Keyword research is a fundamental aspect of SEO and the first step in the keyword process. Keyword research helps you identify the keywords that your audience is searching for, which will ultimately determine how your website ranks on search engines.
Keyword research entails understanding your audience and what they are looking for. You want to identify keywords that are relevant to your business or website and that people are actively searching for. If you use relevant keywords, you will be able to improve your organic and paid traffic, as well as increase your ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Table of Contents
Keyword Research Small Seo Tools
Keyword research is a crucial element of modern SEO. Whether you’re kick-starting an old blog or developing your content strategy for a new one; good quality keywords are one of the most efficient ways to attract consistent, quality traffic to your site. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best keyword research tools to help you conquer your content.These 10+ keyword #research #tools will help you start ranking your #content in #Google CLICK TO TWEET
The 10+ best keyword research tools
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is not just a keyword tool, it is like the Swiss Army Knife of SEO. Instead of producing a list of keywords, SEMrush suggests 5-10 very specific keywords that your competitors are already using.
Standout features
- Uncover long-tail keywords and ad group ideas
- Get yearly keyword trends
- Worldwide CPC distribution statistics
- Access to the complete keyword research toolkit
- Keyword difficulty analysis and organic traffic insights
Pricing
SEMrush hosts a 7-day free trial of the service. You do need to enter credit card details to get access to the trial, but there are no charges levied if you choose to cancel your subscription within the 7-day trial.
SEMrush has four different pricing plans. The best offers come with annual billing.
- Pro – A plan for limited budget sites and freelancers, it starts at $99.95 per month and gets billed annually.
- Guru – SEO agencies and small to mid-sized business will find the features in this plan perfect for the day-to-day management of content sites. Guru starts at $191.62 per month.
- Business – It is ideal for eCommerce stores and agencies, and opens at $374.95 per month.
- Enterprise – If you have an extensive content strategy, reaching beyond the capacity of the above solutions, SEMrush can custom fit a plan for your needs.
2. KWFinder
KWFinder is a tool designed by Mangools – a developer known for delivering the best keyword research tools across categories. You can use their beginner guide to get started.
The KWFinder platform makes it easy to find keywords with low SEO difficulty, along with a whole host of other useful features.
Standout features
- A unique and easy to navigate user interface
- Find keywords in any language target, anywhere
- Choose options from the list of powerful keywords
- Get precise statistics for keyword competition
- In-depth SERP overview alongside a list of suggestions
- Use filters to refine the list of keyword suggestions
Pricing
KWFinder is part of Mangools package that includes 4 other SEO tools. This keyword tool only allows a handful of free searches. Select an annual plan to save up to 40% on any of their 3 subscriptions.
- Basic – $30 (freelancers and small businesses)
- Premium – $40 (new startups and blogs)
- Agency – $80 (eCommerce stores and heavy sites)
3. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
Ahrefs is one of the best keyword research tools available for content creators today. The platform provides a broad keyword report to the user and relies on clickstream data to provide unique click metrics.
Standout features
- Accurate keyword difficulty score
- 1,000+ keyword suggestions
- Supported in over 171 countries
- Click metrics for improving CTR
- Extensive SERP overview
Pricing
Ahrefs has four pricing plans. The rates for freelancers, online marketers, mid-sized organizations, and bigger brands start at just $82 per month if you choose an annual payment plan.
They do have a trial offer ($7 for 7 days) on their Lite and Standard subscription plans.
4. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a simple keyword tool option serving up a few basic features. Despite the lack of functionality, however, it’s one of the most accurate sources of keyword data on the market. The data comes directly from Google and the results integrate well with AdSense monetization.
Standout features
- Locate commercial keywords using “top of page” bid range
- Accurate search volume directly from Google’s search engine
- Best choice for business websites
Pricing
Google Keyword Planner is available for free.
5. GrowthBar
GrowthBar is a great tool for marketers and bloggers who are in a hurry, and want ranking difficulty or keyword suggestions to appear along with their search results.
A unique feature they recently added is content outline generation, you can use it to generate content outlines in one click for your blog or website with keywords, word counts, headers, images, links and more.
It also allows you to explore competitor’s profile featuring – backlink data, organic keywords, Google/Facebook ads info and related insights.
Standout features
- Generate content outlines with AI
- Keyword rank tracking
- Accurate ranking difficulty
- Long tail keyword suggestions
- Exportable keyword data
- On-page word count
Pricing
GrowthBar offer a free 5-day trial, after which you will be charged based on the plan you choose. The higher-tier plan will let you search unlimited keywords.
- Pro – $29/month
- Scale – $79/month
6. Long Tail Pro
It’s no secret that long-tail keywords are the new standard of SEO. Long Tail Pro keyword tool generates long-tail keywords for niche sites and has even found a cult following with content producers for micro-niche sites.
Standout features
- Powerful, detailed keyword metrics
- Easily find long-tail keywords
- Provides recommendations for attracting highly convertible organic traffic
- 2,500+ SERP lookups every 24 hours
Pricing
Long Tail Pro is a premium tool and does offer a 7-days free trial (subscription to be cancelled before 7 days). Subscriptions start as low as $25 per month (when billed annually). Long Tail Pro currently offers three plans to users.
- Starter – $25/month
- Pro – $45/month
- Agency – $98/ month
7. Majestic
Majestic is an all-in-one SEO tool to keep a track of your site’s health. It’s an ideal tool for new blogs and small businesses that don’t have the resources to invest a lot of complicated support for search engine optimization.
Standout features
- All SEO features are available in a single toolkit
- Find easy-to-target phrases
- Research competition on each keyword
- Trustworthiness vs. authority graph for website analysis
Pricing
Majestic allows you to sign up and run 3 free searches to help you get a feel for the service. The keyword checker, however, is only available in PRO and API plans. You can grab the SEO toolkit for $83/month when you select the annual billing option.
8. Keyword Tool
If you’re obsessed with keyword data mining, try Keyword Tool. The platform is regarded as one of the top keyword research tools on the market and offers analysis for multiple search engines including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and the App Store.
Standout features
- Find great keywords using Google Autocomplete
- Supplement your social media marketing with Instagram and Twitter keyword analysis
- Export results to CSV
- Simple UX for beginners
Pricing
Keyword Tool is very similar to Google Keyword Planner. It’s free for first 750+ keywords and extremely easy to get started with. The Keyword Tool “Basic” plan starts at $69 per month and is billed annually.
9. Serpstat
If you’re searching for a full SEO suite, Serpstat is an excellent option which combines website analytics, keyword research tool, SERP analysis, backlink analysis, a rank tracker, and website audit features. It’s an all-in-one solution meant to streamline the entire category of SEO.
Standout features
- Know your competition using the competitor graph feature
- Find keyword difficulty and keyword trends
- The most budget-friendly option on our list
Pricing
Similar to a couple of the other options we’ve listed here, Serpstat can be used a few times for free by signing up for their trial membership. To use the service regularly though, you need to get yourself set up with one of their subscriptions. A personal plan goes for $55 per month.
10. Moz Keyword Explorer
The Moz Keyword Explorer serves up easy to use, out-of-the-box keyword recommendations. Moz’s SEO tool boasts all the features you’d expect from the very best keyword research tools, plus two very unique data points.
Organic CTR score – This click-through rate demonstrates the number of clicks you’re expected to attract on page 1 of Google.
Priority score – The priority score is a mixture of all the individual factors a typical tool uses to suggest keyword options. It combines data on CTR, search volume, and keyword difficulty to help you select the best terms for your project.
Standout features
- Get related keyword suggestions
- Organic CTR and Priority score for smart targeting
- Moz offers a one month trial period
Pricing
Sign up for a free Moz account and get 10 free queries per month. The Keyword Explorer is not a standalone researching tool, to get full access to this useful little asset you will need to pay for the entire SEO suite. You can get the Moz keyword research features in the platform’s “Medium” plan, which starts at $179 a month with the option for a free 30-day trial.
11. SpyFu
SpyFu is the #1 choice for analyzing your competitors’ SEO strategies. Their keyword tool uncovers valuable, virtually untapped keywords and makes a huge difference if you’re working in a highly saturated niche.
Standout features
- Compare different websites competing for a single search term
- Discover ranking difficulty and historical rank changes
- Additional modules for in-depth domain analysis
Pricing
SpyFu is a little different from the other tools we’ve listed here as they offer monthly results, not real-time feedback. You can subscribe to SpyFu for $33 per month if you choose the annual billing option.
seo ranking keywords
Keyword rankings in SEO refer to your page’s specific spot on the search results pages for a particular search query. When people enter search terms into Google that relate to your page’s subject matter, whichever spot your URL is shown in is your keyword ranking.
Search engines usually show about 10 results per page, and higher keyword rankings mean being closer to the top of the page (toward spot #1), lower keyword rankings mean being closer to the bottom (spot #10). This keyword ranking definition also refers to which page in the SERP a URL is shown on, with more relevant results shown on page 1, and less relevant results appearing on page 2 or beyond.
There’s no way to tell search engines like Google or Bing which keywords you want a page to rank for directly, they will process the content on the page and decide for themselves. There is also no minimum or maximum number of keyword rankings a page can have.
Google defines keywords as “key terms used in the written content of the website pages.” This suggests that a keyword ranking definition is for key phrases and words that exist on the web page as found by Google. This idea represents the link between keywords used on a site for SEO and the keywords that are used by web searchers.
Understand the parts of the SERP
To better understand this “keyword ranking” definition and to understand what keyword ranking in SEO means, it helps to know the key parts of a search engine results page.
Search engines like Google and Bing often show a small selection of paid ads at the top (that look very similar to “organic” results) and then a listing of real, organic results below – usually 10. These appear just below the search bar.
The search results page can sometimes also include rich snippets, shopping results, “knowledge graphs” and more.
However, when people talk about “keyword position” they are almost always referring to where a particular page ranks in the main “organic” listings of 10 results per page. These are the main links in the middle of the page and are what most people are familiar with.
Here’s how they break down:
- Spots #1-10 are on the first page
- Spots #11-20 are on the second page
- Spots #21-30 are on the third page
- And so on…
For SEO marketing the 10 organic spots on each page are what is most important. These 10 spots only include organic results – not paid ads or results for other Google channels like image results or Shopping results (which are tracked separately). The better the rank, the more traffic.
These ten spots are counted down from the top of the page so first result on the page is spot #1, and the last one is spot #10. Having a higher keyword position means more traffic, and is therefore a lot more desirable for SEO.
The #1 result here has an average click-through-rate of 31.7% – making it 10x more likely to get a click then lower results. This is why having an SEO strategy built on good keyword research is important, since it can help sites to target their most valuable existing keyword rankings – and to gain new ones.
Keyword Ranking Definitions vs “Search Queries”
Let’s also talk about another common term in SEO which is “search queries.” Most of the time these terms are used interchangeably – but they’re not necessarily exactly the same.
Search “queries” represent the terms and phrases that are typed into search engines by the users.
So, what is keyword ranking in SEO compared to search queries used by searchers? The difference is mostly context and what’s being referred to. Search queries represent what’s actually typed into a search engine by people who are beginning their search, whereas marketers usually think of “keywords” as the queries that they are targeting for their SEO and PPC campaigns. Plus the Google indexing algorithm is designed to look for keywords in the content of pages, which means that Google has its own keyword ranking definition used for the algorithm.
When it finds keywords, it can deduce what the page is about.
But because there are often many inconsequential variances between search queries (spelling, punctuation, grammar, synonyms) a “keyword” might encapsulate any number of “keywords.”
For example “men’s back country backpacks” and “backcountry backpacks for men” may be different queries but the results shown for these searches will most likely have the same keyword position, meaning that search engines see these terms as the same.
Marketers might think of these as the same keyword and search algorithms often do as well – that’s why searching for both keywords will most likely give people almost identical results.
How to know your keyword ranking position
There are some ways to know what keywords your site is ranking for.
Search Console is provided by Google to help webmasters monitor the health of their website in the index – this tool also gives businesses and sites a way to see how people come to their site through search. It gives marketers a way to see which queries people are using to get to their site, find new keywords that are best for their site, and measure traffic from Google search. All of which are important for SEO.
Search Console offers all websites a “Performance” report where they can see search traffic for their site’s pages broken down by URLs and numbers. Specifically, marketers can see what are the keyword positions for their top URLs with info on clicks, impressions, click-through-rate, and average position.
So what is keyword ranking in Search Console exactly? Let’s look at a couple of the metrics used in this report.
In the Coverage report marketers can see:
- Impressions: Or how many links to your site a user saw on Google search results (even if the result was not scrolled into view). Though this isn’t a good way of tracking or monitoring keyword ranking positions, it’s a good way of understanding the value of keywords and how they can help your site appear to more people.
- Clicks: This metric reflects the number of clicks from Google search that results in users visiting your website.
- CTR: Or “click-through-rate” is the measure of how many clicks the site has received, divided by the number of impressions it gets.
- Average Position: This means the average position of the topmost result from your site for a given keyword. Average is given here because the position fluctuates often, give or take a few spots.
In the Coverage report the keyword ranking positions are shown in the “Queries” tab as a column on the left side.
Google’s keyword ranking definition for “average positions” hinges on the fact that URLs rarely stay in one spot permanently. There’s a lot of variables at play, but links in the search results page can fluctuate up and down over time – day to day or even from search to search.
This is a big part of why the queries/keywork ranking position shown in Search Console is usually a decimal number. A keyword position of “2.5” for example could represent a keyword that moves around between spot #2 and spot #3 on the SERP.
Since Google searches can sometimes be customized for searchers based on their previous searches, the device they are using, and their geographic location – not everyone gets the exact same results. And as the search engine indexes other pages and crawls new content, it reshuffles which links deserve to appear where, based on Google’s complex ranking algorithm.
Google describes Search Console’s keyword ranking definition like this:
“…key terms used in the written content of the website pages. These terms are the most significant keywords and their variants that Google found when crawling your site. When reviewed along with the Search queries report and your site’s listing in actual search results for your targeted keywords, it provides insight into how Google is interpreting the content of your site.”
Keep in mind that these “keywords” are what it’s ranking algorithm determines as the most important core words from the page’s content or design, as well as from context passed to the pages via links. But marketers may not be able to see or know exactly what these keywords are – instead they might have to determine keywords from the listed “queries” shown in Search Console.
Here’s how Google defines queries shown in the Coverage report in Search Console: “The actual query a user entered in Google search.” Simple as that!
This data can be used to help optimize SEO campaigns and optimize on-page content for better traffic and better business. Afterall, what is keyword ranking in SEO used for exactly? The keywords shown here, plus how they perform can help to make adjustments on the site in order to improve SEO.
Monitoring “Average Position” can help businesses determine how Google understands their content – plus metrics like Clicks and CTR can be used to feedback into campaigns and improve traffic for high-value keywords.
For example:
- If a page has a higher average keyword/query position in Search Console, but a low CTR, it could mean that the meta data is not appealing to searchers or comes across as dishonest, spammy, or inaccurate.
- Keywords with a higher average position, but few impressions represent keywords or topics that simply just do not get very much traffic. However, if CTR is higher, and the page is leading to conversions, this may not be a bad thing.
- Pages with average keyword ranking positions that are higher than 10.0 may have fewer clicks because it means these pages are mostly showing up on page 2 of Google search results, where people are far less likely to click on them. For example a page with an “average position” of “10.4” might bounce around periodically between the 10th spot on page 1 or the 1st spot on page 2.
Being able to understand this data is important to being able to know your sites keyword rankings and to improve your search performance. Knowing what keyword ranking in SEO means will help businesses perform keyword research and to curate the content on their site to better perform for high-value keywords that bring them more site traffic, and more revenue.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines