Struggling with expensive keyword research tools? Worry no more. The secret to traffic growth isn't locked behind paywalls. Discover these 15 completely free keyword research tools that will help you uncover industry goldmines, increase website traffic, and drive business growth.
1. Google Keyword Planner: The SEO Powerhouse from AdWords
Google Keyword Planner, part of Google Ads (formerly AdWords), serves more than just paid advertising campaigns. It's equally powerful for SEO keyword research and content inspiration. This free tool helps create ad groups, provides bid suggestions, analyzes competitor strategies, and even predicts campaign performance. Note that you'll need an active Google Ads account with spending history to access comprehensive data.
2. Ubersuggest: The Perfect Complement to Google Keyword Planner
Ubersuggest offers keyword suggestions that Google Keyword Planner might miss. It displays results alphabetically for thorough review and provides valuable metrics like keyword difficulty scores to help identify ranking opportunities.
3. InfiniteSuggest & KeywordTool.io: Expand Your Keyword Lists
InfiniteSuggest generates extensive keyword lists (300+ per search) without search volume data. Combine it with KeywordTool.io (which processes up to 800 keywords) to filter results by search volume and competition levels.
4. Google Correlate: Discover Hidden Keyword Relationships
This underutilized tool excels at identifying related search patterns, particularly valuable for expanding long-tail keyword lists by revealing terms users search for together.
5. Google Autocomplete: Real User Search Behavior
The suggestions appearing as you type in Google's search bar directly reflect popular user queries, offering authentic insights into search intent and behavior patterns.
6. YouTube Autocomplete: Video SEO Goldmine
YouTube's search suggestions reveal trending video queries. Analyzing these can optimize video titles, descriptions, and tags while identifying content opportunities.
7. Amazon Autocomplete: E-commerce Trend Spotter
Amazon's search suggestions highlight popular product-related queries, invaluable for e-commerce businesses to understand market demand and optimize product listings.
8. Bing Autocomplete: Alternative Traffic Source
While often overlooked, Bing's search suggestions can reveal different user segments and search patterns compared to Google, offering additional keyword opportunities.
9. KeywordTool.io: Multi-platform Keyword Generator
This freemium tool taps into autocomplete data across Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, app stores, and social platforms to generate extensive long-tail keyword lists.
10. Kparser: Rapid Keyword Discovery
Kparser's free version quickly generates keyword variations and related terms, helping identify new optimization directions when combined with other tools for volume analysis.
11. Wordtracker & Wordtracker Scout: Browser-based Research
The free tier offers 50 daily keyword suggestions from multiple platforms. The Chrome extension provides on-page keyword analysis for monitoring your own or competitor pages.
12. Answer The Public: Question-based Content Inspiration
This unique tool visualizes actual user questions (who/what/where/when/why/how) surrounding your keywords, perfect for creating content that directly addresses audience needs.
13. Google Trends: Real-time Search Patterns
Track search popularity over time, identify seasonal trends, and discover related queries to align content with current interests and predict future search behavior.
14. HyperSuggest: Cross-platform Keyword Mining
The free version reveals search patterns across multiple platforms (limited to 10 results), helping understand how users search differently on various services.
15. Also Asked: Deep Dive into Related Questions
This tool extends keyword research by showing how questions branch into sub-questions, providing content structure ideas that match user search journeys.
By strategically combining these free tools, marketers can build comprehensive keyword strategies without budget constraints, uncovering valuable opportunities across search platforms and content types.