Keyword research is a three-step process:
- Find keyword ideas that people are searching for
- Check their ranking difficulty
- Figure out the best way to rank
In this post, you'll learn how to do these tasks with nine free keyword research tools.
The best free keyword research tools
Keyword Generator shows up to 150 keyword ideas. You just need to enter your topic and click “Find Keywords.” Then, you can check their ranking difficulty
. Find the most searched keywords
. Also, see the list of 50 most frequently asked questions:
. You will have a harder time ranking for the keyword if this score is close to 100 (more details in point #9).
Keywords too broad Feed them back into the generator
Let's say you enter “bitcoin,” and the generator kicks back “bitcoin mining.” If you want to explore that topic further, feed it back into the generator. You can narrow down your search by doing another round.
Answer the Public uses autocomplete for finding people's questions. Just enter a broad topic, choose your target country, and hit “search.”
For example, search for “bitcoin” and you'll see 392 keyword ideas split into five categories:
Each category (except for alphabeticals) visualizes the keyword ideas like this:
Unfortunately, it doesn't show keyword search volumes. However, the red circles next to each keyword (supposedly) tell you whether it gets a high, average, or low number of monthly searches.
Looking for actual search volumes?
Paste keyword ideas from Answer The Public into Ahrefs' free keyword generator. The first keyword on the list will usually be the one you entered, and you'll see its search volume.
ChatGPT is a chatbot from OpenAI. Although it's not useful in keyword research, it is is helpful for seed keyword ideas.
For instance, it will return a list with terms that are related to Bitcoin.
Not all of these keywords are good for seed keywords, as they are too general and can have many meanings (e.g. “fork”) but there are some.
For instance, let's say you enter a non-obvious term like “hashrate” in our keyword generator. In this case, it looks like many people are searching for the hashrates of different mining hardware:
Unless you know the crypto industry inside out, you probably wouldn't have thought of this seed keyword or discovered these keyword ideas.
Getting underwhelming results from your ChatGPT prompts?
Don't ask for keyword ideas. You can ask for keywords ideas but not keyword suggestions. Ahrefs Websitemaster Tools
Organic keywords report in Site Explorer.There are many ways to use this report for keyword research, but one of my favorites is to find low-hanging page two rankings. To do this, filter for keywords in positions 11-20 and toggle the “Main positions only” switch.
As hardly anyone clicks on page two results, boosting your rankings for these keywords by just a few positions to page one can often massively boost traffic.
For example, we rank in position 11 for “pagerank”:
By applying our SEO checklist to this post or refreshing and republishing the content, we could likely hit the first page for this keyword and get way more traffic.
Not sure which keywords to prioritize?
If you have thousands of page two rankings, prioritize keywords with the highest “business potential.”
5. Google Keyword Planner
For example, search for “crypto,” and it kicks back ideas like “altcoin” and “safemoon coin”:
In fact, of the 880 keyword ideas found by Keyword Planner, 735 don't contain the seed keyword “cryptocurrency.”
Unfortunately, Keyword Planner only gives search volume ranges instead of exact volumes (unless you're running search ads). But you can always copy and paste ideas into Ahrefs' free keyword generator for a more accurate estimate.
Looking for even more related keywords?
Instead of starting with a seed keyword, start with a seed website.
For instance, let's say you choose bitcoin.org to be your seed website. You will get hyper-specific keywords ideas, which you may not have noticed using “conventional keyword research tools”.
Google search Console (GSC), shows you how your site performs in organic searches for the top 1000 keywords. Go to the
Search Results report. There are many ways to use this report for keyword research, but one way is to find declining keywords that need your attention.
For example, if we compare the last three months' performance for the Ahrefs Blog to the same period last year and sort the table by “Clicks Difference” from high to low, we can see that we've lost the most clicks from the query “google keyword planner”:
To try to fix this, we recently updated and republished our guide to Google Keyword Planner–and it worked.
Here are the clicks from that keyword for the past two months:
This shows how there's sometimes more to gain from retargeting old keywords than going after new ones.
Don't make the mistake of ignoring seasonality
Make sure to choose a year-over-year comparison period in GSC. If you don't, seasonality could cause skewed results.
For instance, December is when traffic drops because people go on holiday. If we were to compare the first and last six months of the year, the numbers would be skewed and might lead us astray.
Google Trends visualizes the relative search popularity of a keyword over time. This tool also displays related searches that are rising or breaking down. This is useful for finding trending keywords.
For example, search for “ai content,” and you will see a massive spike in interest recently:
If you then scroll down to the “Related queries” section, you'll see rising and breakout keywords like “ai content creator,” “open ai,” and “chatgpt”:
There's often a delay before trending keywords like these appear in traditional keyword research tools, making Google Trends a neat way to find newly popular topics before your competitors.
Looking for specific ideas related to trending topics?
Just plug a rising topic back into Google Trends.
For example, if you put “chatgpt” (a rising topic from our search) into Google Trends, you see more specific things people are searching for around that topic.
SERP Checker displays the most popular pages and useful SEO metrics. It's particularly useful for understanding a keyword's traffic potential.
For example, Keyword Generator shows that “best bitcoin mining rig” has an average monthly search volume of 500 in the U.S.:
But if you plug this keyword into SERP Checker, you see that the top three search results get between 1K and 1.8K estimated monthly search visits. This is a significant increase in traffic than keyword search volumes.
This can be explained by the fact that top-ranking keywords get between 1K and 1.8K estimated monthly search visits.
So it's worth plugging promising keyword ideas into SERP Checker to better understand how much traffic you can get by ranking.
Do top-ranking pages get less traffic than the keyword's search volume?
Traffic potential isn't always higher than a keyword's search volume. It can sometimes be lower.
For instance, the keyword “how many bitcoin owners” receives an estimated 1.4K monthly search queries in the U.S.A. SERP Checker shows, however, that top-ranking pages get much less traffic than the keyword's search volume.
There could be many reasons for this. This is likely because Google answers most searches on the SERP so searchers do not need to click on a result.010010110. Keyword Difficulty Checker
Keyword Difficulty (KD) Checker estimates how hard it will be to rank in the top 10.
Yet the KD score for “litecoin vs bitcoin” is only 9/100, so it should be quite easy to rank for:
That said, KD is based solely on backlinks. It doesn't consider anything else that may affect ranking difficulty, such as content quality.
Because of this, a high KD score just means you'll likely need lots of backlinks to compete. You should always investigate ranking difficulty further before going after a keyword.
Looking for a rough estimate of how many backlinks you need?
Check the estimate below the Keyword Difficulty (KD) score.
Free and paid keyword tools: How do they compare?
Totally free keyword research tools can be extremely useful for those just beginning. However, they will not provide as many keyword ideas or data as paid ones. For example, you can search for bitcoin in our keyword generator and get 150 keywords ideas. If you use our free keyword generator to search for “bitcoin”, you'll get 150 keyword suggestions.
In order to search for keywords that have high traffic and volume, it might be a good idea to create a website. This can be done quickly by using Keyword Difficulty, Volume and Traffic Potential filters.
You can then easily see the pages that rank highest to determine the competition. Just click the “SERP” dropdown or click the keyword and scroll to the SERP overview:
Final thoughtsIf you're new to SEO, free keyword research tools will be enough to discover some good keyword ideas for your website. Paid keyword research tools will be worth it once you have a website that grows rapidly and your time is more valuable. Payed keyword research tools allow you to find more keyword ideas and faster by providing more data.
Want to know more about keyword research. Learn more about keyword research in our Beginner's Guide or this video:
Did I forget any great free tools for keyword research? Call me at
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