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Free Keyword Research Tools (Keyword Planner)

Looking to find winning keywords to target but don’t have the budget for paid tools?

Google Keyword Planner used to be great for this. You could enter any ‘seed’ keyword and see tons of keyword suggestions, plus search volumes.

Keyword Planner-Google Ads website click here

One solution is to use a tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer that shows actual search volumes and tons of other SEO metrics.

But what if you’re starting out and can’t justify paying for any SEO tools?

Here are some free keyword tools to help kick start your SEO with zero investment:

· Google Trends;

· Keyword Generator;

· Keyword Sheeter;

· Answer the Public;

· Keyword Surfer;

· Keyworddit;

· Google Search Console;

· Questions;

· Bulk Keyword Generator;

· Google

1. Google Trends

Google Trends visualizes the relative search popularity of a keyword over time.

For example, if we look at the term “costumes” for the past five years, we see that popularity spikes every October.

Google trends website click here

This is because of Halloween.

But how is this useful for keyword research?

For starters, it can help you plan your content calendar. Let’s assume you sell costumes online. Publishing or republishing a list of the “10 Scariest Halloween Costumes for 20XX” each September/October makes perfect sense.

Interest in “iPhone specs” peaks every September when Apple launches a new iPhone.

If you run a tech blog, it would make sense to update and republish any related posts every September.

Going beyond content calendars, Trends can also help avoid targeting the wrong keywords.

Take a look at these two:

If you could only create content for one of these keywords, which would you choose? It’d be the one with the highest search volume, right?

Not so fast, because search volumes are averages taken across many months or years?

If we check data for the past 12 months only in Google Trends, we see that searches for “apple watch series 5” recently overtook those for “apple watch series 3.”

So if you were running an eCommerce store and had to prioritize one of these keywords, it would almost certainly be “apple watch series 5.”

After all, searches for the Series 3 are only going to decrease as time goes on.

2. Keyword Generator

Keyword Generator finds up to 150 keyword ideas for any seed keyword.

For example, if we search for “bit coin,” we get one hundred keyword ideas containing that word along with their estimated monthly search volumes.

For the first ten keywords on each list, we also show the Keyword Difficulty (KD) score. This is a number between 0–100 that estimates ranking difficulty. Generally speaking, the higher it is, the more backlinks you’ll need to rank.

SIDENOTE. Keyword Difficulty (KD) doesn’t take anything else into account besides backlinks. It’s important to take content quality, search intent, and website authority into account when assessing ranking difficulty. Learn more in this post.

Note that search volumes and KD scores are relative to the chosen country, which is the United States by default.

If you’re looking to rank elsewhere, just choose from one of the 170+ countries from the drop down.

You can also use the Keyword Generator to find keyword ideas for Bing, YouTube, and Amazon. Just switch the search engine at the top of the page.

3. Keyword Sheeter

Keyword Sheeter pulls thousands of autocomplete suggestions from Google.

To get started, enter one or more seed keywords and click “Sheet keywords.”

keyword sheeter

If you want to generate a lot of keywords ideas fast, this is the tool for you. It pulls around 1,000 ideas per minute, and you can export the results for free in one click.

The only downside to the Keyword Sheeter is that it’s quite basic.

It doesn’t show search volumes or trends data, and it doesn’t group keywords as Keyword Planner does.

But it does have one other notable feature: positive and negative filters.

The easiest way to explain how this works is to show an example. So let’s add “how” to the positive filter.

keyword sheeter how

Now it only shows queries that contain the word “how”—i.e., informational keywords that might make for good blog posts.

The negative filter does the opposite and excludes queries containing certain words.

This is useful for eliminating anything irrelevant. For example, if you run a tech blog and scrape results for “an apple,” then you probably only want to see keywords relating to Apple the company, not the fruit.

So you could exclude keywords like “pie,” “crumble,” “fruit,” and “cider.”

keyword sheeter negative

DO YOU WANT EVEN MORE KEYWORD IDEAS?

Try the Phrase match report in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Keywords Explorer > enter the seed keyword > Phrase match

keyword ideas phrase match keywords explorer

Keywords Explorer doesn’t just pull more keyword ideas. It also shows SEO metrics like monthly search volume and Keyword Difficulty (KD).

4. Answer the Public

Answer the Public finds questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabetical, and related searches.

Confused? Let’s tackle each of these one-by-one.

We’ll start by entering a “seed” keyword—let’s stick with “protein powder.”

Answer the public

The first thing you’ll see is questions.

These are search queries containing who, what, why, where, how, which, when, are, and is.

Examples:

What protein powder tastes best?

How protein powder is made

Are protein powders fattening?

When does protein powder expire?

You’ll see a visualization by default, but you can switch to a regular list.

Next up, we have propositions—i.e., for, can, is, near, without, with, and to.

These are search queries that fit the [seed] [preposition] [______] format.

Examples:

Protein powder without carbs

Protein powder for weight gain

Protein powder is it safe

We then have comparisons—i.e., versus, vs, and, like, or.

Examples:

Protein powder versus meat

Protein powder or chicken breast

Protein powder like a quest

And finally, we have alphabetical and related.

Alphabetical is Google autocomplete suggestions.

Answer the public alphabetical

And related, well, who knows?

In my experience, the number of suggestions in the related category is almost always ~20. I have no clue how it derives those keywords. But it does kick back a few gems from time to time.

But where does ATP get its data from?

As far as we’re aware, that would be Google Keyword Planner and Google autosuggest.

SIDENOTE. All data is exportable to CSV. No need to register or log in.

LOOKING FOR MORE QUESTION-TYPE SUGGESTIONS?

Answer the Public gives 160 question-type queries for the phrase “cat.”

If we plug the same seed into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, we get 626,768 keywords—that’s 3,900x times more.

Keywords explorer questions report

Of course, we’re flexing our big data muscles here. For most people, Answer the Public has more than enough keyword suggestions. But when your site grows bigger, there’s always Keywords Explorer.