Freemium keyword research tools for SEO analysis
A few of the premium paid websites offer free tools for limited use. You get the same outstanding services provided by the premium services for a limited number of searches or fewer features. Even so, they are comprehensive free keyword research tools.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
Ahrefs Keyword Generator is one of the free tools offered by Ahrefs, which is a popular paid service. Enter any target keyword or phrase, and it will pull the top 100 keyword ideas from its database of over 8 billion keywords from more than 170 countries.
For each keyword phrase, the Keyword Generator displays:
- Search volume
- Keyword difficulty from 1 to 100
- How recently this result was updated
- A list of questions related to your search term
You can use this keyword research tool to identify long-tail keywords, target less competitive phrases, and isolate your search using geographic location or search engine.
It allows you to export your data by downloading your list of results. In addition to the Keyword Generator that pulls from Google, Ahrefs also has free Bing, YouTube, and Amazon tools.
While some freemium services include the SERP results inside the keyword search tool, Ahrefs provides their free SERP service on a separate page.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator is an efficient and valuable free tool that allows you to do unlimited searches without creating an account. However, unlike other tools, it does not allow you to download your results. And, because you don’t create an account with the free service, you have to prove you’re not a robot with every new search.
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool is one of several free tools offered by SEO giant Semrush. To access their free tools, create an account and select Skip Trial. You can always sign up for the paid service down the road if you’d like.
The Keyword Magic Tool gives you access to more than 20 billion keywords from over 120 geographical databases.
Free reports include:
- Monthly search volume
- Competitive density (competition among paid advertisers)
- Keyword difficulty (how difficult it would be to rank in Google’s top 20)
The Keyword Magic Tool also has some helpful sorting and organizing features. It allows you to sort keywords into topic-specific subgroups, apply smart filters to narrow or expand your search, and quickly export your findings. You can see related keywords by topic and semantically related keywords or by keywords with similar phrasing.
The free account limits you to 10 searches a day across all the complementary tools provided by Semrush.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest provides a wealth of information with its free version. When you enter a search term, it displays the search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and CPC.
Immediately beneath that display, it identifies the number of backlinks you would need to rank on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase.
As you scroll down, you can view lists of keyword ideas and page content ideas.
The list of page content ideas displays related blog titles. At a glance, you can see how many people click on and share each article. You can export most of your data reports to CSV to save and sort. Ubersuggest provides a free Chrome extension to see data right on the SERP easily.
The free version limits your use to a single website and 3 keyword searches per day.
Moz Keyword Explorer
Moz Keyword Explorer is an attractive and well-laid-out keyword research tool. You can see monthly volume, organic difficulty, organic click-through rate (CTR), and a priority score for each search term.
The organic CTR displays how many people who use the term follow through and click on one of the results. The priority score aggregates the difficulty, opportunity, and volume to show you in a simple score how likely you are to rank for that keyword phrase.
Keyword Explorer delivers a long list of keyword suggestions for each term, with monthly search volume and relevancy.
The SERP analysis, also included with the free search results, gives you 10 specific pages that rank for your target keyword. You can see their title, URL, page authority, domain authority, number of backlinks to the page, and the number of backlinks to the root domain. It’s easy to download results into a spreadsheet.
Moz provides an excellent service. The downside is the free account limits you to 10 queries a month.
