Free Keyword Research Tools - the Ultimate Guide

December 15th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 16 Comments

I have done many posts on keyword research at Search Engine Journal and figured it’s time to compile all the keyword research tools into one post for further reference.

1. Start with general reference sources and dictionaries.

Here are just a few of them, for more please refer to the original post: Keyword Research : Where to Start?

Dictionary	Contains
The free dictionary	Word definition(s), set phrases/ idioms (use them to lighten up your writing style), examples of usage. Words of the same root (inflected words and derivations), thesaurus, classic literature mentions, keyword phrases, related acronyms.
Synonym.com	Word synonyms and antonyms.
Meta Glossary	Word definitions, related words and synonyms.
Reference.com	Your core term synonyms and definitions.

2. Investigate your competitors’ keywords.

Check what your competitors are optimizing for: Ranks, SEOworkers and RankQuest will report on any site keywords used in title and meta tags, headings, alternative and anchor text, and overall content.
Check which anchor text people are using to link to your competitors. Here is the list of backlink checkers that explore backlinks anchor text: BacklinkWatch, Smart backlinks, Analyze Back Links and Link Diagnosis.
Learn what your competitor ranks for: Google search-based keyword tool offers limited yet free and useful information on keyword ideas based on the domain name you specify.

3. Use social media sites to analyze which words real people are using to tag your industry related content:

Features/Tools	Twitter Search	Del.icio.us related terms	Facebook Lexicon
Data source	Twitter	Del.icio.us	Facebook
How to use it.	See your term in live context.	See your term related tags.	See how often your term is mentioned across FB walls.

Use more Twitter keyword research tools that allow to investigate hot trends and any term popularity:

Twit Scoop will search for any term, trend its popularity in the form of a graph and display the list of recent related discussions.
SiteVolume compares up to 5 terms buzz over at Twitter (and also Digg, Myspace, Youtube and Flickr) - the results are pulled from Google [site:] search.

4. Search blogs and news articles for more keyword ideas. Check out your niche meme trackers.

5. Use free keyword suggestion tools:

Google AdWords External Tool (that is based on Google paid search);
Google insights (that shows the term trends; related terms and related news stories);
SEObook keyword suggestion tool (that will also show you Wordtracker count and daily search volume for each term).

6. Check out keyword brainstorming tools (term clustering and related terms):

Tools/Features	What you will find there
Google Sets	Related terms (i.e. terms that are likely to appear in lists).
MSN clustering tool	Word clusters (keyword phrases).
Searchradar	Tag clouds and keyword definitions.
Keyword Map	Related terms (synonyms and keyword phrases).
Urban Dictionary	Related terms (related synonyms and urban words).

7. Use your internal analytics reports to get an idea of your visitors’ preferences: here is a huge collection of Google Analytics advanced tips that can help you to do that.

8. More keyword related tools and resources:

Investigate your core term common typos;
Bookmark Aaron’s keyword research flow chart;
Use Wikipedia for your keyword research: evaluate the term wiki traffic and analyze any text associated articles.
Find more related words;
Let this tool answer your keyword-related questions;
Learn how to organize your long-tail keywords effectively (and a few desktop tools for that).
Find more tools to generate and manage your keyword lists.

Comments

16 responses so far ↓

Matt Longley on Dec 16, 2008 at 8:41 am

Thanks for the helpful resources Ann. I can always pick your posts out of all my SEO feeds.
ABnCParties on Dec 16, 2008 at 8:50 am

Just a wealth of information. Too much to digest in one sitting. I did test our site in SEOworkers and RankQuest with different results. Thanks again.
Paul on Dec 16, 2008 at 3:33 pm

Useful information. Appreciate the sharing.
Colorado Springs Vintage Homes by Kathy Torline on Dec 17, 2008 at 8:25 pm

Very helpful info; a couple of tools I haven’t used. Thanks
alex on Dec 18, 2008 at 6:11 am

Hi! Nice article.
Check out also this tool:
http://www.thinkpragmatic.net/gss/
Google Suggest Scraper
I’st easy:
- Write your query in the query box
- Choose your language
- Click the suggest button
- GSS will give you a list of keyword suggested by Google with the option to download them in a CSV file
- Click on any keyword to see other related terms
Arun Gangwar on Dec 29, 2008 at 7:43 am

Awesome article. I like it. Ann Smarty, i have gone through many articles of your’s but this one is absolutely pretty good. Enough to get in one byte
visiblenet on Jan 16, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Great list of tools Ann. We have used quite a few of them, but there are also some hidden gems in your list. I had never heard of or used Twit Scoop before, so thanks for that gem. We developed our own keywords tool to use in-house which is now offered free on our company site. Thought your readers may be interested in trying it out. We encourage feedback so let us know if you think changes can be made. Thanks.

http://www.visible.net/tools/keywords/

(Note: the link above is reported to have viruses.)
John S. Britsios (aka Webnauts) on Jan 24, 2009 at 11:04 am

If you liked the SEO Workers Analysis Tool, we have just published a nice Firefox Extension which you can analyze a web page with just single click https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10455
mike on Mar 8, 2009 at 1:22 am

In addition to article, the free utility for selection keywords and as (wow!) similar keywords, just about that that you wrote. synonymbase.com/
Manoj on Mar 13, 2009 at 9:44 am

Good information about keywords.
Car dealers on Mar 13, 2009 at 9:46 am

Good directory for car dealers
Mariage Marocain on Mar 25, 2009 at 4:55 pm

Very good stuff ;)
Backlinks Software on Apr 1, 2009 at 8:47 pm

I am stuck on your blog with all these great tools you share here :)
I have been very much involved in keyword research lately, and it’s good to know there is a great page to go to for free tools. Thanks.
There are also some great Free Keyword Research Tools videos on Youtube.
Confronta ADSL on Apr 15, 2009 at 7:59 am

Wow i can only say: fantastic series of tools! Thanks Ann for sharing this with us :)
diyan on Apr 26, 2009 at 3:39 am

i make to seo
Vikash on May 4, 2009 at 10:26 pm

Thanks a lot for sharing your views… Some of the ideas is already being used by me.

Regards,
Vikash