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The Most Trusted Keyword Research Tools

When optimizing your website to improve rankings and attract more traffic to your site, keyword research, and the proper usage of such, may just be the most important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO). While web users can land on a site in a variety of ways, search engines are the main driving force of web traffic. With this in mind, you need to ensure your website is effectively optimized for keywords related to your business. While this can be a difficult task, you can surely get your website ranking in search engines with the right knowledge and keyword research tools.

Of course, you never need to delve into this alone. In addition to providing our valued members with easy-to-follow analytics for their websites, StatCounter also seeks to provide members with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions for their sites, which will ultimately help them improve rankings, increase visibility, and achieve optimal conversions. First, we'll need to take a deeper look into the importance of keyword research and the tools needed to complete such.

Keyword Research: Why Do It

Researching and using keywords is great practice within SEO, if not one of the most important aspects of it. It's suggested 9 out of 10 web users utilize search engines to find what they're looking for. When they search for a specific term, the search engine crawls mass amounts of web pages, utilizing various algorithms to find the most relevant pages for the user's query. This is where your keyword research comes in. Depending on your industry, you'll need to optimize varying pages of your site for specific keywords related to the products or services you offer. Then, you'll have a chance of ranking within the aforementioned search results.

Real World Application

Let's say you run a landscaping service in your city, we'll say Seattle. When someone decides they need some landscaping done on their home, they'll most likely get online and type “Seattle landscapers” in a search engine. The search engine will then deliver numerous results for nearby landscapers, and those at the top of the results will have been deemed the most relevant for that search query. With this, you can assume those high-ranking businesses have optimized their website around keywords like “Seattle landscapers” and variants of this, such as “landscapers in Seattle”.

Of course, before you start optimizing your site's pages for certain keywords, you need to find relevant and effective keywords you can rank for. The best method within this is utilizing keyword research tools, focusing on monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and your site's potential to rank for any given search term.

Top 3 Keyword Research Tools

When it comes down to it, you have a number of keyword research tools to choose from. While the paid tools will provide you with the best results, a range of free tools can still go a long way. Plus, you can't always rely on the research tools alone. It's never a bad idea to double check keywords in a search engine and observe the kind of results each term pulls up. This way, you can ensure you're trying to rank for a keyword relevant to your business and website. Nevertheless, let's take a look at a few keyword research tools many experts swear by.

SEMRush

Though it's a paid tool, SEMRush is often the go-to keyword research tool for many businesses and SEO experts. As you can see in the screenshot above, SEMRush delivers quick info for any given keyword, providing the monthly search volume, total number of results, and the cost-per-click (CPC).

Pro Tips

While CPC only concerns those utilizing paid ads, you can still view high CPC terms as sought-after terms. In other words, terms with high CPC are probably great choices to optimize your site around, as people are clearly willing to pay higher amounts for these keywords.

SEMRush not only provides the aforementioned quick info, but it also offers phrase match keywords and related keywords for each term you type in. The phrase match section can be extremely useful, as it'll deliver related phrases to your keyword (shown in the above figure). Related keywords can also be useful. However, it often brings up misspellings in addition to variants of the same keyword. SEMRush even offers a competitor analysis when you input your site's URL.

Übersuggest

A paid tool with free capabilities, Übersuggest delivers related keywords in the free version with the option to perform the keyword search for the web, images, shopping, and more. You can also choose the location from which you think your users will be searching from, since search results are often times displayed according to a web user's location. As with most of these free keyword research tools, you'll need to pay to find more info like search volume and CPC.

Still, the free version delivers a great list of related keywords, alphabetized for easy scanning. For instance, consider our last example regarding landscaping. Using the same keyword, you simply enter into Übersuggest and a list of related keywords are provided. See the image below to get a better idea.

KWFinder

Also offering both free and paid subscriptions, KWFinder is a pretty great tool. While free subscribers are limited to just 5 searches and 25 related keywords a day, the results for such are quite in-depth. You can even choose the location for each search term, much like that of Übersuggest. Take a look:

Paid subscriptions could very well be worth your while. While you can get by with free tools, the paid tools will deliver better and more in-depth results, which provides more opportunity in your SEO efforts.

Make Sense of Your SEO with StatCounter

Though there's plenty you can do in terms of SEO, as well as plenty of tools to carry out your strategy, you'll need to track your efforts to see what's working for you and what isn't. With StatCounter, you can effectively monitor your web traffic, SEO strategies, and more so you can make the right decisions when it comes to improving your website and achieving higher rankings. If you ever need any assistance, don't hesitate to contact our support by filling out the form below.

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