When you begin your SEO journey, regardless if it’s for your startup or an existing business, keyword research should be top of mind. In 2024, there are a ton of free tools that stand out as they help generate and analyze keywords with ease. Here’s a closer look at the top free keyword research tools of 2024, so far…
If you’re ever stuck on content, AnswerThePublic is probably the best place you can start. The platform leverages Google’s autocomplete data to generate a map of questions and phrases that people are actively searching for. This is useful for discovering some of those hidden long-tail keywords and understanding the types of queries your audience might have or be interested in.
Yeah, you might hate us for this one, but any AI-powered tool like ChatGPT can actually help you generate seed keyword ideas by analyzing current trends and patterns in search data. ChatGPT is useful for the brainstorming stage of keyword research. It can also help you to expand upon the current list of keywords you already have in mind.
Google Gemini is also an AI-powered tool that helps users understand search intents, providing a deeper insight into what users are searching for when entering specific queries. While it isn’t the same usefulness as ChatGPT, Google Gemini can be useful for crafting content that aligns closely with user intent.
We’re all in a race to rank on Google, right? Well then why wouldn’t we use the full suite of Google’s keyword tools? Google Keyword Planner is a classic tool that offers keyword ideas directly from Google’s database. It’s been shown to help find related keywords and understanding search volumes, intents, and more. However, it requires a Google Ads account for full-access.
Another tool would be Google Search Console (GSC). While Google Keyword Planner takes similar keywords and generates more, GSC provides data on the top 1,000 keywords your website ranks for, along with their average positions, click-through rates, and impressions. While it isn’t the best tool for the initial stage of keyword research, this tool provides insight into your site’s performance. When you look to revamp the SEO or change directions, GSC will help to uncover new opportunities for optimization.
The final tool in the suite (at least what we will be discussion) is Google Trends. Google Trends analyzes the most popular search queries and ranks them on popularity over time, allowing you to identify keyword trends. This has been found to be a very effective solution for ecommerce businesses. Not only for SEO, but also for developing products (i.e., during Covid, we know cleaning products and disinfectants were going nuts in the search engine. E-commerce businesses would then take the trend and begin to stock these items). Outside of just products, you can capitalize on trending topics and align your content strategy with current interests.
Getting featured in the SERPs is a game changer for your business. Using SERP checker, you can evaluate the traffic potential of your keywords by cross-analyzing the top-ranking pages. This tool will help you to understand the competitiveness of keyword and whether or not it’s worth targeting based on authority, relevance, and other top results.
One of the metrics we focus on with keywords is the Keyword Difficulty (KD). The Keyword Difficulty Checker (can be found on SEMRush) estimates how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. Understanding the competition level of a keyword, you’ll be able to better push your resources, efforts, and focus onto keywords that offer a reasonable chance of ranking.
When starting, free tools are probably the best for value. However, investing in the paid version of free tools can give more data and features which can push your keyword research and SEO strategy to new heights. Each of the free tools provided give their own special insights into how you can discover new keywords, understand search intent, and optimize your content effectively.