One of the keys to making money online with a content website is keyword research. Finding out what people are searching for is the first step in creating any online business which relies on search engine traffic. It doesn't matter whether you make money with adsense, promote affiliate products or sell your own product or service, organic search visitors are what you want.
With that in mind, I've put together a list of free keyword research tools that I use on a regular basis. I use them when I'm researching a new niche or when I'm looking at expanding a website in an existing niche. They give me a fair idea of what people are looking for and what topics I should be writing about.
Wordtracker GTrends Keyword Tool
I've already written about the Wordtracker GTrends free keyword research tool in a previous post so I wont go into too much detail here.
What the tool provides is:
- A list of long tails for your main keyword,
- The approximate search volume, and
- The number of competing pages in Google
You can find the tool at the following url: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/.
Keyword Discovery Free Search Term Suggestion Tool
This is another tool which comes in handy.
The data provided is a list containing:
- Long tails for you main keyword, and
- The annual search volume
According to the website, their data is collected from a number of search engines. However, I find this service to be the least accurate when it comes to the raw numbers. However, I find it useful to get an idea of the relative volume of searches.
What I mean by this is that if another tool tells me that how to make money online is searched for twice as often as ways to make money online, I can compare with Keyword Discovery to see if the ratio is in the same ballpark.
The other thing I use this tool for is to get an idea of the types of phrases people type into search engines.
You can find the tool at http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
By rights, this should be the best and most accurate service out there as Google serves the lions share of the world's search queries. And generally it's pretty good. The main thing I've noticed is that not all of the popular variations for a particular search term are listed. Yet if I enter the missing term directly, it happily gives me the volume and long tails as you would expect. I've come across a few anomalies like that.
Although this isn't a real example, it would be like entering internet marketing into the tool then not getting back internet marketing strategy in the results, even though it appears to have good volume. But entering internet marketing strategy directly gives plenty of results.
The Adwords Keyword Tool provides the following information:
- A list of related keywords,
- The monthly search volume for each of these,
- Cost Per Click that advertisers are paying in Adwords,
- Advertiser competition, and
- Trend over time
In addition there are a number of filters. You can target specific countries, you can set broad, phrase or exact match on the keywords and you can also choose to display synonyms.
A full discussion of this tool is an entire article in its own right, so I'll leave it at that for now.
Visit the Adwords Keyword Tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2.
Google Insights For Search
Another for the Google stable of tools is Insights for Search. There are heaps of different ways to use this service (probably way more than I've considered).
While it doesn't give you the raw volume of some of the other tools I've discussed here, what I like is that you can slice and dice your keyword research in many different ways. You can look break it down by location, time or category. You can see what's popular more recently verses over the long term. You can look at seasonal search volume.
The best thing to do is jump in and have a play. You can find Insights for Search here: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#.
Google Search-Based Keyword Tool
Yet another one from Google. I find I don't use this service as much as some of the others mentioned. But if you're stuck looking for a niche, you can drill down into categories through multiple levels and get a list of 689 keywords (along with monthly search volume and CPC information) related to 'Wine & Beer Collecting & Brewing' for example.
I haven't explored all of the options yet so once again, just jump in and give it a try.
Visit the Search-Based Keyword Tool at: http://www.google.com/sktool/#.
WordStream Free Keyword Tool
I've only just found this one. Of the free options, this service seems to give the greatest raw volume. You get to see the top 100 keywords as an anonymous user but you need to provide your email address to see the complete list. I presume this is how they make money - by 'targeted offers' to their list.
Check out WordStream here: http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/.
Wonder Wheel and Related Searches
Most internet marketers are already familiar with this so I'll be brief. When you do a search using Google, there is a 'Show option...' link at the top of the search results. There's a heap of things to choose from but a couple that I find handy are Related searches and Wonder wheel.
Related searches is just that - a list of searches which are related to the term you've just used.
Wonder wheel is kind of like a graphical representation of related searches. It shows how the various keywords are related and you can click to further expand various topics.
Word Checker
This one's kind of out of left field. What it lets you do is analyse a word, find the word stem, then using that stem find other similar words by adding prefixes and suffixes to the stem.
So for instance if I enter marketing, it tells me the stem is market. It then gives me a list of similar words - marketer, marketeer and so on. You can then go and plug some of these variations into the tools already discussed above.
Try it out at: http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/wordcheck/.
Please leave me a comment with any other free keyword research tools which I have missed.
One find thing. None of these tools are accurate all of the time. Crosscheck the results from one against another. Don't build a huge search engine optimisation around a search term you've discovered using one of these tools, only to find that the traffic's just not there.
