12 free keyword research tools tested. Should you pay for keywords at all?

There are plenty services ready to collect keywords for you for 40$-200$. None of them ideal, though personally I prefer moz.com the best. Let’s see if we can do the same without any paid services and they really get money for nothing and chicks for free 😉

Step 1. Collect keyword suggestions using free keyword research tools

There is a list of services that let you collect keywords for free. On this stage we need to get as many keyword suggestions as possible. Don’t bother about  volume, CPC and so on right now. I took “WordPress multisite” phrase as an example and fetched it to each service and here are the results:

1. https://serps.com/tools/keyword-research/ — I’ve got 123 keywords
2. https://keywordtool.io/ru/search/google/5752402?keyword=WordPress%20multisite&country=us&language=en#suggestions 322
3. https://app.wordtracker.com/search?query=WordPress%20multisite 20
4. https://moz.com/explorer/keyword/suggestions?locale=en-US&q=WordPress+multisite 1000 here
5. https://ubersuggest.io/ 293
6. http://soovle.com/ 28
7. http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/ 25
8. http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/ 4
9. http://www.keywordspy.com/research/search.aspx?q=WordPress%20multisite&type=keywords#/tab=keyword-similar 1
10. https://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html 0
11. https://www.semrush.com/info/WordPress%20multisite+(full+search) 10
12. https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/ 235

On this stage I’ve got a list of 1500+ keyword suggestion.

Step 2. Clean the combined list from duplicates

You may use any tool on your choice, Excel, online tools, etc. I did it in my favorite text editor Notepad++. After removing duplicates I got 742 keywords left.

Step 3. Get keyword search volume and competition for free

Now we’ve got a nice list without duplicates.

What we want to do is to get volume of these keywords. As all these services take data from nowhere else but Google itself, Google own service Keyword Planner would be the best free keyword volume research tool.

1. Navigate to Google Adwords -> Tools -> Keyword Planner -> Get search volume data and trends -> Enter your keyword list -> Get search volume
2. Next page “Add all” to your plan and “Review plan”
3. Make sure you put max bid high to see all results, forcast period is month and tab is keyword
4. The last point to do the magic is match type. Choose  “Exact”, “Phrase” or “Broad” match type depending on your purposes

Voilà! That’s all you need to gather keywords with all information including monthly volume, ctr  and so on by different match type depending on your needs.

P.S. If you want to save your SEO budget, remember to take long tail keywords only for your website optimization.

Do you use any paid or free keyword research services for you semantic kernel? Why?