Keyword tools are some of the most essential resources for webmasters who aim to build their websites to become successful as far content and rankings are concerned.
They offer you the chance to determine which keywords are good to utilize and base your content on which helps in targeting the right audience and addressing the needing issues of the niche you are in.
This beginner’s guide on keyword tools will be helping you learn everything you need to know about keyword tools and using them to boost the quality and success of your website.
Let’s dive right in.
Table of Contents
What Are Keyword Tools
These are online tools that help you research more on a topic and come up with keywords that you can use to create your content which will help your website rank well easily and get a good amount of traffic that will convert.
Some examples of keyword tools include SEMrush, Soovle, Jaaxy, Majestic, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, and Answer the Public, among many others.
What these tools do is to help you find keywords that might be good to use and then help you analyze each and every one of them through different metrics such as traffic and competition and help you figure out which one is the best to use.
When it comes to choosing keywords, it can be hard to know which ones people are searching for a lot and which ones your competitors have used for their content without the help of a keyword tool.
And this can have you choosing the wrong keywords which you might think are the best to leverage but which are actually not.
And this will result in having your content ranked under competitive keyword phrases that hugely authoritative websites could be ranking for and make it difficult for you to get the top positions that are known to have high traffic.
Without using a keyword tool, there is a high chance you are going to struggle coming up with content ideas for your website as well as getting good rankings in the search engines that will affect the performance of your website at large and end up in failure.
Keyword tools are what help you get ideas that you can discuss on your site that people are actually interested in.
They also help you determine which keywords you can use and have an easy time driving traffic to your website without facing a lot of opposition from your competitors.
How Keyword Tools Work
Keyword tools provide analyses of keywords from different niches that help you in finding the keyword that best fits you, which will enhance your website performance.
Some of the metrics these tools give you are competition of a keyword, the traffic that it brings to people who take up the top positions of the search engines, how difficult it is to use it for paid SEO techniques like Google Adwords, and more.
While some keyword tools focus only on keyword analysis, there are others that also offer a deeper analysis of the content that has been ranked for those keywords you intend to use so that you know what it will take you to create content that will outperform the content of the competitors.
Other features you get with some keyword tools include backlink analysis, competitor ranking, rank tracking, social media tracking, web monetization, keyword research, on-page SEO, SERP tracking, content tracking, content marketing, content optimization among many others.
But you should know that these features vary with the keyword you choose to work with.
There are some that offer all of these features while others offer some and even others provide only the keyword tool with a few metrics analyses only.
Mostly, the keyword tools that offer a lot of valuable information on a keyword and have all these other features come with a hefty price tag.
So it is always important to make sure that you choose a good keyword tool that will satisfy your keyword needs and with a manageable budget going by what you are looking to build on your website.
Best Keyword Tools You Can Use For Your Keyword Research
These are some of the popular high-quality keyword tools that offer different cool features that can further enhance your keyword research process.
√ Jaaxy
This is a really good tool for people who are looking forward to getting an easy to use a keyword tool that offers well-presented information that can be easily understood.
It is what I have been personally using for years now and it has been nothing short of awesome.
Some of its features include helping you perform deep keyword research, track ranking on various search engines through the site rank feature, helping you discover a good keyword-based domain name and buy it, get countless keyword ideas using the alphabet soup feature and they even offer tutorials on how to use the tool.
Their pricing plans start from a free account with 30 free searches, to the Jaaxy lite that you get when you get a premium Wealthy Affiliate account that is owned by the same people who created Jaaxy, to the Pro account going for $49 per month and then the Enterprise account that goes for $99 per month.
√ Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
This is another quite popular keyword that offers a really comprehensive keyword analysis.
It is actually one of the best systems out there that not only help with keywords but also with content analysis, backlink analysis, ranking analysis, and traffic analysis, among many others.
With its great features, comes a great price tag which starts from $99 a month from the Lite account, $179 from the Standard account, $399 for the advanced plan, and $999 for the agency plan.
√ SEMrush
SEMrush is yet another credible keyword tool that offers a wide variety of features for your website needs.
The features include keyword research, content analysis, social media tracking, SEO analysis, and PPC (Pay Per Click) analysis, to name a few.
As far as keyword research goes, it can help you discover keywords that have not been used before and provide you with lots of keyword ideas through the keyword magic tool.
Its prices range from $99.95 per month for the Pro account, $199.95 per month for the Guru plan, $399.95 per month for the Business plan, and for the Enterprise account, you have to contact the people that manage the tool so that you get a custom plan that matches your needs.
√ Majestic
This is another value-packed keyword tool that also drags along with its different features that improve the performance of your website.
Its features include keyword checker and generator for your keyword needs, and the ability to analyze a domain that could be your competitor, submit your website URLs, analyze content, backlink analysis, and managing different campaigns for your website.
Its prices begin from £49.99 per month for the Lite plan, £99.99 per month for the Pro plan, and £399.99 per month for the API plan.
√ BuzzSumo
Buzzsumo is another reputable system that gives good keyword ideas for your website and also helps you get to know the best stuff to leverage from social media and even connect to the influencers to better growth of your website.
It also helps you with analyzing the best content to help you remain at the top with your website content and tracking what’s happening online that could benefit your business.
Its prices range from $99 per month for the Pro plan, $179 per month for the Plus plan, $299 per month Large plan, and $499 per month for the Enterprise plan.
How to Use Keyword tools to Find the Best keywords
Keyword tools vary with usage.
Since every tool is designed differently, the usage will also differ.
But the good thing is that most popular keyword tools provide video tutorials on how to use them.
You can also get much more detailed information on keyword usage from Google and Youtube so it shouldn’t be a hassle for you.
Personally, I use Jaaxy as my favorite keyword tool as the budget works for me and it also offers more resources for my keyword needs.
So I will give you an illustration of how I use it to come up with keywords for my website. Here is the step by step walkthrough.
Step 1: Go to Jaaxy.com and login into your account.
Step 2: Click on the “Keywords” on the top menu so that you can be taken straight to the keyword tool.
Step 3: Enter the keyword idea you have for the topic you want to get keywords on. Once you have typed in the topic you want to focus on, click on “Find keywords” so that the tool can look for keywords you can use within the topic.
Step 4: Analyze the results you have been given. Now when the search is over, you will be given will be mixed with good and bad keywords and it is your responsibility to vet them and discover the one that is most likely to help you succeed.
To do that, you have to use proper keyword criteria to help you only get the best keywords. And it is actually very simple to do that.
With Jaaxy, you get the most essential results in terms of metrics to use to evaluate the keywords.
These are average monthly searches a keyword gets (in the AVG column), the number of websites using that keyword (under Quoted Search Results [QSR] column), the amount of traffic your website will get from being ranked in the highest positions of the search engine results pages (in the traffic column, and how well the keyword would do for PPC (Paid per Click) Marketing [under the SEO column].
Now what I do is work with the keyword that has less than 100 in the competition column and more than 200 in the traffic column.
When I want to use a keyword for PPC, I normally go with the one that has the highest rating, that is, the one closes to 100 under the SEO column.
Benefits of Keyword Tools
Here are the benefits you get from using keyword tools:
1. Making keyword research extremely easy – If you decided to do manual keyword research you might end up wasting a lot of time and effort or even worse end up not having the best results.
However, when using keyword research tools, results that you are looking for are automatically generated for you thereby making your work easier and efficient because you only need to analyze the results to get the best keywords.
2. Helping you keep tabs on your competitors – Keyword tools are the best solution when it comes to knowing what you are competitors are up to.
Through them, you can find out what keywords have low competition and will rank your website well on search engines that they are using which you can also use on your website.
They also help you discover other ideas that can help you find untapped ideas that could really come in handy for you.
Also, through content analysis and backlink analysis of your high-performing competitors, you get to learn what you need to do to be playing at the high levels in terms of brand popularity and credibility.
3. Helping you know the direction to take with your work – Through keyword research tools, you find the best keywords for a specific topic that your audience is looking for, and hence you can provide the kind of content that they need.
This gives you the right direction to take with your website that will increase your success rates.
4. Helping you target the right audience – If you are completely new to the website running arena, it can be tough for you to get your way around and know the people you want to reach out to with your content as well as how to do that.
Through keyword tools, you can learn more about your niche and the kind of topics to cover so that you get the right kind of audience that will benefit you in the long run.
5. Helping you discover areas that have not been tapped yet – As you do keyword research with the tools, you get to discover areas that haven’t been touched by others and hence get to be among the first to tackle them that gives you the edge over your competitors as far as search engine rankings are concerned.
6. Helping you find high-quality keywords to use – Keyword tools will provide keyword suggestions on good quality keywords especially long-tail keywords.
This type of keywords are great because they are personalized to you, have less competition, targeted traffic, and ranking well with them is not as hard as the other types.
7. Helping you find the trending keywords – You get to learn about hot keywords that lots of people are talking about using keyword tools.
And this will ensure that you are not left behind when there are new trends and also that you keep your audience updated on various topics.
Tips To Help You Choose the Best Keyword Tool
Not all keyword tools out there are good to perform keyword research with. Some offer inaccurate results while others are not entirely genuine which could make you lose so much money in the long run.
In the process of finding the best keyword tool, you must be extremely careful so that you are choosing a keyword tool that is effective and also that meets your needs.
It’s possible to unintentionally pick the wrong keyword tool and end up experiencing problems something I know you don’t want.
Therefore, here are a few features that your preferred keyword tool should have;
• The ability to generate long-tail keywords
These keywords are the best if you intend to improve your website performance in the search engine results pages, therefore, you don’t want to pick a tool that will only provide you with short keywords because they are highly competitive and hence if you are just starting out, you might have a hard time trying to get on the coveted top positions.
• Provide you with competition analysis
A good keyword tool must help you to establish how competitive a certain keyword is so that you know if it’s worth exploring or not.
If it’s highly competitive do not go for it at any cost but if it has low competition, it means that your chances of ranking with it are high because you don’t have a lot of websites to compete with.
Therefore, you can take advantage of that and provide the best content among those few that you are competing with to rank highest.
Also keeping tabs on your competitors is important because it allows you to analyze your website’s performance and what you can improve on to go above them.
• Provide you with keyword trends
This is key so that you don’t miss to inform your audience on current trends in your niche and to avoid left behind by your competitors too.
Knowing trending keywords will also help you know the direction to take with your topics so it’s a worthy feature for the tool you will use.
• Show you how relevant keyword is to your audience
The tool you use should tell you the average number of searches a keyword has so that you know if it’s something that people are constantly looking for information on or not.
This saves you a lot of time and effort and assures you that you are working with topics and keywords that have demand.
Common Mistakes Made When Using Keyword Tools
Here are some common mistakes people make when working with keyword tools.
* Poor interpretation of the metrics
This results in a poor choice of keywords and hence poor performance on the SERPs.
If you don’t understand how to read the metrics on your tool you can always ask for help in there through for example the faqs section or simply using the contact details.
You can also get tutorials from search engines and Youtube on how to use specific keyword tools.
* Choosing the wrong keyword tools
The first thing that you should research is how the keyword tool you chose works so that your experience with it is easier.
You must understand that there are tools that are better used by beginners and others by advanced webmasters.
So you always want to get a tool that is good for the level you are on and as you progress, you can get a better tool.
Also, it’s wise to choose a keyword tool that suits your needs and budget because in so doing, your needs will get satisfied without having to overspend.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Keyword Tools
Question: Must I pay for the keyword tool that I want to use?
Answer: No, keyword tools differ from each other and that is why you will find a keyword tool that allows you to access it for free, and there are those that you must pay first to be in a position to work with them. Having this in mind, it wise to choose one that is efficient and which matches your financial ability when starting out and then maybe as you progress upgrade to other more expensive plans that offer more features.
Question: Can I work with many keyword tools at a go?
Answer: Quite frankly, it’s wise that you focus on using just one that you feel is extremely effective for you.
Firstly, you get to save money from doing that, and secondly, you get to have the consistency of results for your keywords that helps you establish a keyword research plan that will make your website growth easy and fast.
So this means that you should take your time to make a decision on which keyword tool is the best for you. You can take a look at our guide on the best keyword research tools to help you see which ones have the features that best fit you.
Question: How long does it take to perform keyword research with keyword tools?
Answer: Unless your internet connection is slow and you don’t have a keyword research technique that you are using, you should be done in a matter of minutes because these tools work pretty fast. And if you don’t have a research plan, you can always use the one I have provided you in the usage section above.
Question: Must I sign up with the tool I want to use?
Answer: This depends on the tool you want to use. There are those that will require you to create your account so that you can even save a list of the keywords you find suitable for future content but others that won’t require you to do that.
