Comprehensive Review & Comparison of Top Keyword Research Tools. Select the Best Free Keyword Research Tool per your Requirements:
Keyword Research Tool is an application that has functionalities for finding and analyzing the exact search terms entered by people. Broadly we can categorize Keyword Research tools into two categories, Basic Keyword Research Tool and Competitor based Keyword Research Tool.
The below image will explain the benefits of long-tail keywords with an example.
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To find the keywords that drive potential customers directly to your site, you need to find Money Keywords. This will help you to get the right potential customers. You will get these right potential customers when you offer the services with the exact keywords they are searching for.
Money keywords are the long-tail keywords that are typed by your customers into search engines.
What You Will Learn:
List of Best Keyword Research Tools
- Semrush
- Keyword Tool.io
- WordStream’s Keyword Tool
- KWFinder
- Ahrefs
- Google Keyword Planner
- Soovle
- QuestionDB
- SpyFu
- Ubersuggest
- Serpstat
- SE Ranking
Also Read =>> Top 10 Private Search Engines
Comparison of Top Keyword Research Software
| Keyword Research Tools | Best for | Features | Free Trial | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Semrush | Freelancers, Startups, and small to large businesses, etc. | Market Research toolkit, Analyzing search intent for any keyword, etc. | Available | Pro: $119.95/month, Guru: $229.95/month, Business: $449.95/month. |
KeywordTool.io | Google Keyword Planner alternative. Content creation, SEO, etc. | Search volume Data, Cost-per-click data, Google Ads Competition Data, makes the use of Google Autocomplete, etc. | Free plan available. 30-days money-back guarantee | Pro Business: $159/month Pro Plus: $79/month Pro Basic: $69/month |
WordStream’s Keyword Tool | Free keyword tool & alternative to Google Keyword Tool or AdWords Keyword Tool. | Provides a full keyword list in a CSV format, Provides a keyword with a competition score and an estimated CPC, etc. | Free tool | Free |
KWFinder | Newbies & experienced. Small to medium-sized businesses | Import keywords in bulk, competitors keywords, long-tail keywords, organize keywords with keyword lists, etc. | Available for 10 days. Money-back guarantee for 48 hours. | Mangools Basic: $29.90/month Mangools Premium: $39.90/month Mangools Agency: $79.90/month. |
Ahrefs | Small to large businesses. | Organic search report, advanced keyword metrics, Keyword Explorer tool, Content Research tool, etc. | No. 7 day trial available for $7. | Lite: $99/month Standard: $179/month Advanced: $399/month Agency: $999/month. |
#1) Semrush
Best for freelancers, startups, small to large businesses, growing agencies, e-commerce projects, and businesses with an extensive web presence.
Semrush provides a complete workflow for any SEO professional that includes the modules for a technical SEO audit, semantic core collection, position tracking, and ideas for gaining more organic traffic, backlinks audit & analytics, & competitive intelligence.
The Market Research toolkit will provide market insights and competitor strategy overview. This toolkit will spot new opportunities for growth, can explore any company’s web traffic & visitor engagement, provides data for sales prospecting & lead evaluation, and uncover the most effective digital marketing strategies.
Semrush’s keyword intent labels are available in all tools like organic research, position tracking, keyword magic tool, etc.
Features:
- Semrush offers a new feature for search intent analysis with various key elements such as filtering, automation, and competitor insights.
- For search intent analysis, it supports 10 languages including English, German, French, Spanish, etc.
- Semrush keyword intent can be used in 5 ways for marketing like tracking growth based on search intent with position tracking.
- Paid traffic will improve the results of your PPC efforts. It will provide competition analysis, Ad Keywords, and creative research.
- It can instantly analyze content performance. It can provide trending topic ideas for your articles. It will help you build an effective social media strategy.
Verdict: Semrush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals. It offers various functionalities, including SEO, Paid Traffic, Social Media, Content & PR, and Market Research. It is a complete tool for search intent analysis at all stages of keyword research.
It will also help you to uncover your competitor’s social strategies. It has a built-in image editor, link shortener & UTM builder. The chrome extension is also available.
Price: With Semrush, monthly subscriptions, as well as annual billing options, are available. It offers three pricing plans, Pro ($119.95 per month), Guru ($229.95 per month), and Business ($449.95 per month). A free trial is available for Pro and Guru Plans.
#2) Keyword Tool.io
Best for content creation, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and other marketing activities.
KeywordTool.io can generate more than 750 long-tail keyword suggestions for every search term. You will get a lot of new long-tail keywords for any topic.
It generates a long-tail keyword by prepending and appending the search term (that you have specified) to various letters and numbers. These are placed in the Google search box and then the tool takes out the keyword suggestions. It performs this whole process in a split of a second.
Features:
- Based on the language you are using and the Google domain, the tool will produce the keyword suggestions.
- It makes the use of Google Autocomplete for generating various relevant long-tail keywords for any topic.
- The tool will present the extracted Google Keyword suggestions in an easily understandable format.
- With the advanced versions, you will get more features and more number of keywords as compared to the free plan.
Verdict: This tool will allow you to choose a specific domain out of 192 supported domains. You can choose the language out of 83 languages for producing keyword suggestions. It is a reliable tool and will work 99.99% of the time.
Price: It can be used for free without creating an account. Along with the free plan it offers three more plans, Pro Business ($159 per month), Pro Plus ($79 per month), and Pro Basic ($69 per month). Keyword Tool also provides a 30-days money-back guarantee.
Website: KeywordTool.io
#3) WordStream’s Keyword Tool
Best for free keyword tool & as an alternative to Google Keyword Tool or AdWords Keyword Tool.
WordStream offers a free keyword tool. It has functionalities for discovering and exporting new keywords and performance data that will help you with succeeding in Google Ads and Bing Ads. The tool can provide contextual keyword suggestions based on a website URL.
You just have to enter a keyword and select your industry and country. The tool will give you a list of related keyword suggestions. These suggestions will include long-tail keyword variations and their search volume on Google and Bing.
Features:
- You will get a lot of relevant keyword results according to your industry and country.
- It provides a keyword with a competition score and an estimated CPC. This feature will let you prioritize and make the most of your marketing budget.
- The tool will let you download a full keyword list in a CSV format. You can upload it directly into Google Ads.
- It makes the use of the latest Google search data to provide you accurate and targeted advertising ideas.
Verdict: Finding keywords will be fast and easier with the help of this free keyword tool. Along with the relevant keyword results, the tool will provide additional information like estimated CPC.
Price: Free Keyword Research Tool
Website: WordStream’s Keyword Tool
#4) KWFinder
Best for newbies as well as experienced users. It is also suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.
KWFinder is a keyword research and analysis tool. The tool will provide the keywords with exact search volumes. To boost the organic traffic of your website, the tool will help you to identify seasonal keywords. It provides a local keyword research tool that will help you to find location-specific long-tail keywords.
Features:
- KWFinder provides the facility to import keywords in bulk.
- It provides functionalities to filter keywords that are not profitable, SERP analysis & SEO metrics, find competitor’s keywords & long-tail keywords.
- It has features to organize keywords with keyword lists.
- With premium plans, it can provide unlimited competitor keywords or search.
Verdict: As per reviews, KWFinder is a powerful tool and easy to use. It is a perfect solution for newbies as well as experienced users.
Price: It offers a free trial for 10 days. It also offers a money-back guarantee for 48 hours. There are three pricing plans, Mangools Basic ($29.90 per month), Mangools Premium ($39.90 per month), and Mangools Agency ($79.90 per month). All these prices are for monthly plans. Annual plans are also available and you can save up to 40% with annual plans.
Website: KWFinder
#5) Ahrefs
Best for small to large businesses.
Ahrefs tool will help you to grow your search traffic. It has functionalities to research your competitors. It provides the tools for Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Research, Content Research, Rank Tracking, and Web Monitoring. Its backlink checker tool will provide the best services through its robots constantly crawling 54 billion web pages and the tool updates the index every 15 minutes.
Features:
- Ahrefs provides an organic search report that will help you to analyze your competitor’s traffic.
- The tool will help you with targeting the keywords through the keyword difficulty score and the advanced keyword metrics.
- Its Keywords Explorer tool can provide the annual search volume trends that will help you with knowing searcher’s behavior and SERP ranking history.
- Its Content Research tool will tell you about the content that is working well.
Verdict: The tool can provide the exact keywords that are the reason for the competitor’s rank. It has a huge database of over 3 billion keywords.
Price: You can get a seven day trial for $7. Ahrefs has monthly as well as annual billing plans. It offers four pricing plans, Lite ($99 per month), Standard ($179 per month), Advanced ($399 per month), and Agency ($999 per month).
Website: Ahrefs
#6) Google Keyword Planner
Best for providing a lot of data for free.
Google Keyword Planner will help you to choose the right keywords. It will give you the keywords relevant to your business. After finding the keywords, you can make an advertising plan, save it, or share it.
Features:
- It can provide insights for the keywords that are searched most of the time.
- It can also tell about the changes in the searches over time.
- It can help you with determining the advertising budget by giving you the suggested bid estimates for each keyword.
Verdict: Google Keywords planner can be used to research keywords and get historical statistics & traffic forecasts. It will narrow down the keyword list to your required ones.
Price: This tool is provided with Google Ads. It is available for free with Google Ads. Google Ads can provide the service for any budget.
Website: Google Keyword Planner
#7) Soovle
Best for suggesting keyword ideas from multiple sources like Google, YouTube, etc.
Soovle is the tool that can provide the keyword ideas from Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. It has a drag-and-drop saved suggestions feature that will let you save your favorite keywords. You can download your favorite keywords to a CSV file.
Features:
- Soovle can provide auto-complete suggestions from a variety of sources.
- It will provide suggestions that will be useful for your blog.
- Soovle will give you quick and efficient results.
Verdict: Soovle is simple and easy to use. You just have to enter the keyword and review the result.
Price: Soovle is a free keyword research tool.
Website: Soovle
#8) QuestionDB
Best for casual ideation, understand your readers, deep dives into topics, and ongoing content ideation.
QuestionDB is a free content idea generator. You will be able to search a massive collection of user questions that will help you to get original ideas for new content. Its free plan is for casual ideation and to understand your readers. Paid Plan is to deep dive into topics and ongoing content ideation.
You just have to enter a keyword and the tool will provide a lot of questions related to that keyword that will help you to write the content. The tool will give you new ideas to write the content. New questions are continually added to QuestionDB.
Features:
- The free plan will allow you to sort by question popularity or topic, download CSV, and provide max 40 results per search.
- A Paid plan can provide up to 1000 results for the search.
- Pro Plan will allow you to sort by new questions added to QuestionDB.
- It provides API access and unlimited searches.
Verdict: QuestionDB is a powerful and valuable tool for writers and marketers. It is not a general keyword tool. It works by compiling millions of questions asked on various websites over time into a large searchable database.
Price: QuestionDB has two pricing plans, Free and Pro ($10 per month).
Website: QuestionDB
#9) SpyFu
Best for competitor research features and reporting.
SpyFu is a Competitor Keyword Research Tool for AdWords. It can be used for an unlimited number of projects, searches, and exports. You can search for any competitor and download their keywords. It will help you with learning competitors’ PPC and SEO tricks.
You will be able to trace the ranking history of any page or website on a keyword. SpyFu has functionalities for PPC competitor research, SEO competitor research, and Keyword Research Tool, and Domain Leads and top lists.
Features:
- SpyFu provides recommendations that will help you to drive clicks to your SEO or AdWords campaigns.
- You will be able to monitor your paid and SEO rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
- It has functionalities for filtering by search volume, CPC, SEO difficulty, number of advertisers, etc.
- It provides a Keyword Grouper tool that can organize the list of keywords into groups and can provide search volume and CPC data to them.
- It provides the features to find specific ranking factors for each keyword.
Verdict: As a keyword research tool, it can be an alternative to Google Keyword Tool. It can generate keyword ideas. SpyFu will give you 100% safe backlink recommendations that will be actively indexed by Google.
Price: SpyFu offers a free trial. It has three pricing plans, Basic ($33 per month), Professional ($58 per month), and Team ($199 per month). All these prices are for annual billing. Monthly plans are also available. It provides a money-back guarantee for 30 days.
Website: SpyFu
#10) Ubersuggest
Best for businesses that want to rank higher on Google.
Ubersuggest is an all-in-one tool that will help you to grow your SEO traffic. It provides a keyword tool and generates more suggestions. This tool has functionalities for keyword suggestions, content ideas, and backlink data.
Features:
- Ubersuggest can provide long-tail phrases. It provides hundreds of suggestions.
- Backlink Data feature will give you the exact content in your space that people are linking to.
- It can provide content ideas.
- It can provide reports per day.
Verdict: Ubersuggest will provide the list of keywords considering a competitor Google. For competitive analysis, it has features of historical data, top pages, top keywords, filtering, etc.
Price: Ubersuggest will allow you to pay monthly ($29 per month) as well as annually ($290 per year). It can provide a 7-day free trial.
Website: Ubersuggest
#11) Serpstat
Best for small to large businesses and freelancers.
Serpstat is a growth hacking tool for SEO, PPC, Search analytics, Marketing, and Content Marketing. It will help you to find the keyword variations and search suggestions.
To determine the value of keywords, it has the features of comparing your keywords to different performance indicators like search volume, cost-per-click, competition level, etc. It can provide a list of proven and profitable keywords that are used by your competitors.
Features:
- Serpstat has features to discover international data that will help you to adapt keywords for targeting countries.
- The tool has features for identifying the most relevant pages to specific queries.
- You will be able to measure a page’s relevance compared to competing pages. It can identify the missing keywords that can be added to your page.
- It can provide an easy to understand graph that will show the fluctuation of user’s interest in a keyword over the last year.
- It has many more features and functionalities for advertising analysis, search analytics, content marketing ideation, competitor research, rank tracking, market intelligence, reports & infographics, and on-page audit.
Verdict: The tool will help you to get long-tail keywords that can drive a significant amount of traffic on the web. This tool allows keyword research in all major languages. For a keyword, it can provide additional data like organic keywords, the number of Facebook shares, and the potential traffic score for the individual page.
Price: Serpstat offers the services with four pricing plans, Lite ($69 per month), Standard ($149 per month), Advanced ($299 per month), and Enterprise ($499 per month). You can also try the product for free.
Website: Serpstat
#12) SE Ranking
Best for startups, small and mid-sized businesses, agencies, SEO specialists looking for data-packed yet affordable solutions.
Proper keywords are crucial for your SEO campaign. To ensure you have a list of such queries, you need a digital tool that will give you insight into the quality of each keyword. The SE Ranking Keyword Research Tool does just that.
Insert the seed keyword, and you’ll see its Difficulty score, search volume, CPC (cost per click), paid competition, and more. All of that is on one screen, shown in expandable graphs with great data visualization.
You can expand and improve your keyword list with relevant suggestions with low search volume by using filters. Look into the competition for each keyword and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Features:
- Detailed analysis of every keyword, including search volume, CPC, difficulty score, etc.
- Grouped suggestions with similar, relevant, and low search volume keywords.
- Data export in easy-to-understand reports.
- Visualized data for easier perception.
- Affordable pricing plans and custom plans are available.
- Free 14-day trial
Verdict: The SE Ranking Keyword Research Tool is lightweight yet packed with well-visualized data. You can see information about keyword competition, new opportunities, and analyze all the key parameters of each query.
SE Ranking has its own Difficulty score that will show you whether or not it will be easy to optimize your content. Search volume, CPC, etc., are a given. So, if you need a decent keyword tool to amp up your game, this might be the one.
Price: SE Ranking is available in 3 main plans, but you can order a custom plan. Besides, you save 20% if you pay annually. The Essential plan is $39, the Pro plan is $89, and the Business plan is $189 if you pay monthly.
Conclusion
Based on your needs you can choose the basic or competitor based Keyword Research tool but Competitor based Keyword Research tools are more effective. Keyword Tool.io, WordStream’s Keyword Tool, KW Finder, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner are our top recommended tools.
If we compare the prices of all the top 11 tools then KWFinder offers the basic plan for the lowest price and Serpstat for the highest price. WordStream’s Keyword Tool and Soovle are free tools. KeywordTool.io and QuestionDB offer a free plan.
We hope this detailed review and comparison of best Keyword Research Tools will guide to select the right solution.
Review Process:
- Time taken to research this article:
- Total tools researched
- Top tools shortlisted