As complicated as keyword research can be, it’s also mind-boggling if you’re a beginner just on the start. If you’re starting from square one and don’t want to look clueless with keyword stuffings, read on this article to know which SEO keyword tools to use.

What Is SEO?

SEO means Search Engine Optimization and it is used to optimize a website’s technical configuration, content relevance and link popularity so its pages can become easily findable, more relevant and popular towards user search queries to rank them better.

What Is A Keyword Tool?

Keyword tool is free online keyword research instrument that uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords for any topics. Google Autocomplete is a feature used in Google Search. Its purpose is to speed up the searches performed by users on Google.

SEO Keyword Tools that You Can Use

SEMrush

SEMrush can help you find what people are searching for around a particular topic, just type in your keyword or phrase and watch the magic happen. It will pull phrase match keywords, related keywords, and organic search results.

You can quickly pop in a URL, and SEMrush will show all the keywords ranking for that one page. However, what makes it unique is the “SERP” option (under the Positions tab), which is available for every single keyword. This option displays a “snapshot” of the SERP page for that keyword, under one specific country. It’s crucial to not only tracking the rankings of your keywords but also analyze how Google displays your page on SERPs. For instance, you may have a Featured Snippet, but the image attached is of a competitor. You may be ranking in the top 10, but Google only displays the first eight results. Sometimes, FAQs may bump your page down even further. Google is also testing out how to view pages, e.g., with our without brand logos. And this is why this tool is so great – you can then go back to the drawing board and reprioritize fixes for your SEO cleaning.

The Keyword Gap Tool lets me see how my website is ranking against other competitors who are targeting the same keywords. By doing so, I can see keywords they’re ranking for that I’m not so I can focus my efforts on targeting the same. This information is extremely useful in creating campaigns and content strategies so my website can rank higher in SERPs.

Furthermore, I can use Keyword Gap to identify which keywords top competitors rank highly but with little advertising competition. I can leverage that by creating an ad campaign to gain more traffic on my end. One thing I love about the tool is it shows mobile and desktop keyword results. If we’re trying to rank more for mobile users, we can shift our focus on that information to get better rankings.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is Neil Patel’s premium SEO tool that a lot of people are talking about. The easy to use Chrome extension gives you insight into keywords that are working in your specific market to adapt and improve them while gaining an edge on your competition. This ultimately helps us increase the visibility of our clients and drive traffic to their website. Even better is that with the reverse engineering of competitors’ SEO and content marketing strategy, we spend significantly less time curating content that people won’t access or even read. Ubersuggest is super easy to use, you simply type in a domain or keyword to get started, and it provides you with everything you need to know to win the game of SEO.

Ubersuggest has a free version and a paid version, but the free version works perfectly fine for almost anything one would need to do. You can search tons of keywords that will show you the difficulty of the keywords and who the top ranking competitors are for those words. It also offers up suggestions of similar keywords related to the ones you’re trying to target. The whole platform is super helpful for SEO and marketing purposes and is my favorite tool.

Ahrefs

This is another famous keyword tool that people are using. It has many function including searching for keywords and competitor analysis. It is also one of the keyword tools website that has high amount users compared to most websites. It offers a snapshot of several key website metrics including domain rating, number of backlinks, number of links domains and follow vs. no-follow patterns. I use this free tool multiple times per week to assess different websites from an authority and SEO perspective. It is just a glimpse of the data that awaits you if you sign up for a full Ahrefs account.

It has so much functionality and useful features that other all-in-one SEO tools might not have (although others have features Ahrefs does not have). It’s also very simply laid out and easy to navigate compared to other similar tools. Most notably, I find it most useful for backlink analysis, estimated traffic value, and research on competitors and our site.

Moz

MozBar, is a free all-in-one SEO toolbar that allows you to view that page or SERP metrics. There is both a free and premium version, but the free version gives you plenty to start with. Using this extension, you can see the domain authority, page authority, spam score, link metrics, and page load times (just to name a few) of any page you view. My favorite feature is how it works on SERPs. The metrics of each result’s page are viewable, right from the SERP itself. This gives you an idea of what you’ll have to do to rank on page one for a particular keyword.

Screaming Frog

This keyword tool is for technical SEO audits and on-page optimization. It is super insightful because it crawls the entire site to look for gaps in your SEO strategy. in a matter of minutes, a detailed understanding of the “nuts and bolts” of any site. I’m able to see all of the metadata that is being collected by search engines. I can quickly see what’s working, but more importantly, what needs to be improved to ensure the site is optimized for search engines.

Keywords Everywhere

It’s a free browser extension that will append search volume for keywords on every query that you run (which is awesome). This has saved me a ton of time as I am regularly doing keyword research. It’s always running in the background, so there is no configuration needed.

SEO Search Simulator by Nightwatch

SEO Search Simulator by Nightwatch simplifies work for SEOs to see where you rank locally or globally. When you need to check keyword results on different local Google search properties, I use Nightwatch Search Simulator which is free to use Chrome Extension. It simulates search engine queries from any location on Google properties. Let’s say you rank well on Google FR, but what about Google Belgium? Nightwatch Search Simulator helps with that.

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