Any SEO expert will agree that keyword research plays a critical role in both attracting visitors and improving ranking in search engine results. “What?” You reply indignantly, “I need to research the keywords I use for my website? Won’t people just search for my business by name?” As if small business owners don’t have enough work already!
Actually, branded searches are great for your business, but new customers aren’t likely to search for your hotel, spa, clinic, or real estate services by name, are they? And new customers are the lifeblood of any business.
Without the right keywords, your website becomes a ghost to search engines and virtually invisible to potential customers searching for your solutions. As such, SEO keyword research is always the first phase in any SEO campaign, followed immediately by keyword planning.
How Search Engines ‘Read’
You may call your beauty spa ‘A Piece of Heaven,’ but search engines can’t actually look at the pictures on your website. Web crawlers read the metadata, text, and coding of your website in order to determine the right match for the searcher intent.
Positioned in the appropriate places of your site architecture and coding (i.e., SEO title, slug, snippets, metatags, headings), the right keywords will drive your ranking in search results higher and attract more leads to your website’s landing pages.
Why Use A Keyword Research Tool?
While SEO is more than keywords, a strategic use of the most popular keywords and terms in your region or industry will make your website more popular with search engines.
SEO agencies rely heavily on keyword research to help their clients craft better content, boost traffic, rank higher, and drive conversion upwards. Whether you’re a seasoned business owner or a hopeful hobbyist with a great new idea, your website stands a better chance of being discovered if you’re willing to do some research.
Keyword research tools and certain plugins for SEO are typically web-based software that provide web statistics on the use of specific keywords and phrases. They offer users recommendations and insights into the following statistics:
- Search volume (number of searches daily, monthly)
- Alternate popular search phrases
- Cost per click (CPC) of specific keywords and phrases (based on search engine)
- Ranked keyword popularity by region
- Ranked keyword popularity by search engine
- Competitor keywords gaining traffic
- Keyword monitoring to track changes in keyword ranking
Many website builders and blogging platforms offer keyword research apps or add-ons to help optimize your website. Free versions and subscription services are also available to help you zero in on the best keywords for your business.
If you’re managing a blog or business website on your own, an SEO website audit of your site for keyword usage and distribution can be very helpful as a first step. Once you’ve gauged the success of your current keywords and identified areas for improvement, you can form a better content marketing strategy that actually gets results!
Free Keyword Research Tools
Investing in keyword research software or a subscription is a wise move if you’re looking for ways to positively impact your marketing and SEO – a keyword insight provider is one of the few essential SEO tools. As a small business owner, you may not have the benefit of a web administrator or team, but there are free tools to get you started on the right path.
Have fun experimenting with the free keyword research tools listed below!
1. Ahrefs:
Full disclosure here: we love Ahrefs, and they love us. We are the only SEO company in Toronto that is an Ahrefs-certified agency at the time of this writing. Ahrefs offers several free tools and a Lite plan with more comprehensive features.
Here’s an overview of what you can do with the free version and what you get with the Lite plan:
Free Version
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Provides limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit, allowing you to improve your website’s SEO performance and get more search traffic.
- Keyword Generator. Find up to 100 keyword ideas related to any topic.
- Keyword Difficulty Checker. Assess how difficult it would be to rank in the top 10 for a given keyword.
- SERP Checker: Analyze the top 10 rankings for any keyword in any country.
- Website Traffic Checker. See search traffic estimates for any website or webpage.
- Backlink Checker. View the top 100 backlinks to any website or webpage.
- Broken Link Checker. Find broken links to and from any webpage or website.
- SEO Toolbar. Provides on-page SEO reports, broken link checking, redirect tracing, and SERP country changing.
Lite Plan
The Lite plan offers more comprehensive access to Ahrefs’ tools and data, including:
- Full access to Site Explorer. Analyze competitors’ backlinks, organic keywords, and traffic.
- Full access to Site Audit. Perform in-depth technical SEO audits of your website.
- Keywords Explorer. Conduct more extensive keyword research with larger data sets.
- Content Explorer. Find popular content in your niche and beef up your entity clustering efforts.
- Rank Tracker. Monitor your keyword rankings.
- Increased limits on reports, exports, and data.
- Access to historical data.
- Ability to add additional users (at extra cost).
The Lite plan is suitable for freelancers, startups, or small businesses looking to improve their SEO efforts. It provides more data and features compared to the free tools, allowing for more comprehensive SEO analysis and strategy development.
2. Google Keyword Planner:
Designed for use by SEM professionals, business owners and novices alike, Google’s Keyword Planner is a free AdWords tool that you can use to explore ideas for keywords to target or use for TF-IDF, which provides a considerable boost to your blog posts.
Ranking your terms against thousands of historical pages with similar content, the Keyword Planner displays accurate, fast, reliable results that are easy to understand. Google Keywords makes planning your online marketing a lot easier and more effective, particularly if you’re deciding on PPC budgets. Access is available by signing in to AdWords with your Gmail or Google+ business profile.
2. SERPs.com:
You just can’t go wrong with SERPs.com. Considered a leading brand by many SEM professionals, SERPS.com offers a number of free web-based SEO tools to complement their more robust subscription-based solutions. The Free Keyword Tool provides users with a quick glance at the top search results for a keyword term, statistics on CPC, search volume and possible alternatives to those keyword terms. You can also drill down results by location or domain.
Their free Competitor Analysis Tool also provides an impressive snapshot of how your website, or any other, is performing overall and compares it to your competitors on relevant keywords with the help of data across numerous metrics displayed in charts and graphs. Very handy for PPC campaign planning, marketing, ad copy, or content strategy. Once generated, results are saved to a CSV file for download to your desktop or mobile phone.
4. SEMrush:
With a free Semrush account, you can access a variety of tools and features, albeit with significant limitations compared to paid subscriptions. Here’s a comparison between what you can do with a free account versus a paid membership.
Free Semrush Account
Features Available:
- Keyword Research. Perform basic keyword research to identify potential keywords for your content strategy.
- Competitor Analysis. Analyze competitors’ websites to gain insights into their SEO and marketing strategies.
- Rank Tracking. Track the rankings of a limited number of keywords.
- Backlink Research. Conduct basic backlink analysis to understand your link profile.
- Site Audits. Perform site audits for websites with up to 100 pages, which is useful for small or growing websites.
- PDF Reports. Create and schedule one PDF report within the My Reports section, which can be sent out daily, weekly, or monthly.
Limitations:
- Requests and Results. Limited number of requests per day and results per request.
- Project Limits. Limited to a small number of projects.
- Data Export. Limited export capabilities.
- Additional Features. Access to specialized tools and apps in the Semrush App Center, but with limited functionality and trials.
Paid Semrush Membership
Features Available:
- Full Access to Tools. Comprehensive access to all Semrush tools, including advanced keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, and site audits.
- Increased Limits. Higher limits on requests, results, projects, and data exports.
- Advanced Reporting. Ability to create and schedule multiple PDF reports.
- Additional Users. Option to add additional users to the account for a fee.
- Specialized Tools. Access to advanced tools like Traffic Analytics, Market Explorer, and more, particularly with the .Trends add-on.
- Custom Plans. Flexibility to create custom plans based on specific marketing needs.
Benefits:
- Comprehensive Data. Access to a broader and more detailed set of data for in-depth analysis.
- Scalability. Suitable for larger businesses, agencies, and e-commerce projects with extensive web presence.
- Enhanced Functionality. Advanced features like plagiarism checks, SEO ideas units, and smart writer words for content optimization.
In a nutshell, like all free vs paid tools, a free Semrush account provides basic functionality suitable for small-scale SEO and marketing tasks; a paid membership offers extensive tools and higher limits, making it ideal for more comprehensive and scalable digital marketing efforts.
Looking for more helpful tips on keyword research and planning? Contact Paul Teitelman, Toronto’s most experienced and professional SEO expert to get more traffic to your small business website.
