Keyword Research Tools

 Keyword Research Tools

There’s no other way to put this:

If you’re serious about SEO, you should strongly consider investing in a keyword research tool.

Sure, you can sort through keywords in the Google Keyword Planner one-by-one. And you can manually evaluate the first page competition for your target keywords.

But the right tool makes the process MUCH faster, easier and more effective.

Because keyword research tools work at light speed, you’ll usually come away with fistfuls of untapped, low-competition keywords in minutes.

But which keyword research tool is best for you and your business?

Well in this guide I’ve put five of the top tools to the test. I’ll show you an overview of how they work, key features, and a list of pros and cons.

(And to show you that I’m being straightforward and objective with my reviews, there are no affiliate links anywhere on this page)

Let’s do this!

SECockpit

The first keyword research tool I’ll go over is SECockpit.

Like any other keyword research tool, you pop in a seed keyword and get a list of results. But what makes SECockpit unique is the built-in features that allow you to get an incredible amount of depth on search trends, organic competition and traffic estimates.

Here’s how it works:

• 1
  When you login you’ll automatically go to your Dashboard, where you can create projects around sets of keywords…or jump right in with a single keyword search:
  
• 2
  To start the keyword research process, click on “Start a Keyword Search”:
  
• 3
  Then, enter a seed keyword in the field marked “Keyword Phrase”:
  
• 4
  You can get even more results by choosing to include Google Suggest, Related Searches and synonyms pulled from Google Adwords:
  
• 5
  When you’re done, click on “save and close” and the tool will get to work:
  

Here’s what you’ll see:

Most of the results should be familiar to you as they’re exactly what you’re used to seeing in the Google Keyword Planner.

In fact, the columns “Phrase”, “Monthly Searches” and “CPC” are pulled directly from the GKP:

(The only difference is that CPC is called “Suggested Bid” within Adwords)

What does the other information in SECockpit mean?

Well you’ll notice a bunch of green bars under the column labeled “Niche”:

This bar is a single metric that takes into account top 10 competition, monthly search volume, andcommercial intent. In other words, whether or not it’s a good choice. The larger the bar, the better the keyword.

Next to monthly searches you’ll notice a series of orange bars labeled “Rank 1-10”

This bar indicates the difficulty of ranking for that particular keyword based on the current top 10 results.

You can actually get an in-depth overview of a keyword’s first page competition in Google by clicking on that keyword:

SECockpit will display important competition metrics for the top 10 pages in the results, including MozRank, Domain Authority and total links:

This is a great way to quickly size up competition without having to look one-by-one at Google’s search results.

If you go back to the keywords page, you can actually add at least 20 more columns to the results:

For example, you can see a ratio of the keyword’s competition in comparison to its search volume. Or you can get a comparison of the estimated traffic you’ll get from hitting the top 3 for that keyword compared to the level of competition for that keyword. Lots and lots of advanced features in SECockpit.

But there’s one optional column that I really like, called “Top 10 Sites Sniper”:

If you see an icon in this column it means that there’s a very weak result in the top 10, like HubPages, Squidoo or Ezine Articles (similar to the Easy Target Results I talked about in Chapter 4). These are typically keywords that you can rank for quickly and easily.

BOTTOM LINE

The first thing you’ll notice about SECockpit is that it’s a tool designed for SEO professionals.

Sure, newbies can get value out of it, but there’s no doubt that SECockpit is targeted for people that sleep, eat and breathe SEO.

If you’re brand new to SEO, the sheer number of features in this tool might be overwhelming for you. But if you’re looking for lots and lots of depth, you’ll get your money’s worth with SECockpit.

Moz Analytics’ Keyword Analysis Tool

This tool isn’t nearly as feature-rich as some of the other Keyword Research tools on the market. But to be fair it’s just one part of a larger suite of tools found within Moz Analytics.

And it’s very straightforward and easy to use.

• 1
  First, login to your Moz Analytics account, hover over “Research Tools” and click on “Keyword Analysis”:
  
• 2
  Enter one or more keywords and click on “Check Difficulty”:
  
• 3
  The tool will show you the Keyword’s overall difficulty (displayed as a %) and the exact match search volume from Bing:
  
  The higher the keyword difficulty %, the harder it is to rank for.
• 4
  To take a closer look at the top 10 results, click the “View” button under “SERP Analysis Reports”:
  
• 5
  You get a bird’s eye view of the top 10 results’ Page Authority and Domain Authority in Google:
  
• 6
  And if you scroll down you can see in-depth information, including the URLs of the pages ranking for that keyword and the number of referring domains linking to each page:
  

BOTTOM LINE

As you can see, Moz’s keyword competition tool is easy to use. And its “Keyword Difficulty” score makes determining a keyword’s difficulty simple.

However, it doesn’t actually help generate new keyword ideas. It’s only helpful to size up the top 10 results for a list of keywords you’re interested in ranking for.

Long Tail Pro

Next up we have Long Tail Pro, a user friendly (and high quality) keyword research tool.

• 1
  First, launch the desktop software and enter one or more seed keywords into the tool:
  
• 2
  You can also choose to have the tool grab some extra pieces of data, like Google Title Competition (the number of pages in Google’s index use that keyword in their title):
  
• 3
  Finally, you can set up a few filters so that low search
  volume keywords are excluded from the results:
  
• 4
  When you have everything set up, click on “Generate Keywords”:
  
• 5
  And Long Tail Pro will show you information pulled from the Google Keyword Planner:
  

What makes the tool worthwhile is the Keyword Competition feature. Just click on any keyword from the list and Long Tail Pro will automatically analyze the top 10 competition for that keyword:

Like some of the other tools you’ve seen, Long Tail Pro shows you the Page Authority and Domain Authority of the top 10. But the tool also shows you the number of inbound links, PageRank and the site’s age (an important ranking factor that most tools overlook).

And if you find that a keyword is a bit too competitive, just hit the red “x” next to it and it’s gone:

This makes is easy to filter out irrelevant or overly-competitive terms.

BOTTOM LINE

For an in-depth keyword research tool that’s also very easy to use, Long Tail Pro is an excellent choice.

SEMrush

SEMrush works a bit differently than the keyword research tools I’ve shown you so far.

Instead of entering a seed keyword and getting a long list of keyword ideas, SEMrush shows you keywords that your competition is already ranking for.

These are often outside-the-box keywords that would be impossible to find using any other tool.

Here’s how it works:

• 1
  Enter a competitor’s domain name in the field at the top of the page.

  Click “Search”:
  
• 2
  If you’re doing SEO in a country outside of the US (for example, in Google.co.uk), you can choose to see information about that specific market. Just choose that country from this menu:
  
• 3
  Next, take a look at the “Overview” box:
  
  Here’s what the different terms in the Overview box mean:

  SEMrush rank is where the domain ranks in its database of domains (like Alexa, the lower the number, the better). SEMrush rank is based on total organic traffic and the value of that traffic.

  SE Traffic is the estimated number of monthly organic visitors that come from Google.

  SE Traffic price indicates how valuable this traffic is (based on Adwords CPC).

  So if you see a domain with a lot of SE Traffic but a relatively low SE Traffic price, you know that they’re targeting keywords that probably don’t convert especially well.
• 4
  But the real value of SEMrush comes from the “Organic Keywords” data:.
  
• 5
  This box will show you 5 of the top keywords that your competitor’s are ranking for. To see more, click on “Full Report”:
  
• 6
  And you’ll get a list of all of the keywords that the site or page is currently ranking for:
  
  This page alone will usually give you a handful of solid keywords.
• 7
  But if you want more ideas, go back to the domain’s overview and check out the “Competitors in organic search” box:
  

When you click on one of those results, you’ll see what keywords they’re ranking for.

There will be some overlap from what you just saw, but you’ll also usually dig up some real gems.

You can also start your SEMrush search with a keyword instead of a competitor’s site:

SEMrush will show you a “Phrase match report”, which is a list of long tail keywords that include the keyword you entered:

This is really helpful for finding long tail variations of Head and Body Keywords.

For example, if you wanted to rank for the keyword “weight loss”, you’ll quickly find that it’s simply too competitive.

But SEMrush will show you long tail variations, like “weight loss tips”, that are MUCH easier to rank for:

When you start your search with a keyword SEMrush will also show you a “Related keywords report”, which (as you might expect) is a list of related keywords:

SEMrush is surprisingly good at linking together thematically related keywords. As you can see in the example above they were able to figure out that keywords like “weight watchers” and “nutrition” were related to the keyword “weight loss”. These are often excellent keywords to target because they’re notkeywords that the Google Keyword Planner suggests to everyone (including your competition).

BOTTOM LINE

If you’re looking for a fresh list of keywords to use as the foundation of your SEO campaigns, SEMrush is a must-have tool.

Keyword Snatcher

If you want a lot – and I mean a lot – of keyword ideas, Keyword Snatcher is a dream come true.

You’ll usually generate at least 4,000 keywords from a single seed keyword.

Here’s how it works:

• 1
  Just open up the tool (it’s browser-based), and you’ll be able to choose the sources that Keyword Snatcher pulls its keyword suggestions from:
  
  I recommend keeping them all checked off so you can generate as many keyword ideas as possible.
• 2
  Next, enter a seed keyword into the field and click “Get Suggestions”:
  
• 3
  And after a long wait, you’ll get an insane amount of suggestions:
  
  The one downside of this keyword research tool is that it doesn’t show you helpful information about the keywords that it generates (like search volume and keyword competition). It’s simply a keyword generation tool.
• 4
  To get that information, you need to extract the list of keywords by clicking on “Download Suggestions” and saving your keyword list as a text or CSV file:
  
• 5
  Then, head over to the Google Keyword Planner and choose “Get search volume for a list of keywords…”. Upload the file that you downloaded from Keyword Snatcher:
  
• 6
  Then you can see the search volume, suggested bid and Adwords competition for all of the keywords that the tool gave you:
  

BOTTOM LINE

When it comes to generating massive lists of keyword ideas, you’d be hard pressed to find a more robust tool than Keyword Snatcher. I’d prefer if you could see data from the Google Keyword Planner without having to upload a file, but that’s not a deal breaker for me because it only takes an extra minute.