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 | Del.icio.us | ||
| 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.
Thanks for the helpful resources Ann. I can always pick your posts out of all my SEO feeds.
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.
Useful information. Appreciate the sharing.
Very helpful info; a couple of tools I haven’t used. Thanks
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
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
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.)
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
In addition to article, the free utility for selection keywords and as (wow!) similar keywords, just about that that you wrote. synonymbase.com/
Good information about keywords.
Good directory for car dealers
Very good stuff ;)
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.
Wow i can only say: fantastic series of tools! Thanks Ann for sharing this with us :)
i make to seo
Thanks a lot for sharing your views… Some of the ideas is already being used by me.
Regards,
Vikash
Another great resource for English synonyms. Its fast and covers words not found in other dictionaries
After finding and reading your great se0-tools post, now I am delighted with more keyword research tools also.
I love to do keyword research, but I have some challenge in determining what keywords would be typed into Google by people who would possibly be interested in creating unconditional freedom from unwanted conditions in life, which is my passion as can be seen on my myspace page http://www.myspace.com/unconditionalfreedom
I like the way you present everything. I shall keep abreast. OK!