Keyword Lookup Tools

A Beginner’s Guide To Free Keyword Research Tools

Keyword lookup tools, whether free or paid, are a must have if you are a blogger. Tools are a necessity in any business and blogging is no different. In this post, we will examine some free keyword research tools for beginners and discuss the importance of doing keyword research when writing a blog post.

First, let’s go over a few terms but if you’re in a hurry, check out our Table Of Contents so you can quickly navigate to any section.

What Are Keywords?

A keyword is a specific word, a set of words, phrases or terms that are entered into search engines by users when they are doing a query. Ideally, when Bloggers write content, they want to optimize it for keywords relating to their topic or niche. In doing so, their content or blog post will be picked up by search engines when users are searching for information. These users will then be directed to the blog posts that match their inquiries, resulting in traffic for Bloggers.

Enough can’t be said about the importance of keyword research. 

Why Do Keyword Research?

It is really important to do proper keyword research before writing your blog posts to identify topics that users are searching for. You and your ai can spend quite a bit of time writing and optimizing a post with beautiful images as well as priceless, actionable tips but then no one reads it.

Why?

Your post will not do well in a Google search if you’ve chosen highly competitive keywords that are difficult to rank for or no keywords at all. Get familiar with the words your audience is using and optimize your content with those words so your pages will show up in their search results. If your website is fairly new like mine or has a low domain authority with no backlinks then you must choose low competition keywords. You don’t want your awesome blog post to end up on page 5 of Google. 

Does anyone even go to page 3 let alone page 5 on a Google search? 

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are priceless gems that all Bloggers crave.  When other website owners find your content engaging and informative, they may be inclined to give up a “backlink” by referring to your site via a link from their site. Your website authority ranking will increase as you accumulate backlinks.

Lori Ballen, www.loriballen.com has an awesome explanation of the importance of using Long-tail keywords. 

 Enter Long-Tail Keywords

For us newbie sites, it is best to pick long-tail keywords because they are easier to rank for.

Doing paid ads to increase traffic might not yet be in a beginner’s budget.

Google will give your website more exposure if you have backlinks. Writing valuable content which target low competition, long-tail keywords will help your ranking and domain authority.

What Is A Long-tail Keyword? 

These keywords are long as their name suggests, they get fewer searches and are less competitive than shorter or single word keywords. All these traits make them easier to rank for!

I didn’t quite get the importance of this at first, so I used to choose any popular keyword I liked for my blogs in previous websites and ran with it.

Don’t make that newbie mistake!

If you are a visual creature like me, I’ll break it down so you’ll grasp it quicker than I did.

Observe these 2 keywords:

1st Keyword:  “make money” 

 2nd Keyword: “best ways for stay at home moms to make money”

Wow, that second keyword was a mouthful, but it is a valid keyword, quite long and it is being searched. Both keyword choices are worded differently but they are both talking about the same thing:

     making money

Albeit the second one is longer and more specific. We can all agree that the first keyword will be heavily blogged about and researched. It is shorter and highly competitive so it would be wise to leave it alone.

As a new Blogger with a new website:

Do not waste your time writing articles with keywords that are impossible to rank for!!!

Some keyword tools refer to this as “KD” meaning Keyword Difficulty. It is given a rating from 0 to 100, so the lower the better. It basically denotes how hard it would be to rank for a keyword. Some tools like Ubersuggest call it “SD” meaning Search Difficulty. Again, you’ll want to keep this rating as low as possible preferably under 50. If you don’t keep this metric low, you’ll be competing against the big top dog sites and they will chew you up and spit you out towards the back of the line... in this case, maybe towards the last page in a Google search 😞

Go for a less popular, less researched keyword (typically called a long-tail keyword) and you’ll have a better chance of ranking for it and appearing on page 1 of Google.

 Six figure Affiliate Marketer and realtor Lori Ballen explains keyword research best in many of her Youtube videos.  Take a moment to watch and learn from her. 

When doing your keyword research, enter the keyword into the search bar of your keyword lookup tool and make a note of the keyword suggestions your tool will give you as well. If you don’t have such a tool, no worries!

We are here for beginners!

Free Keyword Lookup Tools

So before we start suggesting name brand premium tools, let’s keep it really simple initially folks and check out a tried and true completely free tool we all know and love assuming that you don’t even know what keywords to pick, where to start or how important keywords are. 

• Enter Google

Yes indeed, all roads lead to Google because Google might be just the tool you need to get started. Google has a search feature called Google Autocomplete. It will attempt to predict what you are looking for while you are typing in your question during your search. For example, you’d like to know, what time is it in New York. Before you’ve finished typing in your question, Google will attempt to predict the location you are questioning!

In the example above,  I’ve only typed,  “what time is it in” but look at all the choices Google has given.  Yes, New York is one of them.  If the prediction is correct, there’s no need to continue typing,  You can scroll to and select the result that suits you. 

The same prediction applies to keyword research. Let’s say hypothetically you’d like to write about making money. Without even downloading and signing up for keyword tools just yet, type “make money” into Google’s search field and see what she thinks.

Yes, I’m so sure  G o o g l e  is female 😉 

As you can see, just those 2 words, make money, generated a laundry list of phrases and they are all keywords.

          FREE KEYWORDS!!!      

Make note of them. Pick a free tool below to help you decide which keyword to select and blog about based on its degree of difficulty we previously mentioned. Free tools will also give you additional keyword ideas.

Even though Google gave you a long list, don’t just pick one and start writing. You must make sure to pick a low competition, long-tail keyword if your site has a low domain authority. For help in doing so, pick a free keyword research tool from the list below.

• Ahrefs 

This keyword generator can give you up to 150 keyword ideas. Ahrefs has a selection of free SEO tools that will truly amaze you.  The free ones are more limited but they are immensely valuable to a new Blogger just starting out with SEO. That’s not all Ahrefs will do… how about a free meta description generator, a free AI grammar checker, sentence rewriter, reworder, paraphraser, blog title generator and so much more. Check out Ahref’s freebies today and you’ll be glad you found this free tool until you can afford a premium plan.

• SemRush

 You name it and Semrush can do it. The keyword overview tool and the Keyword magic tool with Semrush are free to use. You can get 10 free keyword searches per day. Get help with backlinks, link building, rank tracking, site audits, social media, competitor analysis and so much more.  Get their free trial today.

• Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer Extension is free and has over 600,000 users. You can get keyword suggestions and analyze results.  It is available for anyone to use. Click here to add their FREE chrome extension.

• Google Keyword Planner

 This tool is free to use within Google Ads. It’s great for finding keywords related to your business or to your main keyword that you may not have thought about before.

• Ubersuggest  

 Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that will generate new keyword ideas. It will allow 3 keyword searches per day FOR FREE. You can add one project and track up to 25 keywords. If also freely suggests keywords and analyzes your competitors’ sites as well as your own.

• Keyword Tool Dominator

Find the perfect keyword using keyword tool dominator. Whether you need keywords for Google, Etsy or YouTube this tool rocks. 

I’ve said this many times and I have to say it again, as beginners:

“Free Is Your Friend”

…until you can afford to pay for premium plans.

As you can see, there are several free keyword research tools available to you. Don’t start paying for too many tools or services all at once until you’ve started to earn income. Many premium plans may have a free plan as well or a free trial. Take advantage of free plans and free trial periods to  familiarize yourself with the tool.  This will help you to decide which tool to ultimately invest in. When money starts coming in, you would do well to upgrade to a paid plan such as an affordable one with SEMrush, Ahrefs, UberSuggest or one of your choice.

I have a lifetime plan with Ubersuggest. They do not currently have an affiliate program.  

Check Posts Having Your Keyword

 If time permits, take a peek at what other content creators (your competitors) have written using the keyword YOU chose and make your article or blog post better.

Yes, better.

If your competitor is ranking really well for a keyword you wanted to blog about because you are knowledgeable about it then research a longer keyword with low competition from their focus keyphrase. Then you and your AI tool can create the best blog post with great content, images, internal links snd SEO optimization. The goal is to outrank everyone else for that keyword variation.  Never ever plagiarize content from other creators.

How do you find blog posts that have used the same keywords that you’d like to blog about?

Finding Posts With Your Keywords  

In the Google search bar enter the following:

sites:google.com/your keyword

Using the keyword:

“sell your gold“

it looks like this:

 sites:google.com/sell your gold

You’ve Chosen A Long-tail Keyword

 Now what?

You’ve chosen a long-tail, low competition keyword, so what’s next? You’re ready to play with your free ai writing tools and create great content. Or you can write your own content. 

Finally, Optimize Your Blog Post

Whether you’ve written your blog post yourself, hired a writer, used an ai writing tool to do it or a combination of all the above, be sure to add in your keyword and variations of it but do not overdo it or keyword stuff.

If you use WordPress, Yoast is a great plugin for assistance.

It will give you a field where you can enter your “focus keyphrase” that you’d like your post to rank for.

Yoast will give you many SEO  tips such as: 

• The title of the blog post should have your keyword. 
• Yoast will instruct you to add the keyword in the first paragraph of your blog post.
• The body of your blog post should have your keyword and variations of it dispersed throughout but not overdone. 
• Yoast will make sure you haven’t overused or underused your keyword.
• A couple Headings within your post should have the featured keyword. Use your H1 to H4 tags so your headings can stand out and make sure they’re bold. 
• The Meta description needs to have your keyword.
• The images in your blog post, including the featured image should be keyword rich.
• The alt text descriptions should have relevant keywords as well. 

Keyword Cannibalization

According to Yoast, using the exact same keyword in multiple blog posts is called keyword cannibalization. This should be avoided so your posts won’t compete against each other. However, it is perfectly fine to use variations of the keyword across several blog posts.

Do The Same Rules Apply To Pinterest?

Pinterest has a mind of her own.

Yup, she’s female too.

Pinterest has its own SEO and keyword research procedures.

Read our post on pinterest keywords, how to find them and where to place them throughout your pinterest account.

Bonus Tip

Go through your old blog posts that are not ranking for their current keywords and update them with a low competition, long-tail keyword.

The Wrap Up

So there you have it, information on keyword lookup using free keyword research tools. Remember to also research pinterest keywords on their platform and the ideal locations where these keywords should be placed. The importance of keyword research can’t be overstated.

Best wishes on your journey with free keyword research tools!

We update our posts regularly with new information so remember to bookmark, save, revisit and follow us on Pinterest please. 

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