The digital world has become a place of competition for almost every company. Every successful company is on its toes to bring more organic traffic to its website. In such a competitive market, one thing is consistent with a successful marketing strategy: SEO keywords. Knowing how to find keywords that can optimise content, find the right target audience, and boost the company’s visibility or rank on search engines is essential. Continue reading to learn how to improve traffic flow on your company’s website. This blog will provide valuable insight into keyword research, its benefits, keyword tools, its importance, and the best available keyword research tools.
A good company always targets what their potential customers want to know rather than what the company can tell them while marketing a product. A company must understand what their potential customers are looking for on search engines to generate leads. This is where keywords are significant for the company’s website or content. Keyword research tools will help with planning and strategizing content for marketing.
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Importance of Keyword Research
Keyword research is a practice that is common among digital marketing companies. This is because of the potential that keywords and phrases hold. Successful marketing strategists use this method called inbound marketing, where the company’s priority is to create content based on what people want to discover rather than creating content based on what the company wants people to know.
Most people have become dependent on search engines to find solutions for almost every query that they have. So, keyword research is vital, as a company must understand the questions and words people are looking for on the internet. Only then will these companies be able to target these audiences and provide them with the right solutions to turn them into their customers?
To successfully pull in these audiences, your website and content must have the right keywords to appear in the top results of search engines. The higher the website’s ranking on Google, the better the visibility and reach. Hence, it is essential to understand the importance of keyword research and its benefits.
Benefits of Keyword Research
Keyword research provides companies with the opportunity to grow through digital marketing. So, conducting proper keyword research will only benefit any company. The benefits are as follows:
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Relevant to Market Trends:
For a company to be successful, it has to remain relevant to the target audience. Effective research can lead to better insights into new market trends.
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Traffic Growth:
The right keywords and phrases that fit the content will help it rank higher in search engines. The higher it ranks, the more traffic it will attract to a company’s website.
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Customer Acquisition:
A company can reach potential customers through keyword research by making content about the products and services people seek. So, if a business or website has high-value content that meets customers’ expectations, other business professionals can turn into buyers or customers.
The benefits of keyword research are plenty, and your company can only stand to gain when utilizing keyword research tools.
What are Keyword Research Tools?
Keyword research tools are online services that help users find the right keywords for their website or online content. A keyword tool makes it easier for content creators and website owners to analyze, compare, and prioritize keyword opportunities. The tools will help boost their marketing strategy and understanding of their audience’s language. There are many different kinds of tools, each using various techniques to generate keywords. On top of that, these tools also analyze each keyword’s search volume, competitiveness, and relevance.
What Makes a Keyword Research Tool Good?
Every keyword research tool must have the following relevant features that will make it a good research tool:
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Keyword suggestions:
This feature allows users to get recommendations on the relevant keywords and ideas appropriate to their content strategy.
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Search Volume:
This will provide information on the number of people searching for a specific keyword or phrase at a particular time.
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Competition Analysis:
This feature allows users to understand the competition for a particular keyword. If most companies use the keyword, it may be difficult for it to rank well on search engines. However, if other competitors are seldom using the keyword, then the keyword has the potential to rank well.
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Keyword Difficulty:
keyword tools will provide a feature where a keyword will have a score indicating whether the word will rank well on search engines. The keyword’s difficulty is measured based on keyword competition and other factors.
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SERP Analysis:
A good research tool will have a feature that analyses particular keywords from the top results of search engines. After that, it provides insights and ideas on the type of content and format that will help the keyword rank well.
Among other additional benefits, a good keyword research tool will have almost all of the above features. So with many keyword research tools, how will one know the best keyword research tools? Read on to find out some of the best keyword research tools.
What are the Best Keyword Research Tools?
In 2023, many keyword tools can help companies understand what their potential customers want. These online tools provide various keywords or phrases based on the ideas generated by a researcher. Some of the best keyword research tools and their unique features are:
1. Google keyword planner: Google keyword planner is one of the best free keyword research tools provided by Google. It helps companies or individuals find relevant keywords to target potential leads and advertising campaigns. This keyword planner is one of the best keyword research tools, providing results based on several search engines’ latest trends and algorithms. This makes it the best research tool to get high-ranking keywords for a company’s website, especially within the Google search engine.
This keyword planner has several features, including:
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Keyword Research:
It provides exploratory and discovery keyword research where users enter a seed term to generate keyword ideas related to their business or topic. In addition, it will also provide information on the search volume and competition level of each keyword.
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In-Depth Research on Search Volume Trends and Forecasting:
Google keyword planner will provide an in-depth historical trend graph of the monthly search volume of each keyword. This is important as it helps to understand the popularity of a keyword at a given time.
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Keyword Competition:
The competitiveness of a keyword will provide information on how many companies are utilising it. The more companies that use a particular keyword, the more difficult it will be for that keyword to rank high. Google Keyword Planner provides information on how competitive a keyword is. This will simplify a researcher’s decision about whether the keyword is worth using in content or campaigns.
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Cost-Per-Click:
Another exciting feature of this keyword tool is that it provides an estimate of how much the company will have to pay every time a customer clicks on an ad for a given keyword.
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Keyword Filtering:
This tool provides filters based on several criteria, such as search volume, competitiveness, and relevance.
2. SEMrush: SEMrush is a highly advanced keyword tool that provides much keyword data. The tool provides features that make getting detailed information on SERP features and granular analysis easy. On top of that, it also includes keyword research tools for standard traffic and search volume data and keyword research for content-driven and competitive analysis. The tool provides both free and paid services. The free service will include 10 analytic reports per day and 10 tracked keywords. The paid plan will provide up to 3000 reports per day, including 10,000 results per report and 250 keyword metric updates in a month.
Some of the essential features of SEMrush are:
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Keyword Research:
The keyword tool provides comprehensive keyword research and can identify keywords based on their relevance to a business. It includes information on search volume, competition, and difficulty level of every keyword. This makes it easier for business owners and individuals to make better-informed decisions on their marketing strategy.
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Competitive Analysis:
SEMrush provides researchers with the opportunity to understand their competitors and keyword strategies. It even includes insight on how to outrank them. The tool offers detailed information on the keywords the competitors are targeting, their ranking, and an estimate of how much traffic they get.
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Long-Tail Keyword Research:
Long-tail keywords are less competitive than broader keywords. They are also more targeted, which makes them more likely to attract organic traffic to a website and improve the chance of your content ranking higher in SERPs. This makes SEMrush an excellent tool as it provides detailed data on long-tail keywords.
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Keyword Tracking:
Through SEMrush, any business owner or individual can track their keyword rankings. This is an essential feature as it helps identify a keyword’s quality and effectiveness. It also helps to identify any problems that negatively impact the quality of an SEO keyword. Thereby helping business owners or individuals make better plans or adjustments to their strategies.
3. Jaaxy: Jaaxy is one of the best keyword research tools for affiliate marketers that is simple and efficient. It is a straightforward tool where anyone can suggest keywords by providing a related keyword, topic, or URL. The tool will give basic stats on monthly search volumes, traffic to page results, and keywords.
Some of the unique features of Jaaxy are:
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Keyword Research:
The tool provides users with an extensive database of keywords with high search volumes and low competition.
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Competitor Analysis:
Jaaxy also provides a detailed analysis of competitors and how they utilise their keywords and rankings. This helps users make better strategies concerning their website and content.
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Site Tracking and Rank:
An exciting feature of Jaaxy is that it allows users to track their website’s status on search engines based on particular keywords. This will enable users to better strategise their keywords for better search engine visibility.
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SEO Analysis:
This tool provides users with information on optimizing their website or content based on SEO for better ranking.
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Alphabet Soup search:
A unique feature of Jaaxy is that it provides users with an alphabetical search option. Users can find keywords by typing a phrase or a keyword’s beginning letters. The tool will then offer suggestions by automatically filling in the remaining words and letters.
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Brainstorming:
The keyword tool also provides a brainstorming feature where ideas can be generated through a list of relevant keywords when users enter a topic.
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Helps to Find Affiliate Programs:
Jaaxy also offers an affiliate program feature where users can enter specific keywords on the affiliate program tab. They will then get a list of affiliate programs sourced by Commission Junction, Link Share, Digital River, and Clickbank.
4. Ahref’s keyword generator: Ahref’s keyword generator is a keyword research tool that offers to generate over 100 keyword ideas from its extensive database of over 8 billion keywords from its source of 170 countries. The generator provides the following details about every keyword:
- Search volume.
- Keyword difficulty ranges from 1-100.
- How recent are the updated results?
- Questions related to the terms or phrases searched by the user.
The keyword tool helps identify long-tail keywords, provides less competitive phrases, and narrows the search based on geographic location or search engine. This also helps to pinpoint and target the right consumers. What’s unique about this tool is that people can use it without creating an account. However, this implies that it is necessary to constantly verify whether the user is a bot.
Ahref’s keyword generator gets its results from Google and also offers freemium services that include SERP results. The only drawback of this tool is that it does not allow users to download their list of keyword results.
5. Moz keyword explorer: This tool offers several different research tools that need to provide detailed data like SERP or the ranking of a keyword compared to other research tools. This can, however, be a blessing in disguise for individuals who are not professional search marketers, as it simplifies their user experience.
Some of the Features Provided by Moz’s Keyword Explorer are:
- The monthly volume of a keyword.
- Rank difficulty.
- Click through rate or CTR.
- Analysis of current results.
- Similar keyword suggestions.
- Priority score: a unique feature where the keyword generator provides the score. The score signifies whether a keyword is worth utilising. This is calculated based on the keyword’s volume, CTR, difficulty, and the user’s score. This is important as it stops a user from using a low-ranking keyword and improves the website and content quality.
- Keyword gap feature: This allows users to find relevant keywords that their competitors utilise for better ranking.
6. Keyword Surfer: this tool is a Google Chrome extension that Surfer SEO offers for free. Keyword Surfer provides information on search volume and CPC data along with related keywords on the page of each SERP listing. The tool also offers associated keywords, visualisations of the SERP data, and a free AI article outline generator. The tool also comes under a paid plan where users can opt for the full Surfer SEO app.
7. Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest is an SEO tool that allows business owners and marketers to improve their search engine rankings and generate more organic website traffic. The tool enables users to generate keyword ideas and information about each keyword’s search volume, competition and estimated CPC or cost per click.
Some of the Features of Ubersuggest are:
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Site Audit:
This feature scans a user’s website for potential issues that are preventing the website from ranking well on search engines. These issues can be broken links, missing meta tags, and slow loading time.
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Backlink Analysis:
Another unique feature of this keyword research tool is that it allows users to analyse their website and their competitor’s backlink profiles. This includes the number of backlinks, referring domains, and anchor text distribution.
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Content Ideas:
This feature provides users with a list of popular articles related to a keyword or phrase entered by the user. Along with the article topic, it also generates possible social media engagement and estimated traffic.
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Traffic Analysis:
This feature gives insight into the estimated traffic of a website along with a list of the top pages and keywords that will be driving the traffic.
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Competitor Analysis:
Through Ubersuggest, users can enter websites and observe its top organic search competitors. It also provides information on the traffic, full pages, and domain backlinks.
8. Keyworddit: This is another exciting tool that gets its keywords from Reddit. Reddit is a popular platform where people come together to deep dive into a topic of interest. It is the perfect place to find new, exciting, and unique ideas. Keyworddit is utilised when a user enters a subreddit of at least 10,000 subscribers within a specific timeframe. The tool will then review the questions and comments to generate at least 500 keyword ideas. The relevance of the keywords may vary depending on the variety of topics and comments. However, there is an option for high significance, which slows down the tool’s performance. This tool does not operate like standard keyword research tools. However, it is a very interesting one.
9. Question DB is the best free keyword research tool for question-based keywords. Users can type keywords and phrases to get question-related results that people ask online. The most unique feature of this tool is the source of the results. Most results are on what people seek on Google, Bing, Reddit, Quora, Stack Exchange, and more. This tool allows users to understand what customers want and, most importantly, how they should talk about the subject in question.
These are some of the best keyword research tools that individuals or companies can use to gain relevant keywords and grow their traffic and business. Now, a question arises: how exactly do these tools improve a company’s rank? Read below to find out more.
How do Keyword Research Tools Improve a Company’s Rank on Google?
There are many ways in which a company’s rank on Google can improve through the proper usage of keyword research tools. These tools help companies gain more potential customers as they take information or data from what people on the internet are looking for. Understanding these keywords will help any business grow in this day and age as companies can optimise their marketing strategy and content like titles, descriptions, and copies. These keyword research tools can also improve a business’s relevance and visibility on SERPs.
Another way a keyword research tool can improve a company’s rank is that it helps businesses understand and identify highly targeted long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are longer words or phrases that customers use when they are nearing the point of purchase. So using long-tail keywords will direct potential buyers to a company’s domain.
These tools also help companies understand keyword gaps. A keyword gap is a difference in the keywords used by other competitors ranking high compared to a company not using these keywords. Understanding where the gap lies will help any upcoming company increase traffic and visibility to its website.
Thus, keyword research tools are helpful as they provide valuable insight into their audience and the products and services they seek. Which in turn helps companies provide such customers with relevant solutions.
Paid Keyword Research Tools vs. Free Keyword Research Tools
Almost all online keyword research tools provide free and paid plans. Both services have their advantages and disadvantages. Some of the significant differences between them are:
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The Difference in Comprehensive Data:
Paid keyword research tools have more in-depth data than free tools. With paid tools, a user can get data on search volume, competition, ad bids, and related keywords. However, free tools only provide limited and estimated data.
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Accuracy:
Paid keyword planners provide better and more accurate data as they use more sophisticated algorithms and proper sources to generate keywords and precise data on search volume and competition. Free tools, however, may be less accurate as they use external sources to generate data and information.
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Features:
Certain features can be enjoyed only on paid plans. Additional features like competitive analysis, keyword difficulty score, and long-tail keyword suggestion are available on paid tools but may not be available with free tools.
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Cost:
The subscription fee for paid keyword tools is expensive, but it can be worth the investment if a user is serious about understanding SEO and growing their business online. Free keyword tools are significant only if the user is starting their business and understands the basics of keywords and keyword tools.
When it comes to a comparison between a paid tool and a free keyword research tool, there is no direct answer as to which one is better. There is more to gain from a paid tool, but the cost is something to consider. So, it all depends on the user’s preference and end goal.
To Sum it Up,
In today’s digital age, where businesses thrive and grow through online markets and social media, keyword tools have become an essential aspect of digital marketing. They provide companies with opportunities to grow, gain more traffic, and promote better planning and marketing strategies. They also provide valuable information and insight, allowing companies to make better data-driven decisions. At Valueleaf, we also strive to provide your company with the best digital marketing services through our team of SEO experts.
