An old friend – Google’s free Adwords Keyword tool – has gone off the grid for good, leaving in its place the new Keyword Planner. The Planner is a little more detailed, but still fairly easy to use and still free.
A recent post at the GroTraffic.com blog had a list of 10 free keyword research tools you will find useful, as well as a good infographic that provides step-by-step instructions on how to conduct keyword research:
Mergewords – especially useful for creating long tail keyword phrases which are critical to your SEO efforts.
Wordstream – will give you up to 30 free keyword results; after that, you have to subscribe.
SEMRush – the first 10 results are free; a subscription is required for more. Data analysis and keyword performance info is also offered on the site.
SEOBook – this site has a free keyword tool that requires free registration to access.
Keyword Eye – if you are more visually oriented, this site is for you.
KGen – if you use Firefox as your browser, this tool is available as an add-on and will rank keywords on any given website.
Bing Keyword Research Tool – part of the Bing Webmaster Tools.
Keyword Spy – lets you evaluate competitive websites for keywords they use.
Thesaurus.com – this website gives you synonyms for your keywords.
Ubersuggest – suggestion tool for more keyword ideas.
