Comparing the Top 5 Keyword Research Tools for SEO | Pros and Cons for top 5 SEO keywords research tools

 

 

If I ask any SEO professional about favorite tools for keywords research then the most common answers would be #googlekeywordplaner, #ahrefs, #moz, #ubersuggest, #semrush. Though my personal favourite keywords research tools for SEO is #serankings for the simplicity and ease of use.

Keyword research is a critical step while performing SEO for a website. Selecting the rights keywords is the key to drive organic traffic and improve website visibility. Keyword research tools simplify the process by providing valuable insights into search trends, competition, and user intent. Now with so many tools available how to select the one that suits all your needs. In this article I’ll compare the top five keyword research tools, highlighting their features, advantages, and limitations to help you make an informed choice for your SEO efforts.

 

1.     Google Keyword Planner:

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool designed to help advertisers find relevant keywords for their Google Ads campaigns. While its primary focus is on paid advertising, it remains a popular choice among SEO professionals. The tool offers essential data such as search volume, competition, and cost per click (CPC). Its integration with Google Ads provides insights into keyword performance and potential impressions.

Pros:

 

Provided by Google, the most widely used search engine.

Offers accurate and up-to-date search volume data.

Helps identify potential keywords with high commercial intent.

Cons:

 

Limited depth of keyword suggestions.

Designed more for advertisers than for SEO specialists.

2.     Ahrefs:

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool suite that includes a powerful keyword research feature. With a vast keyword database, Ahrefs offers valuable insights into search volume, keyword difficulty, and click-through rates (CTR). The tool's "Keyword Explorer" feature provides in-depth metrics to help identify high-potential keywords.

Pros:

 

Extensive keyword database with accurate metrics.

Offers keyword difficulty scores to assess competition.

Provides insights into parent topics and related keywords.

Cons:

 

Premium pricing might be costly for smaller businesses.

Some features are more geared towards backlink analysis.

3.     Semrush:

Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that includes a robust keyword research feature. With its "Keyword Magic Tool," users can explore a wide range of keyword suggestions and related terms. Semrush offers essential metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive data, making it a popular choice among SEO professionals.

Pros:

 

Comprehensive keyword database with global coverage.

Offers in-depth competitive analysis for keywords.

Provides historical data and trend analysis.

Cons:

 

Pricing plans can be expensive for small businesses.

Interface might feel overwhelming for beginners.

4. Moz Keyword Explorer:

Moz's Keyword Explorer is known for its user-friendly interface and valuable insights. It offers search volume, keyword difficulty, and opportunity scores, helping users identify keywords that are easy to rank for. Additionally, it provides SERP (search engine results page) analysis, which shows the types of content ranking for specific keywords.

Pros:

 

User-friendly interface suitable for beginners.

Opportunity score helps identify untapped keywords.

Offers valuable insights into SERP features and ranking content.

Cons:

 

Smaller keyword database compared to some competitors.

Lacks some advanced features found in other tools.

4.     Ubersuggest:

Ubersuggest, developed by Neil Patel, is a user-friendly keyword research tool aimed at simplifying the SEO process. It offers keyword suggestions, search volume data, and competitive analysis. Ubersuggest's interface makes it easy to navigate and understand, especially for newcomers to SEO.

Pros:

 

Simple and intuitive interface.

Provides valuable keyword suggestions and data.

Competitive analysis for both organic and paid search.

Cons:

 

Data accuracy might not be as reliable as with other tools.

Advanced users might find the tool lacking in advanced features.

Conclusion:

Choosing the right keyword research tool depends on your specific needs, budget, and level of expertise. Google Keyword Planner serves beginners, while Ahrefs and Semrush cater to more experienced SEO professionals looking for in-depth insights. Moz Keyword Explorer and Ubersuggest offer a balance between user-friendliness and data insights. Evaluate these tools based on their features, pricing, and the depth of data they provide to make the best choice for your SEO endeavors.

Mastering Competitor Analysis for SEO

One of the most effective ways to enhance your SEO strategy is through thorough competitor analysis. By dissecting your competitors' tactics, strengths, and weaknesses, you can glean valuable insights to refine your approach and gain a competitive edge. Competitor analysis isn't about copying your rivals; it's about learning from their successes and failures.

Here is why it is crucial for your SEO strategy:

Identify Opportunities: By analysing competitors' keywords, content, and backlink profiles, you can uncover keyword gaps and untapped content ideas.
Benchmark Your Performance: Comparing your website's performance metrics against those of your competitors helps gauge your relative strength and areas for improvement.

Stay Updated: SEO is dynamic; competitors' strategies change. Regular analysis helps you stay informed about shifts in the industry.

Innovate and Differentiate: Understanding what your competitors are doing allows you to innovate and find unique ways to stand out.

Step-by-Step Guide to Competitor Analysis:

Identify Your Competitors: List direct competitors within your niche.
Identify aspirational competitors (larger players in your industry).

Keyword Analysis: Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Serankings to identify competitors' top-ranking keywords. I personally prefer using Serankings for simple reports and better presentation.

Look for keywords they rank for that you might be missing.
Analyze keyword difficulty and search volume to prioritize your efforts.

Content Audit: Examine competitors' content quality, format, and topics.
Identify gaps in their content that you can cover comprehensively.
Determine which types of content (blog posts, videos, infographics) resonate with their audience.

Backlink Profile: Analyze the backlinks pointing to your competitors' websites.
Identify high-quality and authoritative sources linking to them.Find opportunities for guest posting, partnerships, or resource link-building.

On-Page SEO Analysis: Study competitors' meta tags, headers, and content structure.

Social Media and Engagement: Identify which platforms are most effective for them.Learn from their successful engagement strategies.

User Experience (UX): Evaluate competitors' website design, navigation, and mobile-friendliness. Note any features that enhance user experience.

Applying Insights to Your SEO Strategy:

After conducting a th
orough competitor analysis, it's time to integrate your findings into your SEO strategy:
- Incorporate identified keywords into your content strategy.
- Address content gaps and create comprehensive, high-quality content.
- Outreach to authoritative sources to secure valuable backlinks.
- Implement on-page optimizations based on your analysis.

By understanding your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can fine-tune your approach, discover new opportunities, and ultimately enhance your website's search engine visibility.

Hope this helps.

SEO in 2016, things changed from when I started my career back in 2004

Its been 12 years working in SEO Marketing industry and things has changed a lot since then. Initial 6-7 years were very easy (in terms of getting a website ranked in search engines), those where the years when I was open for any SEO challenge and have achieved first pages (sometimes number 1) rankings for many keywords that today a SEO guy might not even think of ranking in the dreams. During those time good on-page SEO, content and some quick links from any kinds of website would help. Also there were very few SEO companies around that time so that was also main reason why ranking a website was easier. In 2004 there were around 2-3 good SEO companies in Chandigarh and today you can see there are a couple of SEO companies in every sector and if I take SEO freelancers, work from home SEO guys, then this number could easily rist to around 300 or more.

SEO was fund those times, and it gave immense pleasure checking website rankings those times. Here are few of the keywords that I achieved top ranking during those times:

1. GED
2. GED Online
3. Football
4. UK football
5. Viagra
6. Buy Viagra
7. Weight Loss Pills
8. Logo Creator
9. PDF converter
10. Web Design Company
11. Paid Surveys
12. There were lot more but these are what I can recall at this moment. Will need to take a look at my resume to update more keywords here :)

 In the current year of 2016, when I think on SEO industry, it has changed a lot. Thanks to the spammer who  would do anything to get a website ranked and the google search spam team headed by Matt Cutts. The google search algorithm is more and more focused on quality of results and hitting hard on the spam websites. Anyone who violates copyrights, participates in link schemes or used a thin quality content is least likely to rank in the search engines results and chances of a penalty are there as well.

So what a webmaster can do to rank a website in search engines these days.

Here is the list that what a webmaster can do really in 2016 to achieve top rankings in search engines:

• Build a great website of value to user
• Add great quality content
• Wait
• Wait
• Wait 
• A grade on-page SEO work for all the pages
• Improve page load speed
• No copyright violations
• Wait 
• Wait
• Wait
• Keep a close eye on google and bing webmaster tools reports
• Get citation links
• NAP mentions
• Active presence at social networks
• Listing at google maps 
• Listing at top local listing websites and sponsored listing if possible
• Wait 
• Wait
• Wait
• PPC marketing campaign when business is in peak 
• Video Promotions
• Blog Promotions
• Get articles published in local newspapers, most newspapers are on web also so good exposure. 
• No hanky panky with paid or low quality links
• Get reviews, testimonials

Most corrupt political party in the world - Another Goolge Bombing Example

One of my friend at facebook shared a post over facebook asking people to Search for "most corrupt political party in the world". In the post he have also attached the screenshot of Google search results that highlights the Wikipedia page of Indian National Congress. Indian National Congress is one the main national parties in India along with BJP (Bhartiya Janta Party).  Now that guy is a supported of Narendar Modi, PM candidate from BJP for 2014 elections to be help in India.

Now reason I believe this phrase "Most corrupt political party in the world" can be another classic example of Google Bombing after "miserable failure" is because the guy who share the link over facebook is a SEO guy himself and chances are there that he might be trying to the get the INC wikipedia page to the number one spot when searched for "Most corrupt political party in the world".

Wikipedia pages are the best pages to get ranked in search results, tou can easily tweak the content and some off-page SEO can easily do the trick here.

If you take a look at the results, the other results are about corrupt countries and what people think about political parties. No other page for any other political party of India or any other country. Perhaps there is something fishy here.

More about google bombing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363

Search Engine Marketing Quote of the day

Hi All,

Jusrt few minutes back I was reading a very nice article at the URL http://moz.com/rand/11-tips-i-gave-to-marketers-this-morning/. This article came in the Moz top 10 newsletter which I've subscribed from a long time and I find their article very interesting and helpful.

In the article author has written very interestig quote about SEO and dating. The full quote is as follows:

Link building is a lot like dating. If you make links/sex the primary focus, it doesn’t work. Those have to be side effects of a great experience and a great match.

I've posted some similar quotes about SEO in the past and you can read all all those SEO quotes here.

I hope you like the quotes, please feel free to share these quotes, post your feedback. In case you've some interesting quotes about SEO to share please mention those and I'd feel happy to publish those with due credit to the author.

For those who love reading quotes on various topics I'd like to suggest to please visit my blog on luv quotes.

Online Reputation Management & SEO - Are they same?

This question was asked recently by one of ex-colleague. He told me that his company got their first ORM (Online reputation management) project and while the discussion was going on he made the statement that there is no difference and he can handle this project smoothly like the other SEO projects.  I just replied that I'll love to hear his statement once this new project is over and wished him good luck. After few days that friend called me and asked about tips on how to fix the negative results and he said he was wrong, it’s not like regular SEO.

So what is the difference between SEO and ORM?

Before I tell you the difference let me tell you that both SEO and ORM complement each other. A good SEO professional will definitely achieve success with ORM as well but for that he will need to be proactive in his approach and just think ahead of on-page and off-page SEO.

How ORM is different can be analyzed from the fact that in SEO you work on achieving page 2 rankings for a set of keywords. All you need to do is get all or few of those in page one and your client is happy. If the increase in rankings brings a significant increase in traffic and leads then chances are there that you'll get some good incentives/bonus from the clients as well. However ORM is a totally different ball game. In ORM you need to work on page basis you are committed to remove negative/unwanted results from a set number of search pages of Google or other search engines. Your client can be happy to see movement of negative results but the biggest challenge lies in getting the negative results out of the first page of search results. 

Definitely the strategies for ORM and SEO needs to be different like SEO is all about focusing on a single site, making it search engine compliance. Once you make that site search engine compliance you focus gets shifted to getting links to that site. However when it comes to online reputation management your focus is on creating new identities and promote lots of positive sites for the same keyword or a couple of keywords that are related (brand name or people name).

This is all about search engine optimization and online reputation management services relation to each other. I'll share some tips about ORM soon in my later posts. Keep visiting and share this post over social networks etc if you like it.

Good Day!

Perry Belcher we need SEO in 2013 post

Before I tell you who is Perry Belcher and why I need SEO in 2013 post from you, I'd request you to take a look at his post about SEO in 2012. Here is the link for the post  http://perrybelcher.com/seo-in-2012/. I have been following Perry Belcher from  along time and it was waley interesting to read his interview, articles and watch video of him. He is among the top internet marketere who have earned billions of dollars online by selling stuff, books, course and giving trainign etc.  His approach is very simple and proven.

His simple approach and giving examples from real life rather than some webiste etc makes it interesting to learn and easy to implement later. By the time he wrote about SEO in 2012 SEO wasn't that comples. Penguin and Panda updates have made things very much comples now a days and thats the reason I am asking Perry to make a post abour SEO in 2013 so that it can be bit easier  for the SEO professional.

Learn more about Perry Belcher at:

http://www.perrybelcher.com
http://linkedin.com/in/perrybelcher
http://youtube.com/user/perrybelcher
http://twitter.com/perrybelcher
http://belcherbutton.com
http://perrybelcher.net
http://facebook.com/theperrybelcher

Thanks! Also I'd like to update you that we are soon goinf to launch new and excting portals in 2013. Will keep you updated about the progress.



 

Top Blogs Every SEO profession should subscribe to

Every SEO professional has their own way to keep themselves updated about latest algorithmic updates and the SEO techniques that comes into existence after the algorithmic updates. Since internet is nowadays full of lots of content farms many SEO companies nowadays post articles, blogs and press releases about Panda and penguin updates just to get some quick links and to give an impression that they offer penguin and panda proof SEO services.  I started my SEO career way back in 2003 and at that time newsletters were the good source of SEO information for me. Main newsletter I’d subscribed at that time were the sitepronews, digitalpoint to name a few however nowadays there is overdose of information at the newsletters and it’s hard to rely just on newsletters for latest updates. Also I’d got lots more busier in SEO project now so  I don’t have time to subscribe to a couple of newsletters and scan 10-20 emails every day just to find some average kind of stuff in every email.

Best thing that worked for me these days is follow some credible blogs that provide the most relevant and most trusted information about SEO, algorithmic updates and most importantly and idea about what SEO changes might take place in future. I personally believe that SEO is not what works for getting top rankings now but SEO is rather what would work in the future.  Any SEO professional who can provide a futuristic SEO technique that works will definitely get lots of bonuses from his client and various new leads as well. 

Question that rises here is that with so much going around in SEO industry how one can focus about future SEO techniques and depict the techniques would work for sure. Now this is what makes you different from average SEO companies and professionals. I never liked the idea of content spinning and never used any kind of content spinning even at the time when many people were doing that profitably rather I found that rather than getting tons of content copies why not get 5 unique copies written and get those published. And the result was that none of my client or my websites got affected due to panda updates.  Another example I’d share is that at the time Google release its Google videos website I recommended one of my client who offered piano lessons online to promote videos at YouTube, dailymotion and Google videos with a little different approach. Previously the client was adding same title, description and tags at all the three websites but I suggest that we must us different title etc. Sooner YouTube was acquired and client has his site, YouTube and daily motion videos appearing in first page for nearly 100+ queries.

Lest cut it short and explain the benefit that subscribing to top blogs his helping me. The blogs that I follow are the ones that post information about the update as they happen and then the world follows those and many times they post interview from people about SEO changes that might happen etc. Here is the list of blogs that might be helpful to you as well.

1. Official Google Blog
2. Inside AdWords
3. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
4.  Inside AdSense Blog
5. Aaron wall Blog
6. Danny Sullivan Blog
7. SEOMoz
8. Matt cutts blog
9. HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog
10.  

In case there is some interesting and useful blog that you recommend adding to the list, please post a comment and I’d happily update the list here. Thanks and have good time with your SEO projects.