There are some clients that use Orange County SEO services who believe that because Google is getting better at interpreting language and search intent, we can lay off the keywords. Unfortunately, they are totally wrong about that since keywords are still vital indicators of how people use to search. Although we can ease up on using the exact keywords, an analysis of keywords provides ideas for content that is appropriate to searchers and reveals gaps that your content can execute. 

The SEO company in Orange County says that keyword analyses provide ideas for more significant content and filling up any content gaps. For this reason, these seven free keyword research tools, from extensive to slightly excessive, can help you out. 

Keyword Surfer

If you are looking for a deeply engaging keyword research experience, then adding the Keyword Surfer Chrome extension is your best bet. It takes control of each of your Google searches by showing keyword statistics in the search bar. Also, it adds a side panel to the search result page, providing the top 10 keywords that are very much like the current query. 

However, Keyword Surfer is not meant to be your main keyword research tool since that data isn’t totally complete. Nevertheless, it is still a very helpful tool to have working in the background just in case something grabs your attention while you are browsing. 

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a good mix of finesse and ease. On one side of the coin, it is a Google SEO tool so it gains entry to one of the largest and the most reliable keyword databases. But it does not allow a lot of research customization and divulges only the most basic of keyword quality metrics. 

Put in a few seed keywords and receive a list of semantically similar keyword suggestions, not lacking any metrics such as monthly search volume, competition, and bid ranges. There will most probably be thousands of results. There are handy sorting and filtering options to narrow them down. Most particularly, you can leave out negative keywords, so you won’t view the results for searches that consist of those words. 

Although you can see a lot of keywords, the variation is limited and probably won’t inspire original content ideas. Yet, Keyword Planner is still a good way to initiate your keyword research. When you eliminate the irrelevant results, synonyms, and hardly-ever searched terms, you are presented with a keyword list of about a dozen basic but actionable terms. 

Question DB

Question DB is another question-oriented keyword finder that extracts a keyword list from a database of over 48 million questions that are asked on Reddit. 

Normally when a person posts a question to Reddit, they ask something that cannot be answered by Google at a drop of a hat. According to the Orange County SEO experts, this becomes your cue to create a special piece of professional content. Also, you can add it to the topic’s Reddit thread when it is prepared. 

Every now and then this tool brings back nothing fruitful, but there are other times it can return great stuff. For instance, by just searching for a “winter jacket,” there was a question about how to use a rain shell and a sweater to create a winter jacket and several questions about form-fitting jackets. This provides you with two out of the blue but encouraging content ideas. 

Rank Tracker

In contrast to other SEO tools that are featured on this list, Rank Tracker is a group of nine research methods. Those paths can be comprehensively categorized into two distinct classifications such as snooping on your competitors and having fun with keyword semantics.  

Rank Tracker locates the highest-ranking keywords for a competitor and reveals the keyword cracks on your website. When it comes to semantic research, put in a keyword, and receive a list of related searches, related questions, and autocomplete suggestions. Keywords gathered in this manner are a rich source for content creators since many of them already appear to be similar to article titles. 

Furthermore, Rank Tracker merges with Google’s SEO tools, consisting of analytics, keyword planner, and search console, so you can view specific quality metrics, such as organic search volume and keyword difficulty. 

Google Trends

Google Trends is not really about finding the best keywords but more about prioritizing content ideas. It exposes keyword popularity over time and across geographic locations. You can plan and compare many keywords on the same graph. 

For instance, Google Trends shows “winter jacket” and “down jacket” are not as transposable as they appear to be. Searches for “winter jacket” reach the pinnacle in early November and are rapidly engulfed with searches for “down jackets.” Maybe the individuals looking for winter jackets find out about the types and end up thinking that down is the best type so they enter “down jacket” in the search. Once they learn about various down jacket brands, an uptick in “Arcteryx” searches are evident. 

When you have this information made available to you, you should create and schedule a series of articles based on keyword priorities throughout the calendar year.  With this model, a content marketer can create a guide on different types of winter jackets with a listicle of the best down jackets and then publish a detailed review of the finest Arc’teryx models. 

Google Search Console

Google Search Console allows someone to find opportunities for keywords which are already being utilized on your website. 

Google Search Console offers a list of keywords that a website ranks for, consisting of SERP positions and click-through rates. The technique used is that each SERP position has an extensively CTR benchmark. For instance, a keyword in the first position should anticipate gaining a CTR of about 30%. Every consecutive position falls around 5%, and the last four positions on the first page of SERP get a CTR of roughly 3%. 

You can check to see if a keyword is lagging behind its SERP position CTR benchmark. To increase the CTR, you could concentrate on your snippets, think of a captivating title, optimize the meta description, apply schema markup, or even rewrite the page to make your content a better fit for users’ anticipations. Making these improvements will help to attract more traffic than attempting to rank with new keywords.