20 best FREE keyword research tools to use

Hi I’m Praneeth Kumar.

In this blog post you will learn 20 best free keyword research tools.

After reading this ultimate guide you don’t have to worry about which keyword tools.

You should be using to do keyword research for absolutely free of cost. The tools mentioned in this list are either totally free or have freemium plans you can use.

So without further ado let’s get started.

Here is a 30000 foot view of the blog post.

20 best free keyword research tools in 2021.

Let’s dive right in.

  1. Google.

Yes you read it right Google is the best keyword research tool you can use for SEO purposes.

Whenever you are searching for anything in Google you will get an amazing list of auto suggestions in Google like this,

free keyword research tools

In most cases these are amazing long tail keyword ideas that you can use to target in your blog posts.

Also in SERPs of Google, you can find amazing long tail keyword ideas and topics for your blog from different sections of the page like people also ask

free keyword research tools

and search related to the section.

free keyword research tools

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you get all this data right from Google and because you are trying to rank in Google you know exactly what the people are actively searching for in Google itself.

You get the data right from Google and the keyword suggestions in Google are the keywords that people are mostly searching for in it.

That is awesome.

This is exactly how I do keyword research for my blog posts and you can read my ultimate guide on how to do keyword research using this method.

  1. Google trends.

This is another free tool of Google that you can use to find the keyword Trend and popularity over a period of time and location.

You can use this tool to identify the trend of any topic in different locations worldwide and different time periods so that you can decide whether or not you should target the topic and keyword for your blog post or not.

For example search for anything like Digital marketing.

free keyword research tools

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that when you do to find any keyword trend of any topic in this tool you will also get related queries that also have a lot of search volume in Google when you scroll down in the tool.

For example if I search digital marketing in this tool I can find related queries like this,

free keyword research tools

Using this tool you can easily identify the trend of any topic and this tool can help you a lot in finding the right topic for your blog post.

  1. Keyword planner.

Google keyword planner is one of the top tools whenever people think about free keyword research.

It is also for a good reason.

Most keyword tools we know actually scrape data from keyword planner only so why not use it directly instead of using a third party source.

Even though this tool is designed for PPC marketing, you can use this tool to find amazing keyword ideas coming straight from Google itself.

There are two ways you can find keyword ideas by either entering the seed keyword or entering the target website name and URL to find the keyword using this tool.

free keyword research tools

You can find amazing keyword ideas in this tool.

free keyword research tools

My favorite thing:

I like to see the top of page bid of the keywords which is how much advertisers are willingly to pay for that keyword traffic,

it is cpc value and more value means the keyword is more important and can lead to sales and money because it has some commercial intent.

  1. Answer the public.

Most free keyword research tools find and show keyword ideas mostly from Google keyword planner but Answer the public is quite different and a better keyword research tool than other tools.

Answer the public brings keyword ideas and questions that people are searching for related to your keyword from different places like forums, social media and search engines apart from keyword planner.

payment-method

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is the way keyword ideas are organised.

free keyword research tools

You can find amazing keyword ideas divided in different categories like,

You can find amazing question keywords, comparison keywords, and keywords divided in alphabetical order.

You can also download all the keywords in a CSV copy to your desktop.

free keyword research tools

This is a freemium keyword tool and you can use this tool to search two searches per day for free.

  1. Ubersuggest.

This is a freemium SEO tool by Neil Patel.

Using this tool you can do keyword research just like using any other premium SEO tools.

You can find the keywords, their search volume, keyword difficulty, cost per click and many other important metrics.

free keyword research tools

You can also find an amazing list of lots of Keyword ideas and different variations of those keywords in question forms and comparisons, prepositions, etc.

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you get lots of keywords in different forms like, prepositions, comparisons, questions, you can also filter them as per the difficulty and volume metrics.

In the free version of this tool you can search up to three searches for free everyday with limited data access.

This is by far one of the best and complete FREE keyword research tools especially for beginners.

  1. Exploding topics.

We all bloggers want to target high volume keywords so that we can drive lots of traffic to our website from search engines and

social media but finding high volume keywords from the keyword tools is quite difficult because most other bloggers also use the same tools to do keyword research and most keywords are already very competitive when there is high volume.

How about going the other way around and targeting keywords related to topics which will have high popularity and relatively less competition.

Thanks to the exploding topics freemium tool we can do that.

It is like Google trends, but this tool will give us an idea on which topic will get popular and trend in the future if it becomes a trending topic.

How cool is that!

They say, Exploding Topics analyzes millions of searches, conversations and mentions across the internet. And

find trends before they’re trends. Our tech-spotting algorithm identifies under-the-radar industries, products, and categories… months or years before they take off.

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you can filter down the topics in different time periods and categories like this,

free keyword research tools

You can then filter down the results like this,

free keyword research tools

You can later enter in your favourite keyword tools to find long tail keywords related to that keyword and that way you can get more traffic mostly with less competition.

Cool!

  1. Quora.

We all know this, Quora is one of the largest qna website.

It is like a social media website where people ask questions, answer them or discuss a lot of things under the sun from pants to Pokémon.

As a matter of fact this platform has over 300 million active users worldwide.

You can use this platform to find amazing keyword ideas for any blogging topic.

Here is how you can do it.

Visit Quora and search for anything like, for example, blogging in search and enter.

free keyword research tools

These are an amazing list of Keyword ideas which you can target in your blog posts.

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you can find keyword ideas and topics that people are actually searching for apart from Google.

Look, over 15% of keywords that get searched on Google are brand new and have never been searched before.

Using this platform, you can find all the keywords that people use in order to find what they are looking for exactly,

you can understand people’s questions better, their problems and their pain points from questions in Quora so that you can create better content that not only solves the problem but

also helps you build a good relationship and connection with them at a deeper level and build a trust and credibility.

You can also find amazing low competition keywords ideas on topics which you can target in your blog post because

those are the ones which people are actively discussing about and mostly they are not found in other keyword research tools as well.

A Pro tip:

You can also use the same method to do keyword research around your topic on other forums like Reddit, Warrior Forum and

other forums related to your industry to understand what people are actually looking for and discussing about in your niche and what are the exact words they are using to find the answers and

understand their situation and problems on this forums better to create good content.

  1. Question dB.

This is another freemium tool like answer the public but using this tool you can find an amazing list of questions in terms of Keyword related to your targeted keyword.

This tool has 32 million questions in its database and the questions are gathered from different sources like forums like Reddit, websites and social media sites.

This tool will help you come up with an amazing questions list for any keyword and You can also download the list as well.

free keyword research tools

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you can also find the sources of the questions that you find in the tool. Most of the sources will be from forums like Quora, Reddit and social media sites where

you can explore to find more keyword ideas for your blog posts.

BTW,

Keyworddit is a similar keyword tool which you can use as it will extract keywords from subreddits just like question db.

Unlike question dB, you can also see the US search volume and context of the keyword using this tool.

free keyword research tools

This will give you a clear idea of what the people are actually discussing about in your niche in subreddits so that you can create content regarding that topic on your blog.

Otherwise you can select those keywords from this tool and get more keywords related to that keyword in other free keyword research tools like keywordtool.io.

  1. Soovle.

This is a free keyword tool which does not give you any new keyword ideas but it will show suggested keywords from many different search engines at a single place.

free keyword research tools

It is like whenever you type something in Google and YouTube you get suggestions to complete your sentence, this is called suggested keywords and this tool will show them in one place.

You can find suggested keywords from different search engines and big websites like,

  • Google.
  • Bing.
  • YouTube.
  • Yahoo.
  • Wikipedia.
  • Amazon.

My favourite thing:

The favourite feature of this tool I like is saving the keywords.

You can easily save all the suggested keywords from Google, bing, YouTube whichever keyword you found interesting and you can also download them on your desktop as well.

This keyword tool can save you a lot of time.

  1. Ahrefs difficulty checker.

difficulty checker

This is not a tool which can help you get more keyword ideas but it can help you more than that.

This tool will help you identify the keyword difficulty level of any keyword and an estimated number of backlinks from different websites you actually need to be able to rank in top 10 positions of Google.

My favourite thing:

Unlike other SEO tools, Ahrefs finds and analyses keyword difficulty level by analysing the website authority and total number of backlinks of top positions that are ranking in Google for that target keyword.

Keyword difficulty is clearly analysed in a  scale of 0 to 100 and you can easily identify the keyword difficulty level because

they are also distinguished in different colours with green being the low difficulty to red which is high difficulty.

Like this,

free link building tools

This tool can help you give a rough idea of the keyword difficulty level in Google but still it will only consider backlinks and referring domains of top ranking pages to

decide keyword difficulty, you should also look at content quality, freshness, intent and authority of website to judge the keyword difficulty which these tools don’t consider to get a clearer picture.

  1. Moz extension.

This is a free Chrome extension of moz that you can install and download on your desktop and

whenever you search any query in Google you can see the domain authority and page authority metrics which are developed by moz of that particular page right in Google search results only.

You can also check backlinks and referring domains of individual pages and entire websites as well.

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you can check the authority of the web pages that are ranking in Google so that you can decide whether you can outrank those pages for that given keyword.

This will also reveal the authority of your competitors and how strong their backlinks are.

This will help you in identifying the keyword competition level also.

  1. Keywords everywhere.

free keyword research tools

This is a freemium Chrome extension which you can install on your desktop.

What this does is, when you search for anything in Google you can find an amazing list of Keyword ideas and long tail or trending keywords right on the search results page related to the target keyword that you searched in Google.

  1. Google Search console.

Google search console is technically not a Keyword research tool you can use to find keyword ideas but if you use it properly then it can help you to find amazing keyword ideas from the blog posts that you have published on your website.

Apart from using Google search console for things like looking at your Impressions, clicks and average position and click through rate you can also use this tool to find how blogs that you have published are performing in Google.

By looking at any individual blog which you published on your blog in Google search console in performance report 

free keyword research tools

you can see all the additional questions and keywords that your blog ranks for, gets additional impressions and clicks apart from the target keyword that is optimised for the blog post like below.

You can use those additional keywords and questions that your blog rank for and add those keywords in your blog post and

optimise them with additional content and information so that you can rank for those keywords higher and get more traffic to your blog post by just updating in the content

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that you get this data right from Google which is awesome and,

All keyword tools will give you ideas related to your target keyword before you write and rank your blog for that term but

in Google search console you can find keyword ideas that your blogs additionally ranks for which you can optimise them.

Depending upon the number of clicks, relevance and Impressions you get for those additional questions and keywords you can either optimize them in an old post or create a new post targeted to that keyword in specific.

I am addicted to this tool.

  1. Keywordtool.io 

This is a well known popular freemium keyword research tool and a great alternative for Keyword planner.

This is a keyword tool that uses free Google autocomplete or Google search suggestions to maximum extent to generate keywords.

Using the free version itself You can get upto 700 keywords for any seed keyword in a single click even without creating a free account as well.

Isn’t that cool.

When you do the keyword search you can find options for questions and prepositions like you do in Answer the Public as types related to keywords other than keyword suggestions which is really COOL.

free keyword research tools

And if you found any amazing keyword which you really like, you can easily copy that keyword to clipboard and get it pasted in your keyword list.

This is a very handy feature of this entire tool as you don’t have to download the entire list in a CSV file as you had to do in other tools.

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this free tool is that  you can find keywords also for other search engines like YouTube, bing, Amazon, eBay, etc.

Unlike other tools, you can find keywords in many different languages other than English like

you can find keywords in over 100 different languages and countries which allow search engines like Google to work in their land from America to Afghanistan, etc.

I absolutely love using this tool.

  1. Amazon.

Without a second thought, Amazon is the largest eCommerce store on this planet.

Over 200 million people use this store every month world wide.

In such a case, you can find amazing keywords using Amazon search suggestions.

Whenever you type anything in Amazon search, you get a list of suggestions from Amazon just like you have in Google and these suggestions are not suggestions rather actually predictions of Google and same in Amazon.

free keyword research tools

Using these suggestions you can find which product people are actually searching a lot on Amazon so that you can use those products to review on your Affiliate website.

You can find some amazing products and keywords with commercial intent which you can target in your blogs.

  1. Semrush free keyword magic tool.

We all know semrush is one of the best premium SEO tools out there.

But like ubersuggest you can also use this tool to do some keyword research for free.

In the free plan you can do 10 searches for free every day with this tool.

You can find keywords search volume, competition, CPC and other important SERP features when doing keyword research.

free keyword research tools

Perfect.

  1. Wordtracker scout.

We all know how to do keyword research using the keyword research tools like entering a seed keyword in the tool and selecting keywords among the list and after checking CPC and competition, you write a blog post.

But

It is a time for some change.

Using this free tool and chrome extension, you can find an amazing list of keyword ideas and their competition and search volume on any webpage on the internet.

What this means is that you can find keyword ideas that your competition includes in their blog post, you can also check important keyword research metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty, etc.

My favourite thing:

What I really like about this tool is that it is so simple and very easy to use in a single click you can find all the keywords that your competitors include in their blog post without opening a new tab in your Chrome browser.

This tool will not suggest random keywords used on a web page; rather,it will compare and present You the best keywords from its database of billions of keywords that people search for free of cost.

I love this tool not because it is different but because it saves both money and time finding the right keywords for writing blogs from my competitors and stealing their traffic and rankings from Google.

  1. LSI graph.

Unlike other keyword research tools mentioned in this list this tool is quite different and

it will not give you any keyword ideas when you enter the seed keyword in this tool rather it will give you a list of LSI keywords related to the target keyword.

LSI keywords are keywords which are closely related to any target keyword like if there is a keyword called affiliate marketing then lsi keywords would be affiliate marketing meaning and affiliate marketing definition.

You got it!

LSI keywords improve the content quality and relevance for a search term.

By including these LSI keywords in your copy, blog post, Google can better understand the content of your blog post and it can rank your blog higher in search results and get more traffic to your blog overall.

  1. Keyword Surfer.

Keyword surfer is another free chrome extension like keywords everywhere but apart from suggesting only keywords,

this extension will give you many more metrics and data like search volume, keyword suggestions, difficulty, and Cpc which You will find in the pro version of keywords everywhere extension and other premium SEO tools.

This is a very handy tool to check important keyword research metrics right in Google search results.

My favourite thing;

The main thing I really like and appreciate about this tool is it is 100% free/forever.

There are many tools like ubersuggest and others which started as free tools initially but later became paid and very restrictive in free plans.

Mostly because of the expense of running these tools.

There are very few free tools (not freemium) which are really worth using for SEO and Keyword research and keyword surfer is definitely one of them.

Other than that, using this extension you can see other interesting data of pages ranking in Google for any query like discover the domain’s monthly traffic, content word count, and the number of exact keywords for your top 10 competitors. 

This tool is really awesome and helpful especially for beginners.

  1. Question hub.

This is another free tool from Google.

Using this tool you can find keywords and questions that people are searching for in Google but the twist is, there is no content targeting those questions in Google.

Yes you read that right.

You can find all the unanswered questions on Google at a place called question hub.

Using those keywords, you can write blog posts targeting those keywords.

The benefit of using this tool is that you can find the questions that people are actually searching for on Google which do not have any competition because

there is no other blog targeting those questions at all so if you write blog posts optimized, you can rank in Google for those keywords and also you can submit those urls to this platform to track how your content is performing in search.

My favourite thing:

This is a tool provided by Google itself, Google will collect all the questions which are unanswered in search,

bring them at this platform and you can select different categories and then get those keywords in your list feed and then you can select and decide whether you want to write the post related to that keyword or not.

It feels quite amazing that there are over a billion blogs on the internet and we think all the information is present in Google but it is not true, there are lots of topics which are not answered with low competition as well.

This is a great deal for bloggers, mainly beginners, who don’t have much website authority to get traffic from competitive keywords to try this tool.

Wait there are a couple of bonus tools.

Yes!

Bonus:

  1. Pinterest.

We all know pinterest as a popular social media platform but you should not forget that pinterest is also a visual search engine platform just like Google and the fact is that 

39% of the female pinners and 48% of male users prefer Pinterest search engine over Google and bing.

So why not use pinterest also for keyword research.

Obviously you can use Pinterest autosuggestions to find keyword ideas like you do on Google but there is a row of popular keywords you can use as well.

pros and cons of pinterest

My favourite thing:

Apart from using the autosuggestions, there is a row of topics that You can find which are getting more searches.

Another thing is, you can find different content ideas based on pins for any keyword in the Pinterest, you can look at and analyse the pins to get more content ideas which you can target in your blogs.

Here is an example of amazing content ideas you can get from pinterest pins.

types of content on pinterest

 Yeah these are all of my best free keyword research tools list.

A few guides you can consider to read related to blogging and SEO further.

With that said let’s conclude the blog post.

Ending remarks;

There you go, these are all the best and free keyword research tools I have for you right now.

Do comment down which tool you found interesting and amazing and you will use.

Share this blog with your family and friends if you have found it helpful.

Sharing is caring.

I will catch you next time till then keep learning and keep growing.

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