The Top Free Keyword Planners for SEO Pros

How do free keyword planners compare? SEO professionals and digital marketers rely on keyword research to find out what words or phases consumers use to search for the products or services that they are promoting.

Adwords Keyword Planner by Google

Google's Keyword Planner is for AdWords' customers; however, anyone who opens an AdWords account can use the tool without creating an AdWords campaign. Unfortunately, Google has started to limit the data available for users who never spend, or those that spend very little. The biggest change is that where free users would concrete numbers for searches, they now see very broad ranges, such as 1K to 10K.

Moz

Moz's Keyword Explorer provides as much data as Google's Keyword Planner, with less broad ranges for the number of searches. Moz's Keyword explorer also gives average number of searches for a six-month period to keep people from being surprised by seasonal variations. Unfortunately, users are limited to two free searches per day unless they opt for the paid version.

While Moz favorably compares their Keyword Explorer to Google's Keyword Planner, the better choice depends on whether a person needs to perform multiple searches each day and whether they sell seasonal merchandise and do not want a six month average for search terms.

Free keyword tools are important to bloggers, especially ones who are not getting traffic despite having high quality content. Keyword tools show what words and phrases people type when they use a search engine. The other free options available:

SEO Book

The SEO Book Keyword Tool shows daily and monthly searches for both Google and Bing. It is completely free, however, it does not show competition. Additionally, SEO Book provides data on related terms, instead of just suggesting related phrases.

SEM Rush

SEM Rush provides all of the information that Moz's Keyword Explorer and Google's Keyword Planner, plus you can take a competitor's site that ranks high, put their URL in, and find out what keywords they use to obtain a higher rank. The catch is that SEM Rush only allows a certain number of searches before it asks you to upgrade to the paid version.