Guide to Keyword Research: Best Tools for 2020

The world of keywords is always competitive, it never sleeps, something that’s unstoppable and the cycle never ends as long as there’s a lot of hard work being done on the digital frontier. To develop a robust keyword strategy is extremely important if you want to make the website visible, crawlable, user-friendly and profitable in the market that’s hungry for your services.

When and how to use specific words that helps indexing them on Google and to the right audience is quite a challenge. As with everything else, endless effort, hard work and dedication goes into social shares and content marketing to bring traffic and authority for the rankings. The online world is always transforming and to keep up with the competition, innovativeness is the key.

Keyword research is itself a process which requires understanding the audience, their preferences especially when it comes to reading and buying. The first step is to determine what your carefully aligned and strategic keywords would target. It’s easier said than done because success depends on satisfying both Google and actual users with appropriate content.

Good content always comes from proper keyword research and just before writing the first blog post, understanding target demographics, their preferences with the content, services and products, is far more effective. That said, keyword research returns the most accurate and important search data which answer queries like:

This guide will enhance your grasp on targeting the right audience, design stronger content as well as introduce you to the best keyword research tools.

This guide outlines proven steps followed by professional digital marketing agencies, aimed to enhance your grasp on targeting the right audience, design stronger content as well as introduce you to the best keyword research tools.

To understand the target market, how it’ll digest the information and all the details that comes forth eventually is crucial before implementing any of the keyword optimisation strategy. Let’s clear up with the example of two different businesses; an outdoor adventure and a food magazine. It’s obvious that content marketing strategy for both would be different to proceed in the right direction from the start.

Most of the new SEOs get confused on what should be ranked on Google against what the audience have been searching for; both factors are completely opposite! When helping a business establish a sound online presence and lead the competition, understanding the factors as outlined below is important.

Everyone has a unique style and way to describe their particular business, services and target industry but, it certainly doesn’t mean similar search terms are being used by the audience for a product, service and/or solution. It all begins with:

A business surely wants to be visible and rank online against primary keywords correlating directly to its products, services and other such offerings. Although it’s a smart way to begin with the keyword research, most of the terms in the end are filtered and present challenges with the volume and ranking. This is when you need the most effective keyword research tool that’s right for you in every way. Check out the detailed list below as well as convincing reasons to know why these tools are most suitable!

SEMrush – Best for detailed competitor’s keyword search

First in the list is SEMrush which gives a holistic view of every single keyword against which your competitors are ranking. Other key takeaways are total volume of traffic being driven to the website along with a reference link to view the ranking page. It also come with the most accurate results and detailed list of highly competing websites allowing you to dig deeper into a competitor’s website and others belonging to the similar industry.

You aren’t required to enter a seed keyword only to proceed with the search process. Instead, all you need to do is provide the website’s URL and execute. Besides identifying the keyword rankings, you’ll get in-depth analysis for keyword difficulty, traffic statistics, domain comparison, ads CPC and much more.

AHREFS – Versatile & Best for Technical SEO

One of the most widely used keyword research tool is AHREFS because of its capability to crawl and secure the largest database of third-party search queries. As a result, you’ll have the largest and most accurate research information. 

The results give you competitors’ organic keywords, AdWords campaign, the best backlinks, trending content, email notifications and relevant keywords; every time your brand name is searched. As for the accuracy on this keyword research tool, you shouldn’t be worried at all because AHREFS database boast more than seven billion keywords plus, nearly 200 billion indexed pages.

MonsterInsights – Highly Preferred for WordPress Users

With MonsterInsights, adding Google Analytics to WordPress website has become easier. You can easily begin with only a few clicks and access all the details crucial to evidence data-driven decisions and keep the traffic humming. In addition, the tool’s absolutely amazing to ensure keyword research is on the right track with room for further improvement.

Many SEOs would find AnswerThePublic as one of the strangest keyword tools in the house but, the price-tag is super alluring and can’t be beaten. Although used for almost any kind of keyword research, AnswerThePublic takes the lead when finding absolutely perfect solutions to the search queries performed by people.

What makes this tool important is the fact that users don’t always actually type the search queries but perform voice searches usually via mobile devices. These are mostly in a question format rather than focusing entirely on the keyword. This is when AnswerThePublic comes in handy as the best tool for keyword research to optimise the content and increase organic traffic.

SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool

One of the many free SEO tools you can fish out of the pool is SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool but to use it, you need to create a free account. Once done, you’ll find a sea of valuable information when doing the searches that include volume, relevant phrases and match results, estimated Cost Per Click (CPC) against the provided keyword. You can also view the Google Trends results.

Google Ads Keyword Planner – Best for Keyword Planning Compared to the Trends & Forecasts

To create new search campaigns or simply adding to the active one, Google Ads Keyword Planner is the ultimate SEO tool. You can view a list of keywords and how they might perform whereas the tool’s helpful in selecting competitive bids and budgets for your campaigns. The tool’s different from many others because it lets you see traffic forecasts and historical statistics like search volume over a certain time period.

The tool also predicts factors such as possible future clicks with estimated conversions. The results are comparably accurate giving you a solid ground to base your decisions on best performing keywords and campaign initiatives.

Rank Tracker – Filters a Huge List of Keyword Variations & SEO Profitability

Rather than sifting through individual search engines and lazily collecting the keywords, Rank Tracker can perform this hectic task for you by filtering across all the major search engines thus saving a lot of your valuable time. That said, the tool extract suggestions from Google, Bing, Yahoo and Amazon to pull out keyword variations as much as possible. 

Above all, the free version gives you the most traffic potential and highly competitive keywords whereas the paid version comes with extra features if you actually like the tool in the first place and wished for more. For first timers, the free version is more than enough to perform basic keyword research.

Google Search Console – To Play Even Better with Keywords You Already Have

If you’re already pulling in search traffic to some extent, Google Search Console is an amazing tool to analyse the average Google rankings, impressions and Click-Through Rates (CTRs). Besides all of this, the tool also advice on the best data points and suggestions to resolve key SEO issues that you might’ve ignored unwillingly. 

Take for instance a website that’s already ranking on the first page but with a very low CTR, it’s only a matter of updating the metatags thereby enticing readers. Google Search Console also crawls a website’s blog thereby a valuable tool for bloggers.

MOZ – A Close Competitor to AHREFS, Preferred for Variety of Research Tools

MOZ is the ultimate one-stop solution and all-powerful keyword research tool packing SEO keyword generator, link analysis for in-depth statistics on inbound and high-quality links and of-course, a dozen keyword research tools. Even pro digital marketers consider MOZ a high-end tool but with all the tutorials and resource guides that come along, it’s ought to take your SEO experience to the next level.

Speaking of the features, here’s what MOZ have in store for you! Page rankings, weekly crawls, competition analysis, open site explorer, keyword difficulty, on-page recommendations and much more. Besides accessing real-time keyword research, MOZ also offer advance level training webinars, Q&A database, access to world’s largest SEO community and plenty more.

SERPstat – Extracts High-Performing Keywords

For those who believe in simplicity to achieve the awesome in SEO keyword research, SERPstat is just the perfect tool. It gives everything you need to sort out high-performing keywords with addons such as backlink and website analysis, keyword research toolbar, rank tracking and website audits. If you like digging deeper, the next feature can be quite exciting!

On accessing a specific keyword, SERPstat use a combination of unique algorithms that helps discovering market share across all the domains in the top hundred search results. It helps you see trendy and risky keywords. But then there’s something quite uncommon that comes with SERPstat which is displaying all domain advertising for the targeted keywords and the type of ads being run. This is amazing if you wish to improve CPC.

Mangools – Best Features for Less

Obviously, the two leading SEO keyword research tools and industry powerhouses AHREFS and MOZ are expensive so here’s something lighter on the pocket! Mangools is the best alternative and bags -4-in-1 tools. On signing up for Mangools, you’ll get SERPchecker and SERPWatcher for SERP analysis and rank tracking respectively, KWFinder for keyword research and LinkMiner for link tracking.

All of the tools make up a pack a punch of perfection to boost up your SEO performance. Of the four, we’ll focus on KWFinder as it’s a keyword research tool that’s extremely user-friendly, inexpensive, accurate and returns clear, simple and understandable data. You can use the features to find concealed long-tailed keywords, local and competitors keywords, search volumes and keyword metrics.

Whether using a single or a combination of all the keyword research tools as listed above, each helps in returning the best pick and relevant keywords to easily integrate into the existing content along with creative ideas to pitch new content.

Irrespective of the keyword research tool, be sure your content is visible and indexed by the search engines based on appropriate keyword targeting, meta tags, page titles and descriptions, social media hashtags and so on. 

Also perform SEO audit to pick up possible errors and resolve them. Other best practices you can use in combination to the tools is email marketing, lead generation and basic SEO practices. Split test the content for effectiveness once it’s ready so that you may optimise it further, better.