggested bid, easier it will be to convert website visitors into customers.
As far as keyword research tools to plan your website go, the Google Keyword Planner is quite helpful. Of course, as mentioned earlier, it is best used with another tool.
- The Moz Keyword Explorer
The Keyword Explorer from Moz is a paid keyword research tool, although you do have a one-month free trial. It helps to discover, prioritize and build lists of quality keywords that you can use. The tool is intuitive and simple to use, with SERP data dating back to only 2 weeks. The advantage is that it includes some extra dimensions to your keyword research. Apart from volume and difficulty, it includes:
– Opportunity: Relative CTR of organic results on a SERP.
– Importance: How vital the keyword is to your campaign.
– Potential: Combination of all keyword metrics so you can prioritize.
The Moz Keyword Explorer provides:
– The largest high-quality database to help speed up your research.
– Accurate search volume estimates for keywords.
– SERP analysis with link and social data breakdown on each ranking position.
Begin by entering a keyword, or search for keywords based on a root domain, sub-domain or a URL. Set location as per your requirement. You can also use the tool’s keyword suggestions to broaden your search for what you would write around. Results will include valuable metrics like volume, priority and more. Analyze and pick your keywords and you’re good to go!
You could use the Keyword Explorer after you have already obtained a list of keywords from a different tool, to help give you more information and to help you prioritize. This tool also helps you plan your SEO strategy because it provides more insights on why certain pages rank in SERPS based on links and social data.
- Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest, a free keyword research tool provides keywords that the Google Keyword Planner does not generate. (Which is why you could use this tool after you have already used the Google Keyword Planner).
Type your keyword into the keyword research tool and click ‘suggest’. A list of keywords is generated. The results are segregated by alphabet, making it easier to access what you want. This organized search ensures you don’t miss a single keyword.
Ubersuggest provides you with data on search volume, keyword competition, and seasonal trends for each keyword. It also shows you an analysis of the keyword difficulty, giving you an idea of how realistic it will be to choose competitive keywords and phrases. It will also determine if it is worth targeting a particular keyword.
- KWFinder
KWFinder is another paid keyword research tool to plan your website. It helps you find many long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. It’s simple to use, provides great user-experience and offers metrics that help you plan your SEO strategies.
Begin your keyword search by typing in your seed keyword and clicking ‘find keywords’. You should receive up to 700 keyword ideas. You can organize your research and access this list at any time. You can also clean up your dashboard by letting the app remove the low traffic keywords.
The keyword SEO difficulty is a useful feature in the tool. It estimates the degree of difficulty (0-100) in ranking on the 1st SERP page when optimizing for the keyword. It is calculated in real- time.
The metrics measured by the tool include:
– Keyword difficulty
– Trends
– Monthly search volumes
– CPC
– PPC
– Google SERPs results
With all these powerful features, it is still easy to use.
At Them You & Me, we help you plan your SEO strategy and keep you updated about keyword research tools to plan your website. If you’d like to talk more about this with us, or would like us to help you with your digital strategy, give us a call.
To know about what we do and the services we offer, please visit our website.
