In last week’s post (How to distinguish between great and useless keywords) I wrote about the importance of keyword research in identifying useful keywords. This week I want to suggest some free non-Google resources that can help you with keyword research that you may not be aware of.

Seed Keywords

I’ll start with an unusual tool that approaches keyword research from a different angle.

One way to discover keywords your potential customers may be typing into Google is to ask them. Seed keywords is a tool you can use to generate keyword ideas from your target audience.

You create a question like “If you were looking for ideas to solve problem X, what would you search for?” Seed Keywords then creates a unique URL that you can direct people to. People see your question and enter the keyword phrases they would use. Seed Keywords then organises these into a list so you can view the results for each keyword or download the data in CSV format.

Wordtracker

This tool gives you the top 10 keywords with the highest search volume, competition for those words and the Key Efficiencty Index, which is based on the relation between search volume and competition. If you want to do further research there is a risk-free 7 day trial for one of three packages they offer.

Keyword Discovery

This tool compiles data from a number of tool bar browsers and over 200 search engines. It generates a list of the top 100 keyword phrases for the keyword you enter and the search volume for each suggested phrase over the last 12 months. You have to subscribe if you want to see more results.

Wordstream

This keyword research tool allows 30 free searches and returns thousands of keyword suggestions listed according to their relative search frequency. Once you have the results you can filter out phrases that contain unwanted keywords. Your final keyword list can then be emailed and downloaded in CSV format.

Keyword IO

Choose which Google version (i.e. based in which country) you want to use and the language then enter a search term. This keyword tool then generates hundreds of long-tail keyword suggestions from your single search term. Highlight the keywords you want to focus on and use a copy button in the bottom right of the screen that lets you copy to a clipboard.

If you want keyword search volumes, CPC, or competition stats you can subscribe. Alternatively use the clipboard feature to paste the keywords into Google Planner or something similar.

Niche Laboratory

Enter a search term and this free tool generates a report. This includes a list of keywords, a list of LSI keyword phrases associated with the niche linked to your search term, a phrase usage chart and a keyword tag cloud. There is also a list of top ranking websites for the search term, supplied from Bing with their title tags, meta descriptions, and a website competition matrix which gives you an idea of how much effort the competition for the search term have put into SEO and social sharing. There is also a bank of related images, lists of products, niche forums, and related items from Google News. All information that might be useful if you are doing keyword research to establish whether it is worth entering a new niche.

As I mentioned at the start of this post creating high quality content is important, but neglecting keyword research will deny you the chance of more search engine traffic. I hope you find the above list helpful. Please add any suggestions of your own in the comments below.