Any serious blogger knows that keyword research is the heart and soul of any SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign. You simply take keywords that people are searching for and strategically insert them into your blog’s content, and your blog’s visibility on search engines will increase as a result.
The trick is finding out what these keywords are. While you can always try to guess these keywords to the best of your ability, a far more effective strategy will be to use free tools online that will tell you which specific keywords are currently popular.
Here are seven free tools for finding popular SEO keywords:
Amazon
One of the biggest ecommerce websites online, Amazon presents you with a huge opportunity for finding out about which keywords and phrases people are talking about. The two best places to go will be product reviews and Amazon Questions and Answers. Since this content is related directly to sales, this will be especially valuable to you if you sell products on your blog.
Bing Webmaster Toolbox
Bing Webmaster Toolbox is a keyword tool that will take data from Bing and show which keywords are trending and receiving more traffic. Since Bing users will be largely searching for the same keywords as users on Google and Yahoo, this is an important tool to use.
FAQ Fox
Simply type in a keyword and a list of websites you would like to analyze, and FAQ Fox will display a list of questions and headlines that include your keyword from your selected websites. Even if you don’t know what websites you would like to analyze, FAQ Fox will allow you to just select a general category of websites instead.
Google Search
Many people don’t know it, but the Google search engine by itself is a very effective keyword finder. Simply type in a keyword and phrase, and then avoid hitting enter. You will then see a list of the most popular variations of that keyword. While this obviously doesn’t tell you how much exact traffic each keyword is getting, it still gives you an idea of what’s being searched for.
Outdated Content Finder
If you’ve written any popular content in the past, it’s possible that an updated version of that content could still be popular today. Outdated Content Finder will identify web content that is ‘outdated’ based on the date that you enter. Not only does this tell you what keywords not to use, but it will also help you brainstorm how you can update those keywords by putting a variation on them.
Reddit
It’s actually possible to run an entire SEO marketing campaign with Reddit alone. Type in a keyword into the search box, and you’ll be shown an entire list of trending headlines. Scan those headlines and the conversations people are having about them, and you should see certain words and phrases popping up again and again.
SEO Analyzer
This website analyzer from NeilPatel.com will generate a content marketing report for three separate URL’s of your choice. This report will tell you what the most popular articles from those URL’s are, and you can then take the keywords that are used in those articles and insert them into your own content.
Create Great Content
Use at least a couple of these free tools while brainstorming specific SEO keywords to include in your next set of content. If successful in your efforts, the payoff will be many more visitors coming to your website each day and an overall increase in your brand’s visibility.