In 2018 there are now dozens of both free and paid keyword research tools available. Many of them are good but also very expensive. Having worked in SEO and PPC for close to a decade I’ve had the chance to try out several of them. In order to help you get the most bang for your buck, I decided to write this guide outlining the top 3 keyword research tools of 2018.
Finding A Good Keyword Research Tool
Kind of ironic researching a research tool, eh? Well, when you are looking to find a good keyword research tool there are a number of factors and features to consider.
First, you want to look at what search engines the keyword tool is pulling its data from. While some tools, such as Google’s keyword tool, make it pretty obvious which search engines they pull from – others you will have to do a bit of digging to figure out. (Don’t worry, I’ve done that digging for you and will let you know under each tool what they use).
Next it is important to look at the various features that the tool offers. Does it just give you search volume estimates? Does the keyword tool provide any form of competitive research? It’s a good idea to stack up the features a tool has, then consider what features of those you actually need or would use. There’s no sense in paying $100 a month for a tool with dozens of features that you will never use.
Finally comes price. I run this website to help college students learn how to build a profitable website that earns them money so they aren’t stuck working crappy part time jobs with crappy pay. That said, there’s also an understanding that many probably currently are working those crappy paying jobs, at least until their site’s really start earning. For this reason, I am going to make a point with this guide to help you find which keyword research tool will give you the most bang for your buck and help you find success with affiliate marketing.
Without further adieu, let’s examine the top keyword research tools:
1. SEMRush
Price: $99/mo, $199/mo, $399/mo
Grade: B+
SEMRush is one of the industry leaders in keyword research. The platform is truly robust, so they are actually justified in asking for $99/mo for their baseline service. Unless you run a private internet marketing firm or are a company, you likely don’t need to look at the higher tier plans.
SEmRush Features:
- Competitive Research Tools – Look into the keywords your competitors are optimizing for and bidding on to help structure your marketing strategy. You get a full suite of competitive research tools at your disposal.
- Keyword Research – Data compiled from Google & Bing. Get an understanding of the general search volume certain keywords are getting and what the competition is like for keywords.
- Position Tracking – Monitor how your website ranks for certain keywords
- Backlink Audit Tool – Check for good and bad backlinks, also see where your competition is getting links from
- PPC Keyword Tool
- Domain vs Domain Comparison – Stack 2 or 3 domains each other and see how they perform in all forms of search (probably my favorite SEMRush feature)
Overall SEMRush has an excellent suite of very robust tools. I’ve found that SEMRush has stronger accuracy for paid search research than it does for organic research, but that’s just my own personal experience with the tool.
If you have clients and are trying to help imporove their digital marketing strategies then SEMRush could serve you very well and the $99/mo price point is worth its weight in gold.
However, if you are working on building out affiliate marketing sites for yourself and don’t have a strong budget (yet), SEMRush probably isn’t your best choice. Additionally, SEMRush was designed for search marketing as a whole – it has little to no extra features catering towards affiliate marketers.
Read My Full SEMRush Review
2. SpyFu
Price: $39/mo, $78/mo, $299/mo
Grade: B
SpyFu is another very popular option for keyword and competitive research in digital marketing. While their price points are a bit easier to digest than SEMRush, the SpyFu tool-set is not quite as robust. My personal opinion is that SpyFu does not have quite as user-friendly of a design, however the tool is still strong and worth considering. I’ve found SpyFu far outperforms SEMRush when it comes to competitor research and finding strong backlink opportunities.
SpyFu has built itself around reporting. Most of the best tools that SpyFu offers come in the form of reports. For folks that like that have more of a “product” when completing their research, SpyFu compiles various PDF reports for chosen domains.
SpyFu Features:
- Organic and PPC Keyword Research – Like the others, SpyFu compiles its keyword data from Google & Bing
- Backlink Information & Contact Info – This is my favorite feature of SpyFu. You can get contact info for site you want to get a backlink from. This provides you with an opportunity to reach out and offer to do a guest post or other backlinking strategy.
- Reporting – SpyFu has a plethora of reports available and they (almost) all come with a downloadable PDF option. These PDFs can also be branded if you pay for their higher tier price point
- PPC Account Scanning – You can scan your AdWords campaigns and get recommendations for negative keywords to add to help optimize your campaign spending
- Tracking – Keep track of keywords and rankings for multiple websites. This allows you to keep tabs on competitors performance as well as your own
Overall I would recommend SpyFu is SEMRush doesn’t quite fit within your budget and you want a decent look at keyword opportunities. The data is not quite as in-depth or robust as SEMRush, but it is still enough for lower volume users. SpyFu also offers the ability to lower your price point by paying annually instead of monthly, which SEMRush does not offer.
3. Jaaxy
Price: Free Trial, $49/mo, $99/mo
Grade: A
I’ll be honest, I saved the best for last here. As mentioned earlier, this guide is meant to fit you with the top keyword research tool to fit your needs and your budget. As this site is catered toward teaching how to make money with affiliate marketing, I rank tools that at least give affiliate marketing some consideration with their design higher.
Jaaxy offer a full suite of tools design ed to help users not only find strong keywords, but also to find domains, affiliate programs, niche ideas and much more. In addition to these features, Jaaxy comes at a much more affordable price point than the previous 2 options.
Jaaxy Features:
- Free Starter Trial – Get to know how Jaaxy works before you decide to spend money on it
- Keyword Research Data – Data is pulled from all 3 major search engines: Google, Bing and Yahoo
- Keyword List Manager – Develop lists of keywords around a central theme. This will become hugely useful when you start writing in-depth content
- Keyword SEO Strength – See how strong a keyword is on a grade scale of 0-100 (100 being easy to rank for, 0 being very competitive) alongside the actual number of articles ranked for a given keyword (QSR). You’ll also gain insight into the average monthly searches for a keyword and the estimated traffic you would receive if you ranked on the first page for a given keyword.
- Alphabet Soup – The alphabet soup method for finding keyword is nothing new. However Jaaxy automates that process, allowing you to quickly and easily find hundreds of strong keywords to optimize your content around.
- Affiliate Program Finder – Type in a keyword, choose the affiliate program database and Jaaxy will give you a list of relevant affiliate programs to sign up for as well as what that program’s commission payout is – allowing you to maximize your ROI
- Domain search – In addition to your keyword lists you will also be able to see if a given keyword is available for a .com, .net or .org domain.
Overall I put Jaaxy at the top of my list for anyone looking for a strong keyword research tool – especially if it is for the purpose of affiliate marketing. The suite of tools is designed to give an affiliate marketer all the resources they need to build successful and profitable websites over and over again.
I also trust and standby Jaaxy’s accuracy. I’ve even gone so far as working to persuade the company I work for to switch their keyword research tool over to Jaaxy from SEMRush because I believe its data is far more reliable and also provides greater brainstorming ability in finding new keyword opportunities.
Give Jaaxy a Try:
Conclusion
There are a number of great keyword research tools out there and I can assure you the 3 listed in this post are the top choices for professional internet marketers. The choice boils down to what features are offered, what features you will use and how much will you be paying to use those features. All 3 of the keyword research tools discussed will provide you with accurate data for the search engines that they crawl.
After reading this post, which keyword research tool do you think would be the best fit for you? Do you have experience with any of the tools? If so, I’d love to hear your feedback or any questions I may have left unanswered. Leave your comments below and I will get back to you ASAP.
Thanks,
Dev
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