10 Best Keyword Research Tools For SEO – 2024 Edition

• Save

Budget Friendly 💵

• Save

KWFinder - Keyword Research Tool

Discover profitable long-tail keywords with ease using KWFinder by Mangools – start your free trial today and unlock the potential of advanced keyword research to skyrocket your website's rankings!

Find Keywords

Here is the list of Keyword research tools listed below:

1. Semrush 
2. KWFinder
3. Keyword Insights
4. SE Ranking
5. Ahrefs 
6. Google Keyword Planner
7. AlsoAsked
8. Keyword Surfer
9. Serpstat
10. Google Trends

Keywords are one of the most critical and important parts of SEO.

The basic foundation of SEO is keyword research.

Afterward, other factors like on-page optimization, writing SEO friendly content, a good UX, content that satisfies user intent, and a few other ranking factors help you to achieve your website goal.

Many companies invest thousands of dollars to pay for keyword research to get such a targeted list of keywords.

But you don’t need to do that. Just follow this guide…

The keywords you choose to focus on for your digital marketing efforts are critical to your website’s organic ranking. It does not matter. If you are running a SaaS business or an e-commerce business, you still need to use keyword generator software that follows the modern standard (AI era) and helps you generate a list of highly targeted keywords for your business.

Choosing the right keywords isn’t always easy or intuitive and you need a lot of data to know whether a given keyword will work for you. Also, you need to keep your domain authority and topical authority in mind when picking the right keyword for your business.

If you are completely new to keyword research tools and the process of keyword research, here are some guides from the past that will help you understand the basics:

• Importance of Keywords in SEO
• Google Keyword Planner guide

Fortunately, there are many keyword generator tools available that can help you figure out which keywords work best for your overall web strategy.

There are mostly two types of Keyword research tools:

1. Basic Keyword research: Use the seed Keyword to find profitable Keywords
2. Competitor-based Keyword research: Find proven keywords that are helping other sites to drive traffic.

Personally, I find Competitor based Keyword research to be more effective as the purpose of Keyword research is to find profitable Keywords.

What could be more profitable than something that is already working for someone?

All you need to do after that is to create a page targeting that profitable keyword & reap the benefit of keyword research.

In this exclusive guide, I have covered both types of Keyword generator tools.

Most of these keyword research tools are paid, and only a few are free.

Best Keyword Research Tools: 2024 edition

1. Semrush <14-Day Free Trial (worth $199)>

“What is the easiest keyword research tool for SEO’s?”

The answer:

• Semrush

Semrush is not a typical keyword research tool; it offers so much more than just researching keywords.

It lets you perform keyword research in multiple ways:

For example:

• Find keywords using a Seed Keyword
• Find Keywords driving traffic to your competitors
• Keyword gap analysis

The simplest one that I like is being able to find keywords based on a URL. All you need to do is, add a URL (or your competitor’s URL) and it will show you all of the keywords that are ranking for that page or for the entire website.

Along with Keyword data, you would be seeing the monthly search volume, Keyword difficulty, and CPC for PPC.

• Save

Keyword suggestions is another handy feature of Semrush, where is shows “Keyword variations” and “Related keywords”. This helps you discover more search terms that you could target.

• Save

This makes it easier for you to find short-tail and long-tail keywords that you can target and beat your competition. The keyword difficulty score feature will help you identify low-hanging fruits.

 You can get in-depth keyword data such as:

• Keyword traffic volume
• Keyword difficulty score
• Search engine reports
• Adsense CPC
• and so many other details that you need to do Keyword research properly.

You also have an option to sort the keyword list based on keyword difficulty score, this helps you find the low-competition keywords, and with one click you can add them to Keyword Manager for content production.

• Save

It also offers features like:

• Keyword manager: This lets you add keywords to a list and see the updated data. It helps in better managing keywords when you are researching for profitable keywords.
• Keyword difficulty tool: To check the keyword difficulty score.
• Keyword Clustering – This is a new feature Semrush added recently. Using this tool, you can quickly create keyword clusters, and also attain topical authority.

• Save

Semrush is highly recommended and the #1 keyword research tool.

• You can read a detailed review of Semrush here.

2. KW finder

• Save

If you are looking for one tool that is entirely dedicated to Keyword research only, KWFinder is your best bet. They are new in the market, yet they are one of the fastest-growing SEO tool companies.

KWFinder helps you get the Keyword that will help you drive highly targeted traffic. Using the question-based Keyword research option you can quickly find long-tail keywords that are related to problem-solving. It’s a no-brainer that problem-solving content helps us get more targeted traffic & conversion.

• Save

KWFinder offers both free & paid plans. For most users, the basic plan is the best.

However, use the 10-day free trial account to see the effectiveness of the KWFinder keyword research app.

3. Keyword Insights (Keyword research + Clustering)

• Save

If you have been into SEO for a while, you might know that Keyword research is not only about finding profitable keywords. You also need to create relations between different keyword using a technique called Clustering, and you should be following the hub and spoke model to attain the topical authority.

This new entrant, called Keyword Insights is a one-stop solution for pro SEOs to do everything they need to do for researching keywords. With Keyword Insights, you could do the following :

• Research keywords
• Cluster keywords
• Export keywords and get a report for the hub & spoke model for your researched topic
• Create a content brief and send the brief to your writer
• Content optimization using real-time SEO data

Depending upon your needs, you can use any of the above features. Since I already have a keyword research tool called Semrush, I typically use Keywordinsights for keyword clustering and generate a report for hub and spoke content strategy. Read Keyword Insights review.

4. SE Ranking (Budget-friendly Keyword research tool)

• Save

If you are looking for an alternative to Semrush and Ahrefs for Keyword research, you are in luck today – Meet SE Ranking tool.

SE Ranking offers everything you might expect from a modern Keyword research tool, and it also offers extras that you will not find in popular tools like Semrush or Ahrefs.

What are those features?

Let’s have a look.

With SR Ranking tool, you can do the following :

• Single keyword research
• Bulk keyword research
• Keyword grouping (Clustering)
• Find Keyword difficulty score
• Keyword search volume
• Global volume for a keyword (Helps in gauging the traffic estimation)
• Keyword manager
• Historical data

• Save

And once you are done identifying keywords you wish to rank for, you can use the SE Ranking Content marketing tool to write and optimise the content.

SE Ranking offers all the features you need, from content research to content production. They offer multiple plans, which is ideal for individuals, freelancer SEOs, and agencies. As an agency, you will find premium support from the SE Ranking team to help you migrate or get started with them.

Overall, if you are on a budget and looking to start fresh, SE Ranking has got you covered.

5. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool

Ahrefs is one of the most popular keyword tools out there.

What I really like about them is extensive detail, including the keyword difficulty. Ahrefs uses clickstream data also to show how many clicks you will get from the search engine. You can use the Keyword generator tool to generate ideas for Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, and other search engines.

This is very useful after knowledge graph integration, as many keywords may have huge traffic but they hardly get any clicks from the search engine. The reason is, that they get answers directly from the Google search result. An example of one such query is: “birthdate of any celebrity.”

• Save

Another thing that makes Ahrefs Keyword research tool stand out is the great UI & the amount of data it provides. There are many more features offered by Ahrefs, such as Backlink analysis and SEO site audit, to name a few. You can read a detailed review of Ahrefs here.

You can also create a list of keywords to target directly from the Ahrefs dashboard. You don’t need to use Excel & this is a huge time-saving.

6. Google Keyword Planner <Free>

• Save

The Google Keyword Planner tool is one of the most used and popular keyword research tools out there.

The only reason for it being so popular is it’s free and is directly integrated with Google AdWords.

To start using this tool you need to have an AdWords account (which you can create one for free).

• Features: The biggest feature of the Keyword Planner tool is the deep information it offers on Google (the largest search engine).
• Limitations: In some ways, that’s also a limitation. If you want to know how your site or a given keyword is doing on other search engines, you won’t get it here.
• Pricing: Free to use.

The Keyword Planner tool is a good, basic tool for the early stages of a website’s SEO.

This is my favorite free tool, but if you need a more detailed and competitive analysis, I would recommend going for one of the advanced tools that I have listed in this Keyword research tools resource.

7. Also Asked: People Also Ask keyword research tool

• Save

AlsoAsked increases the breadth of topical research. Using this tool, you can discover a ton of people who also ask questions that are related to your main keyword. These questions could be further used to create a new post/page for your business or you can use this as FAQ to improve your content.

This is a freemium “People also ask” keyword research tool, where you could get free research every day, or you could pay to buy credits for more research.

8. Keyword Surfer by SurferSEO

• Save

Keyword Surfer is a Chrome extension that lets you see the keyword volume and keyword CPC right on the SERP page. This is a free keyword research Chrome extension that is brought to you by SurferSEO, which is an SEO content optimization tool.

It lets you take advantage of the auto-complete feature of Google Search to discover new search queries. As you can see the monthly traffic volume and related keywords data on the SERP page, it gets easier to create the list of keywords for your project.

For your content marketing effort, this free tool could be a great addition to other more feature-rich tools.

This extension also shows more keyword ideas based on your search and enables you to discover more profitable keywords.

9. Serpstat

Serpstat is another comprehensive keyword research tool that I discovered recently. They have done some really good work in helping us identify winning keywords.

The Serpstat keyword tool gives you the following details:

• Search volume
• Competition
• CPC
• Keyword difficulty score

You have the option to search in Google.com based on the country or also in the Yandex search engine. The Keyword trends section helps you to understand how the keyword search trend has been.

A detailed keyword difficulty score section shows the top 10 web pages that have taken ranking for the keyword, along with details like page rank, external backlinks, and referring domains. This type of data is very useful when you need to evaluate if you can rank them for a specific keyword or not.

For those who are in PPC, the Serpstat keyword research page also shows which all domains are advertising for your target keyword in Serpstat the search and what kind of ads they are running. Something that is uncommon in this list of best tools of Keyword research.

Small businesses use Serpstat to research keywords, build new links, and develop a strategic SEO platform.

• Pricing: Serpstat includes free data just for registration.

Monthly pricing is $19 per month.

I would not recommend you pick up all of the tools listed above, but instead, stick to one or two Keyword research software and get used to its system.

If you have been using the Google Keyword Planner tool for a while, you have a good basis for getting started with any of the paid and professional tools listed here.  Take a look at some of these tools and decide which works best for your business strategy.

10. Bonus: Google Trends

• Save

Google Trends is a free keyword research tool that offers great data of data directly from Google. You can trust all the information such as keyword popularity, Interest by region, and related queries.

You can also compare two or more search queries to see the traffic trend. This is the only tool that lets you see the keyword popularity in different countries.

Once you know in which region/country your target keyword is popular, you can use other keyword research tools to measure the keyword search volume. Overall, this should be part of your keyword strategy as a free keyword tool.

My recommendations:

• If you are looking for an easy yet brilliant solution, go for Semrush.
• If you are researching keywords for micro-niche sites, use KWFinder

Whatever you choose, use these SEO keyword generator tools to supercharge your website’s organic traffic.

Here are some of the top FAQs related to this topic:

How should you use a keyword research tool in an organization?

Typically your SEO guy or your content strategist should be using the tool to mine and generate new profitable SEO keywords. However, since these tools are easy to use, and you know your business well, you can consider using these tools yourself.

Free tool vs. paid tool: Which KW tool should one consider?

Free KW tools give limited data and do not paint the true picture. If you are serious about your business growth, you should pick one of the paid tools, and see the benefit yourself. Most of these paid KW research tools offer 7-14 days of a free trial, which is good enough for you to try out before you spend money on them.

How do I check the traffic for a keyword?

Using any of these keyword tools, you can check the traffic of any keyword in any geographic location. Here is a quick guide for you to check the traffic of a keyword using the Semrush tool.
Login to your Semrush account
Click on keyword overview under keyword research
Add your keyword and select the location
Hit search and it would show you the keyword traffic for your target keyword
(See the screenshot for better understanding)

• Save

What is the best keyword research technique in SEO

There are many techniques for keyword research, and in my opinion, “Keyword gap analysis” is perhaps the best technique for researching keywords in SEO.

For more on SEO, check out:

• Keyword research Guide for beginners
• On-Page SEO Techniques To Rank On First Page: 2024 Edition

Are you using one of the keyword research tools from the above list? How has your experience been so far? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Did you find this guide useful? Share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!

• Save