Keyword research isn’t just about a “keyword”; it is about phrases and questions your target audiences are using to find the answers, products, and services they need. These phrases and questions a critical component of any form of a marketing campaign. 

While gathering this data can be very time-consuming when you have completed your keyword research, you should have valuable information you need for:

• Creating better SEO strategies
• PR campaigns 
• Content ideation — video, text, social, etc.
• Audience research
• Paid advertising 
• Local search campaigns
• Competitive research
• Keywords and phrases to ignore
• Brainstorming sessions

Keyword Research Tools

There are a lot of free tools for you to use that can help you gather this essential information. I am going to break down 12 tools that are free, easy to use, and full of valuable data marketers and businesses can use to improve their marketing strategies. 

Google Trends

Google Trends will help you see the relative popularity of keywords, provide valuable data on regional variations, and is a great source for evaluating seasonality and trends in changes with search engine volume for specific keywords over time.

QuestionDB

Reddit is a massive platform utilized by millions daily to discuss issues they are having, find answers, or to find solutions they need. QuestionDB has created a massive database based on questions asked on Reddit that assesses relevance by a keyword also by the category.

AnswerThePublic

This is a great tool for discovering phrases you might not have thought of or have forgotten.

AnswerThePublic has a free version of their tool, and with it, they allow you to see visualizations of questions and phrases asked around a particular root keyword. The related phrases are fantastic for research and ideation. Note that you have to pay for the Pro version to get regional information for each root keyword. Let’s look at how the tool works. They break the info down into related questions, prepositions, queries by alphabetical order, and related searches.

Keyword Tool Dominator

This tool lets you see keyword data from some very large platforms. They have keyword research tools for each of the following:  Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Google, Google Shopping, YouTube, and Bing.

Important Note: With a free account, you are limited to 3 searches per day per tool. You can download the data for each search.

Soovle

Wondering about the differences in interests on different platforms? Soovle will generate a quick list of top terms for Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, answers.com, YouTube, Bing, and Yahoo. 

SEMrush Free Option

The Keyword Magic Tool is a simple tool to use for keyword research, and it provides a good deal of information. Free users can perform 10 requests per day, but keep in mind that each query in this tool counts towards your daily limit of 10 queries in Domain and Keyword Analytics.