Chapter 6 of our book helps you to identify the best keywords for your business–following the process explained in the book will ensure all your products and their respective categories are covered. As part of that process, you can use keyword research tools to help you move beyond your obvious core keywords to find additional variations you might have missed.
Free Keyword Research Tools from the Search Engines
The search engines themselves are the first place to start. Each search engine requires you to create an account within their paid search offering to use their free keyword research tool. Don’t turn up your nose at free, either–these tools offered by the search engines are actually the most trusted sources of data, albeit they each see the keywords searched for in just their own search engine.
| Search Engine | Tool Name |
| Google Keyword Planner | |
| Bing | Bing Keyword Toolbox |
| Yandex | Yandex Keyword Statistics |
| Baidu | Baidu Keyword Tool |
Commercial Keyword Research Tools
Sometimes it can be valuable to use keyword research tools with different data sources than just the searches within a single search engine. Many of these tools are used by professional search marketing consultants–some of them are not free. If you want to track what your competitors are doing, you should also check out the list of Competitive Keyword Research tools because they have more features in that area than the ones listed below.
| Tool | Volume | Expansion | Niches | Negative | Multilingual | Price | Review |
| Wordstream Keyword Tool | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Free | N/A |
| Wordtracker | Y | Y | N | Y | N | $27.00/mo & up | N/A |
| SEO Book Keyword Tool | Y | Y | N | N | N | Free | N/A |
| Keyword Discovery | Y | Y | N | N | Y | Free and paid | N/A |
| Keyword Tool | N | Y | N | N | Y | Free | N/A |
| SEO Book Keyword Tool | Y | Y | N | N | N | Free | N/A |
Key:
Search Volume – the ability to get estimates on the number of searches made each month
Expansion – the ability to take one or a few words and expand them into multiple variations
Niches – the ability to find related keywords based in the topics
Negatives – the ability to identify or weed out keywords that are not relevant to be put into negative keyword segments
Multilingual – the ability to research and expand keywords in different languages