The Best SEO Keyword Research Tools in 2023

The Best SEO Keyword Research Tools in 2023

Keyword research is the most significant element of SEO to attract a large amount of traffic to your websites and social media channels. To search for the best keywords, there are many keyword research SEO tools available online that help you analyze primary and long-tail keywords for which your competitors are ranking on top.

These tools help find the most relevant keywords to optimize your website content and rank it higher in search engines. Such tools help discover, research, and analyze the correct search terms related to the queries typed by users in the search engine.

However, it is difficult to understand which keyword tool is right for you. To end your quest, we are here with the best SEO keyword research tools of 2021.

In addition, there are also some insights on what makes a great SEO keyword research tool and a comparison between free and paid Keyword Tools.

What makes a great SEO keyword research tool?

A great keyword research tool:

• Helps target the correct keywords, terms, or phrases for including in the blog content and link build-ups.
• Enables you to search for the most relevant words or phrases according to the products or services offered by your business.
• Suggests you the best keywords based on the three essential parameters - relevance, authority, and volume, that will assist you in determining which keywords would be more profitable for your website or blog.
  

Once you get hold of the ideal keywords to use in your content, you can easily finalize your content strategy plan and gain more readers onto your blog or website.

How does the keyword tool work?

Generally, a keyword finder provides you with the following data when doing your keyword research:

• Discovering or Finding New and Relevant Keywords: The first thing a keyword researching tool does is discover words, terms, and phrases based on the seed keyword that you enter. It will assist you in finding all the best possible keywords relevant to creating content for your business. Simply by entering a main word or website URL, you will be able to obtain several related keyword suggestions according to your target audience and industry.
• Researching and Prioritizing the Keywords: The next thing these tools do is research and prioritize the right keywords. They will display a proper insight into the search volume of all keywords, i.e., how frequently some specific words are searched and how the exact google searches have altered over time.
• Estimating the CPC Budget: Every individual keyword undergoes a competition score along with an estimated CPC (Cost Per Click). A suitable keyword finder will suggest CPC estimates for each keyword, which will mainly help establish your business’s advertising budget.

14 Best Keyword Research Tools 

Here’s a list of the 14 best keyword research tools for SEO: 

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is one of the best modern keyword tools, which makes finding keywords extremely easy. It helps track the search performance of your website by displaying the data rankings of used keywords.

The unique ability which makes this keyword researching tool stand out is the easy search for "Opportunity Keywords." It lists out the pages of your site that get the maximum number of clicks along with keywords that led to that traffic.

You will also be able to combine your Google Analytics accounts with Google Search Console, which will let you obtain highly comprehensive keyword data.

Google Keyword Planner

The data provided by Google Keyword Planner is acquired directly from Google, making it highly authentic. This Keyword Planner was designed explicitly for Google Advertisements. It is excellent at displaying keywords that are SEO-focused.

It comes with a unique feature called "Top of Page Bid," which exhibits the average bidding amount for every individual keyword. The higher the value, the more eminent the viewer's commercial intent.

Google Trends

Google Trends helps discover new keywords and visualizes the relative search popularity of keywords according to trends over time. This keyword planning tool can be utilized in two ways. One way is that you could look out for specific keywords and check the segment named "related queries."

The other way is that you could check the popularity growth of a keyword. It is especially required when you are confused between two keywords. You will be able to decide which keyword is trending faster based on its growing interest over time.

The special "YouTube Search" feature lets you see if an existing keyword is trending on YouTube as well.

Keywords Everywhere 

One of the popular paid keyword research tools is Keywords Everywhere. This keyword-finding tool exhibits the keyword data of the top 10 popular websites in your Chrome browser, including websites such as Amazon, eBay, and Answer the Public as well.

With this, it is no longer necessary to copy and paste the keywords separately in the Google Keyword Planner as the data shows up in the chrome browser itself.  

It has a "People also search for" feature that provides a list of relevant and related keywords people are highly searching for in the Google Search Engine.

With this, you will be able to discover keywords based on the search terms of your targeted customers.

The Moz Keyword Explorer

The Moz Keyword Explorer gives an outstanding performance in discovering "lateral" keyword ideas that come out laterally from your targeted SEO audience and generate maximum visitor traffic for your site.

Like most keyword tools, it also displays a list of relevant related searches based on your primary search term.

However, what makes it different are all the outside-the-box recommendations that can't be seen in other keyword-finding tools. It comes with two special features called "Organic CTR" and "Priority," which estimate the click expectations for all the targeted keywords and help you decide whether to choose any particular keyword or not.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a paid keyword tool with a slightly different approach than similar tools.

Rather than entering one main keyword and receiving a long list of keyword ideas, SEMrush displays the list of keywords for which your competitor websites are already ranking, making it easy to pick the right set of keywords and improve your rankings.

Using Semrush's keyword overview, you can enter a seed keyword and get a complete analysis of that keyword, including its monthly search volume data, its trend, and much more. You can also check google ads that use that keyword in PPC advertising, i.e., pay-per-click ads.

The Ahrefs Keywords Explorer 

The Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is an up-to-date enhanced keyword research tool.

It provides in-depth knowledge of every individual keyword, including search volume and top 10 sites ranking for that keyword. Along with the expected data, the tool offers a detailed keyword analysis based on clickstream data to provide unique click metrics.

It contains a feature called "Keyword Difficulty," which analyzes the difficulty level of each keyword based on the required number of backlinks needed to rank it on the first page of Google.

Soovle

Soovle is one of the top-notch free keyword research tools. It recommends keywords from multiple platforms, including popular platforms like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, and more. It helps you get an insight into the several untapped keywords that your competitors haven't touched yet, so you can get a first-mover advantage using it for your website or content campaigns. It is highly beneficial, especially when you’re working in a highly saturated niche. 

It comes with a drag and drops feature named "Saved Suggestions" for saving all your useful keywords to a downloadable CSV file.

Jaaxy 

Jaaxy is a very simple and easy-to-use paid keyword tool that quickly discovers several relevant keyword ideas within a few seconds, including those not available on other keyword tools.

It provides valuable keyword data of each keyword based on potential traffic, competition, and search volume.

It has a QSR (Quoted Search Result) feature, which displays the number of websites that intend to rank for the same keyword. The lower the number, the greater the probability of your website ranking higher.

SECockpit 

The SECockpit is a keyword research tool specially designed for SEO professionals. Like any other keyword tool, you will have to provide SECockpit with a primary keyword to receive the required keyword results list.

However, it has integrated rich features that help you get insight into search trends, competition probabilities, and estimated visitor traffic of every keyword. It has a "Filtering" feature that sorts hundreds of keywords to get the best keywords for you.

KeywordTool.io

KeywordTool.io provides a list of targeted keyword ideas. There are mainly two things that make this tool unique. One - it displays to you loads of keyword recommendations. The other- it scrutinizes, filters, and expands the results to get the best keywords.

It comes with a special "Analyze Competitors" feature, which generates a list of keywords used in your competitor's website.

KWFinder

KWFinder is a robust paid keyword research tool that is very intuitive and easy to handle.

Like Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, it also contains "Keyword Difficulty," which scores the difficulty level for ranking a keyword based on many factors, including domain authority, page authority, content quality, backlinks quality, etc.

Serpstat

Serpstat is a paid SEO keyword research software that helps to analyze content ranking on the first page for any seed keyword. It is a complete SEO tool that provides website analytics, keyword research, SERP analysis, rank tracking, backlinks analysis, and website auditing features.

It has a unique "Competitors Graph" that displays the competing websites for similar keywords or terms. It is the most pocket-friendly keyword research tool on our list.

QuestionDB 

Last but not least, QuestionDB is a free tool that discovers questions asked by netizens and produces question-focused keywords out of them. It mostly pulls out such questions from the threads of Reddit.

The questions are chosen based on popularity and are best for use in blog-type content as question keywords.

Free vs. Paid Keyword Tools: How do they compare?

Both the free and paid keyword tools are beneficial in their own ways. However, free keyword tools have certain limitations in comparison to paid keyword tools.

The amount of suggested keyword and accessible data provided by Free Keyword Tools is inferior compared to the data generated by Paid Keyword Tools. Even the database on which the Paid Keyword Tools run their programs is far more extensive than the Free Keyword Tools.

The Paid Keyword Tools also display several estimated data related to CPC, monthly search volumes, clicks, KD (Keyword Difficulty), and more.

This makes the process of searching, filtering, and selecting keywords far quicker with the help of Paid Keyword Tools.

Due to the above reasons, Paid Keyword Tools are preferred over Free Keyword Tools, especially while dealing with highly advanced content and keyword research.

Bottom Line

Though all the above-mentioned keyword research tools have their own share of benefits, one should determine their budget and analyze their brand objectives and content goals to select the best keyword research tool.

Once the best keyword research tool is selected and installed, updated regularly and used to its fullest extent under optimum conditions - you will surely reap all kinds of benefits!