I often get asked what the best free keyword analysis tools are and how to go about using these tools. If you are looking to gather a list of valuable terms that can be used for writing content on your own blogging niche, then this post is for you!

Keyword research techniques for bloggers

1. Google Auto Suggest

Whether your blog is about fashion, finance, diets, recipes, football, life coaching or any other subject the techniques used will be the same!

Let us imagine that you, like me, write about blogging and are searching for some good terms to write a blog post about.

I am just going to use this as an example to show you how to find good terms for your own niche!

If I was thinking of writing a blog post about the best ways to choose a blogging niche, I would start off this process by first searching to try and understand the key terms and phrases that relate to choosing a blog niche. My first point of call would be Google.

So, if you type in the term you want to research, start by typing the words slowly and observe to see the suggestions that Google automatically suggests as you are typing. 

Autofill keywords when doing a Google search

By carefully observing the auto-suggests terms, you will immediately begin to see terms that are popular in searches and that you can consider using in article titles that you create.

Google Suggest is such an easy way to begin to gather useful keyword terms that you can use for blogging in your own niche, that it is a great free tool you should use.

Now, using the search term (I will use “blog niche” as an example)

  • Enter the term in a Google search.
  • Press enter.
  • Then scroll to the bottom of the page 1 results.
Similar terms results

What you will see at the bottom of the page are “searches related to” the term you entered in the search. 

These related terms will provide you with some invaluable clues as to what people search for.

You will find some extremely useful terms that you quite likely did not otherwise consider.

3. Quora

Quora searches for keyword research

Another excellent resource, and one that is so often under-utilized by so many bloggers, is Quora!

Quora is one of the best (if not the best) online Q&A forums for asking and answering questions on every topic imaginable.

As a blogger, entering terms you consider important to your niche and viewing the exact types of questions that people are looking to learn about, provides you with real insight into your niche!

Through Quora, understand your niche better by seeing what people are asking and need to learn about, whilst also seeing what terminology and expressions people use in your niche!

Questions

One of the first questions I see, if I type in “blog niche” for my own research, is “ways to monetarize your niche blog”, which comes up and many other questions asked, also refer to income from blogging.

This tells me that creating a post on “monetizing your blog” is something worth creating a post on for us here at Promarketingonline, and that the word “monetarization” is worth using.

This, of course, is just the beginning of the research but it provides you with an example of how you can use Quora!

4. BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo search tool

Buzzsumo is used by a lot of professional bloggers because it provides very rich information on the pages that your competitors are ranking for, and provides you with a breakdown of these competitors’ activities for the posts they are getting results for.

View the social media shares, activity, and total engagements for the top posts for a given term. I typed in “blog niche”, for example, and the print screen above shows the first few results I get to see.

Type in a term related to your niche on www.buzzsumo.com and you should find it a very valuable tool for learning more about your own niche and what your competitors are up to.

Note that you might need to set up a free account with Buzzsumo in order to use the tool.

5. Amazon Online

You might be surprised at seeing Amazon (the online retailer) in this list of keyword research tools, but this, in fact, is a great tool for bloggers to use!

Amazon is a surprisingly good tool that you can use for FREE for keyword research.

Go to your local version of Amazon (mine is Amazon.co.uk) and enter a term relating to your niche, into Amazon.

So, in my case, I entered the term “blogging”. One of the first books to come up and that shows with a number of good reviews, is “Blogging Made Easy” by Amen Sharma.

Using Amazon as a keyword search tool

Many paperbacks and all eBooks on Amazon normally have a “Look inside” option (see image above) and, by clicking to look inside the book, you can immediately begin to gather valuable information about terminology and related subjects to your niche.

Useful terms and keywords you can find using Amazon online

In this example above, using blogging as an example niche, you can see that you can begin to see what areas of your niche others have used and written about.

You may well have already considered these same subjects in your niche and learned nothing new.

Very often though, by searching through the table of contents for a number of books in your niche, you can build a list of some really useful terms and subject areas you might have missed for your niche blog.

6. Using Pinterest as a Search Engine to Find Keywords

You might have seen the suggestions that I gave for doing research to find a domain name and if so, you will already have an idea of how Pinterest can be an invaluable tool for finding keywords and key terms that really matter.

Anyway – to recap on using Pinterest for keyword research, you can simply start by entering a term or phrase, related to your blogging niche, into the Pinterest search bar.

I entered the term “Mediterranean food” and

Using Pinterest as a search engine for keyword research

Simply click on one of the terms that Pinterest shows in the results and you can go a level deeper to find terms within that term.

So I entered the term “Mediterranean food” and then clicked the result “vegetarian” and then arrived at the results below.

Mediterranean terms example - Using pinterest as one of the best free keyword analysis tools

As you can see, by using Pinterest as a search engine, you can go several layers down into a certain phrase, to see what popular terms evolve, in relation to your niche! 

If you were blogging about Mediterranean food, you could potentially, based on the data above, have a whole section on vegetarian food and include posts on gluten-free options, roasted Mediterranean food, and so on.

Pinterest in effect is a search engine that, when used for research, is actually one of the best free keyword analysis tools.

7. Competitor Search Results and Adwords Ads

At the top and side of Google search results, you will often see sponsored ads and these are known as Google Adwords ads. So, what does this have to do with blogging you might wonder?

Well, many of these advertisers spend significant time analyzing and testing the best keywords to use in their ads, particularly some of the big and well-known companies.

So, as a blogger, you can, for FREE, simply look and grab ideas from the wording of these paid ads.

Analysing Adwords text from competitors can be a great research tool

In the image above you can, for example, see the terms:

  • authentic
  • tailor-made
  • tours

and these types of terms can provide insight and provide terms that you might want to add to your own keyword research (in this case if your focus is safaris).

There is no guarantee that the wording of the ads is effective but, as a free resource, looking at the wording of ads from the top few results for sponsored ads is certainly worth doing. It costs you nothing!

8. Google Keyword Planner

You will need to have a Google Adwords account to use this tool but you can easily set up an account for free to get started.

Google keyword planner

The Keyword Planner is a robust tool, which links into Adwords and which provides a mass of data including:

  • Monthly traffic for key terms
  • Competition for each term (Adwords competition)

Whilst you will not necessarily want to only rely on this one technique for finding terms and keywords that are related to your blogging niche, this is nonetheless a really handy tool that will suggest some terms in your niche area that you will very likely have missed.

9. KeywordTool.io

Keyword tool IO

A nifty and very useful tool that many bloggers also use is KeywordTool.io. This easy-to-use tool will instantly throw out 100 plus terms related to the term you enter.

What I especially love about this specific tool is that you can not only search Google but also Youtube, Bing, and Amazon.

This tool s particularly good for suggesting long-tail terms (meaning terms that are longer than 3 words) – something that might be especially useful for ideas for blog titles.

There is a free and paid version.

10. Ubersuggest

ubersuggest tool

The Ubersuggest tool combines ‘Google Keyword Planner’ and ‘Google Suggest’ tools into one interface.

Enter a term related to your niche and click enter and you will see a list of terms that can be extremely useful for your blogging niche.

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Paul & Valeria