Hey! Welcome back to our blog series on keyword research! If you haven’t yet read our previous installments, it’s important you do so or else you’ll be missing some crucial information and advice! Click on the following links to complete your education:
Part 1: What is Keyword research?
Part 2: How search volume and competition can help you get ranked?
Part 3: KEI: Keyword efficiency Index and how it can help you rank.
Part 4: How to do keyword research using Google?
Part 5: How does google keyword planner work?
Part 6: 4 Ways Google’s Adword planner could be harming you.
Part 7: What are the keyword research metrics I should be looking at?
Part 8: Using Google Trends to do Keyword Research.
Part 9: 5 of The Best Free Keyword Research Tools 2016
The Best PAID Keyword Research Tools of 2016
There is a reason those aforementioned tools are free… they are simplistic and are
intended to entice and upsell their users to paid packages that offer far greater
functionality, detail, insight, and value. Sure, make full use of the free keyword research
tools we’ve discussed. But if you are serious about building a keyword list that will jet propel
your website to stratospheric heights of web traffic, leads and sales, then you
should enlist the services of at least one paid keyword research tool.
You’ve got to spend money to make money!
FreshKey
URL: http://freshkey.com/
Cost: $49.95 (±R780) Once-off
FreshKey makes use of a grand suite of sources to offer up their keyword suggestions
and not just Google Search, as is the case with most of the free keyword tools. This nifty
program empowers users to source and analyse buyer data from Etsy, Google
Marketplace, Amazon, eBay, and more, which essentially enables you to spy on your
competitors and find their most profitable keywords! FreshKey then lets you view your
results and – as they put it – “find out how big the universe is for your newly found buyer
intelligence by running the same search on Google, Bing, YouTube and more!”
What FreshKey Looks Like
Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Well, there is one downside to Freshkey and that’s that they
don’t really provide enough data, aside from Search Trends. If you have the budget, it’ll
be a good idea to tie FreshKey to another paid program that will show you keyword
metrics.
HitTail
URL: www.hittail.com
Cost $9.95 (±R155) Per Month
HitTail does two awesome things:
- It analyses your website’s existing traffic (something that is completely unique to
this tool) and generates suggestions that are based upon the keywords that are
getting you your most traffic. - It does this on a recurring basis and instead of spewing forth a sea of keywords
you have to trawl through, HitTail provides actionable suggests that are specifically
tailored to your website.
What you can then do is create content focusing on each of the suggested keywords –
keywords you aren’t ranking highly, or even at all for – which should then enable you to
improve your website’s SEO and visibility to search engines.
What HitTail Looks Like
HitTail works really well when paired up with Google’s Adword Planner, because the latter
will give you all the juicy details related to monthly searches and other metrics you might
like to know about the keyword suggestions. This will help you decide whether it’s worth
writing content for those keywords.
So far, we’ve presented two paid keyword research tools… and in spite of the fact that
you’re paying for them, it STILL seems like you have to recruit the help of other tools to
get the full picture. What’s the point of paying for a service if it isn’t providing you with the
A-Z of keyword research?
Quite frankly, FreshKey and HitTail are much better and more comprehensive than any
free keyword research tools. And while they will cost you a little money, they really are
inexpensive and will empower you to build high-return keyword lists. And then there’s our
third recommended tool, which blows all other keyword tools out of the water…
Long Tail Pro
URL: www.longtailpro.com/
Cost: $37 (±R580) Per Month
What sets Long Tail Pro aside from anything we’ve discussed so far is the fact that (1)
their software is lightning fast (about 8 times faster than Market Samurai, or so they claim)
and most importantly (2) they give you a tonne of information in the form of Competitor
Analysis. This is really a crucial aspect to examine when conducting keyword research
and Long Tail Pro knocks it out of the ballpark!
What Long Tail Pro Looks Like
Long Tail Pro quickly analyses the top 10 Google results for each of your keywords and
provides great data like search volume and competition. It also provides important Search
Engine Results Page (SERP) information, such as domain and page authority, domain
age, page rank, the number of backlinks, keyword usage the title and meta tags, Moz
rank and more.
All in all, Long Tail Pro is a great keyword research tool that will help you get solid results.
We do advise that you watch the following video, which demonstrates how their product
works, especially when combined with some additional (really useful) products:
Find More Keyword Ideas With Soovle and Long Tail Platinum
SEMrush Competitive Data
URL: www.semrush.com
Cost: $69,95 (±R1,095) Per Month, Pro Package
SEMrush provides valuable insights into your competitors’ strategies in both paid and
organic search, display advertising, and link building. It also allows you to cross, combine
and illustrate data to estimate keyword difficulty and compare competitive domains. AND
you can launch global campaigns for your website and gather all the competitor and
keyword metrics you need to perfect your on-site SEO.
SEMrush is rated the fourth best company from which to get tools, so it’s really worth
checking out!
SECockpit
URL: http://secockpit.com/
Cost: $40 (±R625) Once-off
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You’ve really got to love the Swiss… not only did they give us great cheese, watches and
chocolate, they’ve also brought to the world of Search Engine Optimization a stunning
program called SECockpit. This keyword research tool comes with an App for your phone,
allowing you to stay at the very forefront of your website’s SEO, regardless of where in
the world you are!
Ideas sometimes strike at the most inopportune of moments, but with SECockpit Mobile
App at your fingertips 24/7 you can test your idea to see if it’s worthwhile. Better yet,
everything you do through your mobile account will be reflected on your computer.
What SECockpit Looks Like
In addition to the convenience of the program, the SECockpit keyword research tool
provides you with a healthy mix of data relating to your results page, from monthly
searches versus competition, CPC and a nifty function that tells you which domain is
available for your selected keyword phrase. Thank you, Switzerland!
Ahrefs
URL: https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
Cost: $99 (±R1,545) Per Month
Ahrefs keyword research tool is definitely a top recommendation of ours, because it
provides you with a suite of metrics, including search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC and
more. However, we find their best feature to be the one that allows you to see who is
ranking in the SERPs for a particular keyword, as well as their domain rating, backlinks,
social metrics, URL rating and more! What this tells you is EXACTLY how difficult a
keyword will be to rank for and whether it’s even worth investing in. And this is gold!
The $99 it costs per month might seem substantially more than many of the other paid
keyword research tools we’ve discussed, but it does include the Ahrefs Site Explorer,
Rank Tracker and Content Explorer.
What Ahrefs Looks Like
Moz Keyword Explorer
URL: https://moz.com/products/pro/keyword-explorer
Cost: $600 (±R9,375) Per Year
If you are in the SEO game, then you will certainly have heard of Moz Pro. Well, only last
month Moz released it’s own keyword research tool called Moz Keyword Explorer, which,
for $600, provides users with all the data they need to perform thorough keyword analysis,
including opportunity, search volume, difficulty and potential. They also provide great
keyword suggestions, mentions and SERP analyses. You could pretty much use Moz on
its own to build a rock-solid keyword list for any niche AND know exactly how difficult it
will be to get that keyword ranked, which is why it’s a favourite of our agency.
$600 up front might seem like a steep price to pay, especially in South Africa, but it is
intended for those who are serious about keyword research and about landing really
bankable results. Moz Keyword Explorere is only a month old, but it’s already proving to
have reset the bar for keyword research tools!
What Moz Looks Like
