6 Free and Effective Keyword Tools

Digital Marketing has become the most dynamic space in today’s time. In the last decade and a half, digital marketing has become this ominously powerful platform, device, or technique that has been a real game-changer in the marketing segment. It is the most rapidly evolving space where digital marketers are always on their toes to decipher the search engine algorithms to make sure that their content gets featured at the top of the search engine page. And in all this, one thing that has held the mast strong in all these years is the keyword.

A keyword is a very seed from which the entire plantation of SEO has branched out. A keyword is a word, a phrase, a sentence, or anything that is typed on a search bar of a search engine. The first digital contact of a layman searching for a piece of information, service, purchasing, or selling opportunity starts by hitting the search bar of a search engine. Hence, it would not be an understatement to say that the entire digital marketing is by and large based on this one powerful tool called ‘keyword.’

The first time when a content developer needs to deploy as soon as he/ she embarks on the digital journey is to identify the most effective keywords for the content. Right from a small blog post to an entire website needs to be powered with a useful keyword to be able to become visible to the target audience.

There are several paid as well as free keyword research tools that help content developers to find effective keywords. At one point in time, Google Keyword Planner had been the most trusted one-stop solution for this. However, now, there are a plethora of tools available online that are trustworthy as well as free.

A paid keyword tool is much more specific and to the point. However, for the newbie content marketers who can’t afford the pair tools, the above free tools come handy only if you learn to use them properly. You can team up one keyword tool with one or two more keyword tools to get the best results. But before you can do that, you need to identify the strength and weaknesses of the free keywords. Hence, here is an attempt to evaluate some of the vividly used keyword tools.

 Come, let’s take a look at some of the most effective and free keyword tools.

1. Google Correlate – This is a very useful tool that helps you with related queries raised by the users in regards to a more general target query. This helps to identify sun-topics that help to appeal your content more vivid and inclusive in terms of catering to maximum queries of the user. This helps to accentuate the reach organically. These keywords are relational as opposed to the exact phrase or keyword matches that are available with the paid premium keyword tools. However, this tool does not have any specific search metrics and may even come up with high correlated keywords that make no sense.
2. Keyword Shitter – Yet another keyword tool that helps to extract auto-suggest keywords from Google based on a seed keyword. This is particularly helpful in generating long-tailed and related words aided by filters to arrive at more specific and definite keywords. However, this tool does not have any search metrics and takes a long time to help find meaning full keywords.
3. Google Trends – An effective keyword tool that traces the search popularity of a keyword over some time and suggests the time frame within a year when that particular keyword has been searched most. This tool is beneficial in analyzing the past and present popularity of a query or keyword. These are particularly beneficial for online retailers or content developers who are into a particular niche that may cater to popular festivals, events, product launches that take place at a fixed time every year. This helps to carry out market research on a topic or keyword. It is not possible to derive a search volume or the amount of organic traffic that this keyword can generate. This needs to be assisted with a keyword tool that gives you a more authentic metrics about search volumes and other aspects.             
4. Keyword Surfer – Yet another keyword tool that helps to evaluate the search volumes of a particular query generated on Google, Keyword Surfer, helps to identify the monthly search trends in 19 countries, including the United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, France, Canada, and Germany amongst others. It is a useful tool for assessing queries that are put on a search bar. The only shortcoming is that there is still no sure shot way to get the exact search volumes in bulk, and neither does this tool aim at providing the same.  
5. Search Engine Auto Suggest – Apart from Google, there are many search engines that we use on a day to day basis that include e-commerce websites such as Amazon, Flipkart, etc., as well as social media apps and pages such as YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Whenever we type in a query, there are innumerable similar and related keywords that came out in the drop-down option. These suggested keywords also reflect the volumes that are recommended by Google searches. Such search engines produce more specific keyword suggestions as compared to Google.
6. Answer the Public – Yet another trusted and useful tool to carry out keyword research. It is a tool where you put a seed keyword, and the tool generates innumerable keyword variations that include all possible questions that can be associated with it. It uses prepositions, then it shows keywords in alphabetical order and so on. By far, the most exhaustive list of keyword suggestions, Answer The Public, is also backed by Google Keyword Planner and Google autosuggest. This is a handy tool to generate long-tail keyword phrases and keyword ideas for the FAQ section.