Last Updated on September 13, 2024
You write regularly and fill up your website or blog with useful and quality content and yet face poor reader stats. A quick scan of competing sites reveals another story, a positive one. If you are planning to chuck away all the hard work and press the delete button for your blog, hold on. Hear me out. I’ll show you a simple technique, not necessarily an easy one, to help win the search engine game and attract relevant readers.
You need to ask yourself some uncomfortable questions first.
- What is the aim of your blog/website?
- Who is your audience?
- Why should they stop over?
- Where will you find them?
- How will you achieve this?
Blog or website writers should take a leaf out of a copywriter’s book – good copy that sells something, anything. Once you get the basics that includes the website design, the domain name, the hosting and the service/products/topics you want to share ready, it’s time to concentrate on making the content effective.
Keywords are nothing but phrases typed in by users in search boxes. Keyword research helps you analyze your markets, customers, and competitors and find out the trends, changes and wants. This research helps you in coming up with content, services or products that address these needs. You can always use this research to attract the right audience for existing content or services.
Manual research of the market and finding the right words can take you weeks and months. Why sweat it out when there are free and paid tools that help you connect the dots or in this case – relevant keywords?
Six free and useful tools for keyword research
Google Keyword Tool
Why look any further if you can use this free cum paid research tool from the search engine gods. Most other free and paid research tools use Google’s keyword data to provide results. The free option is pretty useful for beginners and experienced alike.
This tool shows you the search volume or competition level for each keyword. There are various filter options that you use. You can search for global, country wise or region wise popular keywords. You can match types to find the best keywords for your niche or product.
KeywordSpy
This is a useful tool that has both free and paid components. The free search bar has other options than just keyword search and includes domain name searches, ad copy searches and destination URL searches for the term.
The free tool provides you with an overview of the basic phrase entered with the results being drawn from AdWord, Yahoo, and Bing. It gives you stats on similar words, related words and misspelled words. The tool provides information on Ads, PPC percentages and CPC value as well. You can do a basic keyword related check on organic and PPC competitors. To know more about your competitors, you need to go in for the paid service.
Bing Keyword Tool
While Google is the ‘go to’ place for search engine queries or analysis, you can use the Bing Keyword tool as an effective addition. All you need is a Microsoft account to use this tool.
The Bing tool provides you with data on organic searches by actual online users. You have access to almost six months historical data. You can use the Bing tool to check long tail words in different languages and also find data based on region or country. You can save and utilize your keyword research history for 25 keywords.
Keyword List Generator
This is one among the many tools by SeoBook. This neat tool generates keyword phrases and lists. You enter your keywords and modifiers and the tool comes up with relevant suggestions.
They also have other keyword tools which require a free account sign up with SeoBook. There is the basic keyword tool, the keyword comparison tool and the competitive research tool.
SEMRush
This is a both a free and paid service. You don’t need to sign up to use the free tool. This tool gives you information on the most searched and related phrases based on your query. You can find sites with common keywords. You can use the phrase match and related words reports to find high volume and low competition keywords. You can check out competitor sites that use similar or related phrases.
The tool allows provides you with AdWord traffic and spending details for your chosen keyword. It gives details on 100 keywords and requires you to upgrade for more and detailed results.
Ubersuggest
This free keyword research tool helps you track the right phrases. It draws data from traditional sources such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In addition to this, Ubersuggest pulls data from discovery engines found in Ecommerce, video and news sites. This feature makes the tool stand out from other free ones available online.
Use the free tools as a standalone or combine a couple of them. Keyword research isn’t a onetime technique but a recurring one.
