Here are seven tools that you can use for your keyword research. These keywords are ones that you can add into your blog content and into your associated tags. Hidden keywords are applicable to websites but not your blog since your keyword tags are visible for all to see, nevertheless these tools will help you research the hidden keywords of others too. Don’t add toolbars or download tools to do your keyword research. Although there are many legitimate ones out there, it is hard to figure out which ones are piggybacking malware. The tools here do not need to be downloaded or added to a toolbar, and most are free.
1 – Google’s Webmaster Tools and Affiliate Advertising Program
The AdWords Affiliate program is very good for choosing keywords, and it is free with no obligation to advertise. Simply type in your keyword and up pops a list full of various different keywords from different categories. It will even show you how much other advertisers are bidding for the words, and how likely it is that people will search for them. The prediction methods of the tool are a little suspect, since the program seems to be suffering from a “too much data” syndrome, making it tell you that some keywords are less popular than they really are. Nevertheless there is no finer free keywords research tool.
2 – Google Trends
This is a good tool if you want to see what keywords are popular in which country. It also shows you a graph of how many times this keyword was searched for during the last few months and years. The graphical data is actually quite difficult to understand without some sort of tutorial first, since popular and unpopular keywords seems to have the same graph. Nevertheless, if the graph line is high then the keyword may be useful, if it is low then it may not be.
3 – Google Suggestions
The short-sighted webmaster will tell you that Google Suggestions are poor keywords–they may be, but are often used by web searchers. Google Suggestions is a variation on auto-complete. You enter a few words into the Google search bar, and below a small list of up to ten suggestions will appear. These suggestions are often the search engine simply guessing at what the user desires. Most of them are wrong and so are not chosen, but some are quite apt. Many times a user will start typing and click a suggestion before they finish typing. The suggestions may not be ideal keywords, but many people use the function, therefore you cannot ignore that there is potential traffic that you can gain from them.
Come up with a set of search queries and type them into the search bar on Google. As you type the first, second, third, etc, words you will see different suggestions appear. You must note down the suggestions that apply to your website, and then seriously consider using them. Even the integration of one or two into your blog post as full sentences may help improve your blog’s search engine standing.
4 – A Thesaurus
There is nothing like going back to basics. There are literally hundreds of thesaurus programs online that you can use for free. Type in a few keywords and see what the thesaurus has to offer. Seriously consider the words it produces, since there are people who will use them, and you cannot ignore their traffic potential. Also, consider picking a few of the thesaurus results and running a search on them too. They will often throw up different keywords that approach your blogs subject matter from a different angle, but with relevant keywords. For example, a blog post on sex may bring up terms relating to pre-marital sex, which leads to words about religion, all of which may be relevant to your site.
5 – Bing Keywords Research
This tool gives you information that is completely born from organic research, a little like Google Trends, and unlike Google AdWords. This means that you can get an idea of what people are clicking on in the natural search results, which is very handy since it is doubtful that you will be advertising your blog on an affiliate program. The data goes back in history up to six months and the data gives no averages, which creates both surreal and realistic keyword numbers that you will have to interpret to the best of your ability. Just like Google Trends, you can narrow your search to countries or regions if you wish.
6 – Keyword Eye
Try the free version before you jump into a paid account. Its default setting is for Google co.uk, but you can set it to any country that Google is set up in. The tool is very good at setting up results in a keywords cloud-tag format, which is good for your blog tags. The ability to switch between languages is also good for adding keywords that translate across more than just one language.
7 – SEMRush
Here you can have access to a database that holds over 80 million words. Though the number seems a little too high to have been compiled into a single program, they are actually from Keyword that has been mined from online searches and automated keyword research.
These tool helps you research hidden keywords, which are keywords that webmasters put into their Meta tags but not into their web content, therefore only the search engines see them. It is not recommended that you hide your keywords, since Google states that any hidden text is going to damage your websites Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
These tools allow you to investigate long tailed keywords and research into the keywords that your competitors seem to be using. If you use the free account then you can run ten queries per day and see ten results per day. Your first exposure to the site is very user friendly because it is just a search bar. Enter a query that you feel you customers may enter and analyse the keywords to start compiling a list of keywords that will be the most beneficial to you.
