Free Keyword Research For SEO

Keyword research for SEO

is one of the most important parts of blogging to optimize your blog post for the search engine to get a better ranking.

But, most newbies write articles on their blogs without doing any keyword research.

Ignoring keyword research is one of the main reasons behind the failure of newbies.

This is because they find it a lot time-consuming or boring and do not even know how to do keyword research for SEO in the right manner.

Some newbie does their keyword research just for satisfying their soul that they have done their keyword research.

Newbies search for a keyword in a keyword research tool and they just look that this particular keyword is deriving a decent amount of traffic and they start writing their article in the hope that their article will get ranked automatically as they writing on a keyword with has a lot of search volume.

But, they don’t know they are just doing a formality to see the search volume of the keyword there are a lot of other things that should be taken into consideration in keyword research like analyzing the trend of the keyword, checking keywords of the competitor, etc.

If you also don’t know how to do keyword research for SEO then don’t worry.

In this article, I have explained everything in detail that a newbie should about keyword research.

Before diving into the Ultimate Keyword Research Guide let’s discuss some basics of keyword research.

Basics Of Keyword Research

What Is A Keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase about which the user is looking for some information on Google.

For Example, A user is looking for some information about the iPhone.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is a part of SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ).

It is a process of finding, analyzing, and using the keywords used by people to search on Google.

The main motive for doing keyword research is to optimize your website to get your articles ranked on Google for different search terms.

Why Keyword Research Is So Important For SEO?

Avoid Waste of Your Efforts

If you are writing articles without doing keyword research then you are walking in dark and just wasting your efforts.

You don’t know whether people search or not about the topic of your article.

If there is no one who is searching for what you are writing then you are just wasting your time.

So, it is better to do keyword research before writing any article whether it has any search volume or not.

Help to get your Article Ranked

Keyword Research is the thing by which your articles get ranked on Google.

Google comes to know about the niche or category of an article only on the basis of the keywords used in the article.

For example, if you searched for, “Best mobile phones” then Google will only show you the results related to mobile phones. All the top-ranking articles must have targeted the word “mobile phone” that's why Google comes to know that it has to show those results whenever a person searches for mobile phones.

If you are not targeting the right keywords in your article then your article is not going to rank for those keywords for which you are hoping.

Targeting the right keywords is a must to get ranked in the right search results.

If your article gets ranked on the wrong keyword then you will get traffic but it will increase your bounce rate because when people find your article irrelevant to their search term then they will leave your website.

Improve Your Conversion Rate

If you write an article after doing keyword research then your conversion rate will increase as you will be targeting the right audience for your website.

Helps to Concentrate Your Efforts in the Right Direction

As I have said earlier that if you write an article without doing any keyword research then you will be walking in dark.

Because in that case if you don’t know the right keywords to focus on in your article then you will not be able to get traffic on your blog.

But if you do keyword research will get to know about the easy-to-rank and profitable keywords.

By which you can divot your efforts to rank for those rankable keywords.

As now you have understood the importance of doing keyword research for SEO now let’s have a quick look at the types of keywords.

Types Of Keyword

Short tail keywords

This type of keyword has only one or two words in it.

The short tail keyword has a broader range because a short tail keyword is not a specific keyword.

One can not guess for what purpose a person is searching for that phrase on Google.

Even these keywords are very difficult to monetize because you can’t get the intent of a user to search.

Let’s understand the concept of short-tail keywords with the help of an example.

Let’s say that a person searches for the phrase, “WordPress Theme” on Google.

This keyword has a broad range because this keyword does not specify what kind of information the user is looking for.

He/she may be looking for:

What is WordPress Theme?

How to install a WordPress theme?

How to download and install a third-party theme?

How to customize a WordPress theme?

From where I can buy a WordPress theme?

Or he/she may be looking for something else.

This type of keyword has a higher monthly search volume because different people have different reasons to search for the same term or phrase.

If your target is to rank for these keywords it will increase the bounce rate of your website.

Let’s assume that by searching the term,” WordPress theme” the user is looking for How to install a WordPress theme? and your website is ranking in the top results of Google for the targeted keyword and you have written an article on how to customize a WordPress theme?

Now the user sees your website in the top results he/she clicks on your website but when he/she finds that the article is irrelevant to him then he/she will immediately click the back button and bounce back.

As more readers bounce back from your website then your ranking will start decreasing.

Therefore, you should not target this type of keyword.

Long Tail keyword

Long-tail keywords are those keywords that have more than four or more words.

These keywords are specific keywords.

Long-tail keywords have less search volume but these keywords have a high conversion rate and lower bounce rate.

Let’s understand the concept of long-tail keywords with the help of an example.

Let’s say a person search, for” Free WordPress Theme ”.

In this case, the person is a little bit specific about the search term. He/She is looking for information related to the free WordPress theme.

You can’t say this keyword is a long tail keyword because this keyword can be more specific.

Let’s take another example

A person searches for,” Free responsive WordPress theme ”.

As you can see in this case the user is more specific about his search term.

Let’s take another example

A person searches for,” Best free responsive WordPress theme for the cooking blog”.

As you can see in this case the user is very specific about his search term. He/she is looking for a free responsive WordPress theme specifically for a cooking blog.

So, in this case, if anybody is targeting this long-tail keyword his/her blog will definitely have a higher conversion rate and low bounce rate because he/she is targeting a more specific keyword.

These kinds of keywords drive less traffic but the traffic which arrives on your blog will be of good quality and have a high conversion rate.

To find long tail keywords you can use a tool Long tail pro.

You can also use Answer the Public to get long-tail keywords.

Seasonal Keywords

These are those keywords that are searched by people during a particular season and on a particular occasion.

For example, the best leather blazers, the best Christmas trees, etc.

Evergreen keywords

These are those types of keywords that are searched by people during the whole there is no effect of a season and occasion on these keywords.

For example: how to root mobile phone, how to install WordPress etc

Buyer Keywords

These are the keyword that a buyer use to search on Google.

This keyword brings higher conversion as only a person who is willing to buy something searches with buyer-oriented phrases.

For example a2hosting coupon, apple watch discount, etc

LSI Keywords

LSI keywords stand for latent semantic indexing keywords.

These keywords are closely related to your main keyword.

For Example, your main keyword is chicken.

Then LSI keywords can be boiled chicken, lemon chicken, roasted chicken, etc.

Which Type Of Keyword Should Focus On Broad Range Keywords Or Long-Tail Keywords And Why?

As I have explained above short tail keywords have a broad range but this keyword has a low conversion rate and high bounce rate.

So, therefore you should always target long-tail keyword because long-tail keyword brings better conversion and less bounce rate.

As I have said earlier this type of keyword brings less traffic but will be highly convertible.

With the help of targeting very specific keywords, a new website can easily outrank an existing website because a broad range of keywords has high traffic, high competition, and a high bounce rate.

Although long-tail keywords have less traffic, these keywords have less competition and lower bounce rates.

Now let’s have a look at the free keyword research tools available in the market.

Free Keyword Research Tool For SEO

Before I start telling you about the list of absolute free keyword tools that you can use let me tell you an important thing.

Important Note

A newbie is reluctant to spend his/her money on buying keyword research tools because they are very expensive.

I want to tell you that they are expensive because they play a very important role to help you to rank your articles on Google by targeting the right keywords.

If you are a newbie and do not have money to buy a keyword research tool then don’t worry, here in this article, I going to tell you about the free keyword research tools available in the market by which you can do keyword research in the initial days of your blogging career.

But, once you start making money then I strongly recommend you use paid keyword research tools for better and more accurate results.

If you want to do keyword research for SEO with free tools then you have to work more and have to invest your time instead of your money.

This is because if you do keyword research with paid tools(like ahref and semrush) then one paid tool is enough to do keyword research.

With the help of paid tools, you get accurate results.

The results shown by free keyword research tools are just an estimate so that's why you cannot rely on single keyword research tools you have to use more than one free keyword research tool which takes a lot of time and effort.

Now, it’s upon you whether you want to invest your money by purchasing a paid keyword research tool or you want to invest your time by using a number of free keywords research tools.

Now let’s begin with the list of free keyword research tools.

Spyfu

Spyfu is one of the free keyword research tools available in the market.

This tool has a user-friendly interface.

You can search for keywords in two different ways firstly by directly inserting targeted keywords and secondly by inserting your URL of a competitor’s website.

By inserting the URL of your competitor’s website you will be able to see the top-ranking keywords of your competitor which you can also use.

Google Trends

This is not a keyword research tool but plays a very important role to check the trend of the keywords.

This tool is very easy to use.

You just have to enter your keyword in the search bar and then you will get the trend results of that keyword in a graph format.

This is a very useful tool that lets you know about the popularity of the keyword.

This is very helpful to see whether a keyword is a seasonal keyword that is searched by people only during a particular season or whether it is a normal one.

Ubersuggest

This is a free keyword research tool( Now it started charging some money but still it is less than it feels almost free ) provided by Neil Patel who is a well know SEO expert in the world.

This is one of the best keyword tools by which you can dig deeper into your keyword research.

This tool offers you a lot of free features.

You can do your keyword research in two ways with the help of this keyword research tool.

Firstly you can directly search your targeted keyword and secondly, you can enter the URL of your competitor and then you can see the top-ranking pages and keywords of your competitor.

When searching by entering the URL of your competitor, get to know about different things like the number of organic keywords, organic monthly traffic, domain score, and the number of backlinks.

This keyword tool shows the keywords of your competitor along with the search volume, position, monthly visitors, and SEO difficulty.

Answer the public

This is a keyword tool that you can use to find out long-tail keywords on which you can write your article.

You just have to enter your targeted keyword and then you will see a lot a long tail keywords in the form of questions.

This is an amazing tool that you can also use when you do not have any idea to write a blog post then you can find out a topic for your blog post just by entering the main keyword of your niche.

Premium Keyword Tools

Semrush

The only thing that I have to say about this tool is “exact results”

It is an expensive tool but if you are earning a good bunch of money with your blog then you should definitely invest your money in this tool.

It is a perfect tool if you want to :

Do Keyword Research
Get Keyword Suggestions
Know all inbound and outbound links
Do Competitor analysis.

If you use these tools then you will get the exact ranking result of the competitor’s keywords.

This tool gives detailed information about your competitor.

If you want to make backlinks then you are going to love this tool.

With the help of this tool, you can dig deep into the backlink metrics of your competitor.

KWFinder

This keyword offers a free starter plan.

It has an economical subscription price.

It has easy to use interface.

KWFinder uses several tools like Majestic and Moz to determine the number of monthly searches for your keyword.

This tool not only helps to do keyword research for SEO but also helps to find niche ideas and keywords to work on.

Ahref

This tool was launched in 2011 for backlink analysis.

It is another popular premium keyword research tool.

Ahref offers a user-friendly interface.

It has an amazing feature of data filtering by which you can sort a list of keywords on the basis of keyword difficulty and search volume.

Ahref offers you all the features which are required to do SEO for your blog.

You can use Ahref for

Keyword research
Competitor analysis
Content Exploring

You can do an in-depth SERP analysis and check accurate backlink numbers

Long Tail Pro

This is another awesome keyword research tool.

With the help of this tool, you can find out long-tail keywords.

You can get a ton of long-tail keywords for each seed keyword by using this tool.

If you want to collect a long tail keyword then you should try this tool once.

How To Do Keyword Analysis?

Now let’s understand how to keyword analysis to find profitable and easy-to-rank keywords.

There are different factors on which keyword analysis is done.

Let’s have look at those factors one-by-one.

Popularity

The factor of finding a profitable keyword is to look for a popular keyword.

By the popularity of a keyword, I mean that enough people should be searching for it in a month.

You can the monthly search volume of a keyword by using any keyword research tool.

The search volume of keywords should be at least more than 1000.

If you are a keyword with a lesser search volume then you are not going to get any traffic.

So, make sure that your targeted keyword must have enough search volume.

Now, let’s have a look at the second factor.

Rankability

By rankability, I mean keyword difficulty.

Higher the keyword difficulty lesser the chances of getting your website ranked in the top results.

If the keyword difficulty is higher then it means only higher authority websites are ranking in the top search results.

There are different factors that are considered to find the authority of a website.

Number of Backlinks: It refers to the number of other websites that have mentioned the link of a website in their blog posts. The higher the number of backlinks higher will be the capability of a website to compete with a high-authority website.
Quality of Backlinks: It is related to the authority of the website giving the backlink. If the backlink is given by a high authority and related ( same niche ) website then it will be a quality backlink.
Domain Age: Domain age is another one of the factors of the website’s authority. You can say that the older the website’s domain higher the visibility of the website.

If you want to check the rankability of the keyword then you can check the authority of the website ranking in your keyword.

If you find that all the top-ranking websites are of higher authority then you should not target that keyword because a newer website can’t compete with a high-authority website.

Now, let’s have a look at the third factor.

Search Intent Of User

Once you have checked the popularity and rankability of a keyword then you have to check for the intent of the user to search for that term.

By search intent, I mean the reason behind the search for that particular term.

Let’s have a quick look at the four main user search intents to search for a term.

Informational Intent

The user of this type of search intent is looking for some kind of informational content.

For example, What are the benefits of doing pushups?

Navigational Intent

This type of user is searching on Google to go to a particular place on the internet. Such as Quora, Facebook, etc

Transactional Intent

This type of user is looking for a particular thing to buy on the internet.

For example, a person searches for an a2hosting coupon.

Commercial Intent

This type of user is looking for something information before buying any product.

It can be comparison content or review content.

For example, semrush v/s ahref or A2hosting review.

Once you have checked the intent of the keyword now you can understand whether your audience is looking for some information or it wants to purchase something.

Now let me tell you about the intent of keywords that you should focus on in your blog posts.

Which Type Of Intent Of Keyword Should Focus On?

There is no doubt that everyone wants to make more money, therefore, it is important to target transactional keywords to get a better conversion rate.

It is true that if you want to bring more sales then you should target transactional keywords but it is not the case that you should only target transactional keywords.

Don’t be so greedy.

You should also provide some informational content to your audience.

If you are providing every kind of information about your niche then it will increase the engagement of your audience in your blog.

Therefore, You should also write on informational keywords.

Now, let’s have a look at the step-by-step guide to do the competitor’s keyword research.

How To Do Keyword Research Of Competitors?

Before moving further, if you don’t know who is your competitor then let’s understand who is your competitor and which type of competitor you should target to outrank?

Who Is A Competitor?

A competitor is a person whose website is ranking in the Google search results in your niche.

For example, your niche is biking.

Then just search for your main keyword on Google and all the top-ranking websites will be your competitor.

Which Type Of Competitor You Should Target?

Targeting the right competitor is a must to get the results fasters.

You should neither target a high-end website nor a very newer website.

You should compete with a website that is doing reasonably well in your niche.

This is because if you target to outrank a high-end website then you will not be able to outrank them because high-end websites are very old websites with very high domain authority.

If you compete with a high-end website and even if you have written a very good quality article Google is not going to rank your article on the article of the high-end website because that website has gained the trust of Google by having a large number of backlinks.

So, that’s the reason why you should not target a high-end website to outrank.

Nor you should try to outrank a newer website because that website and yours are almost in the same situation and you can easily outrank that website if you write good-quality articles.

You should target a competitor who is doing reasonably well because if you target that kind of competitor then you can outrank that website with the average domain authority.

Also if you try to outrank that kind of website then you will automatically outrank the newer website.

Step-By-Step Guide To Do Competitor’s Keyword Research

Now that you have understood all the basics of keyword research for SEO so let's begin with the step-by-step guide to keyword Research.

Step 1

Select your main competitors using all the above-mentioned tools.

Step 2

Once you have found out your main competitor then find similar websites with the help of keyword research tools.

Step 3

Once you have made a list of competitors then shortlist your competitors, on the basis of your own criteria of domain authority and a number of backlinks.

If you have a large number of competitors then you will have a large number of keywords but also you have to do more work so that's why shortlisting is recommended.

Step 4

Once you have shortlisted your competitors then look at the keyword list of your competitor by using the keyword research tool.

Once you have downloaded the keyword list of the competitor, then open the keyword list in Microsoft Excel.

Then shortlist the keyword of each competitor using the filter option on the basis of monthly searches(more than a thousand), position (less than 25), and SEO difficulty (less than 20).

Step 5

After shortlisting the keyword then you have to check the trends of the keywords which you can find out with the help of Google Trends.

Google Trends will tell you whether people are searching for those keywords less or more these days.

If the graph of the keyword is going higher day by day then you should definitely target that keyword.

Once you find out low competitive keywords with an increasing trend then you should start writing your article on each keyword.

As you have collected your keywords now let’s understand how to use yo keywords properly.

How To Use Collected Keywords?

After collecting the keywords it’s time to use those keywords in your blog properly.

For doing SEO in a proper manner you have to place the keywords properly in your articles.

If you are starting a fresh blog then you then leté me tell you about the types of articles you have to post on your blog.

There are Two Types of articles.

Pillar Article: As pillars hold the whole building similarly you have to right pillar article for your blog. A pillar article is very detailed and lengthy articles.
Cluster Articles: These are those articles that are going to explain every sub-topic of your niche.

Now you have understood two different types of articles you have to post on your blog, therefore, let’s understand how to place your keywords in your articles to make them SEO optimized.

Do you know why I have highlighted the word “Place”?

If not then let me explain.

I mean you have to cleverly place your keywords in your articles rather than blindly putting keywords anywhere in your article.

By doing keyword stuffing your article is not going to rank what you have to do is that you have to place your keywords in the right place.

So, let’s dive into Tips for How to do keyword placement.

Use your main keyword in your H1 ( First Heading ).
Place it at the Starting of your article to immediately clear the topic of your article.
Use in one of the sub-heading
Use in the meta description of your article.
Naturally, place in one of the most important paragraphs of your article.
Use LSI keywords and synonyms for your keyword.
Keep your keyword density under 8%.
Use SEO plugins like Rankmathe or YoastSEO.

Conclusion

Keyword research is one of the most important parts of doing SEO.

It is the only thing by which you are going to get targeted traffic on your blog.

So, do deep keyword research and find profitable keywords for your blog.

If you really want to find profitable keywords then I Strongly recommend you use premium keyword tools to get better and more accurate results.

I will recommend you use semrush.

And if you have any doubts or queries related to this article then feel free and let me know in the comment section.

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