Content is king, but only if it’s relevant, timely, and seen by your target audience. Whether you want to research keywords to optimize your existing content and improve your website’s organic ranking or you want to generate topic ideas for fresh, SEO-friendly writing, here are 10 SEO tools, in random order, that will help you take your topic and keyword research to the next level.
SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant
SEO Writing Assistant is a content optimization tool that helps you fine-tune your copy for SEO friendliness, readability, tone of voice, and originality. Plus, it’s available as a convenient WordPress plugin and Google Docs add-on.
The limited, free plan for this tool allows you to check your content for readability and SEO friendliness. However, if you want to unlock the tone-of-voice and originality features, you’ll have to subscribe to the Guru plan, for which a free trial is available.*
Ubersuggest helps you discover keywords for your content. It gives insight into things like trends, search volume, and SEO difficulty and lets you sort keyword ideas by various categories (suggestions, related, questions, prepositions, and comparisons). You can also filter results by metrics like search volume and SEO difficulty and define specific keywords to be included or excluded. In addition, the tool provides a Google SERP overview, listing the top URLs that rank for your chosen keyword along with monthly visits, links, domain score, and social shares. It even shows you content ideas! You can harness the power of these features to find topic inspiration, design high-performing title structures, determine ranking difficulty, and explore relevant keywords to integrate in your copy.
To get started with Ubersuggest, you can create a free account, with limited features and the option to upgrade later, or you can sign up for a 7-day free trial for one of the paid subscriptions.*
Answer the Public
Answer the Public shows you the Google searches for a given topic, providing you not only with search insight but also with content ideas. The platform sorts results by categories (questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, and related) and lets you switch between its visualization and list options to view them. You can use this data to better understand searchers’ interests and create valuable content for your target audience.
The limited version of the tool is free, but you’ll have to sign up for a Pro plan to get access to more features.*
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
Keyword Generator helps you find keyword ideas, providing insight into keyword difficulty and search volume and even showing when the data was last updated. For true versatility, the tool gives you the option to research your chosen keywords not only for Google but also for Bing, YouTube, and Amazon.
Keyword Generator can be used for free, with limitations, and Ahrefs offers several paid subscription plans for access to its various SEO tools, along with a 7-day trial for $7.*
Google Trends
Google Trends is a free* tool that gives insight into what people are interested in by letting you enter a search term and showing you interest over time, along with interest by subregion, related topics, and related queries. You can even include additional search terms to compare them. With this data, you can determine if a topic is popular enough to write about or if you need to reevaluate your content idea.
Moz Keyword Explorer
Keyword Explorer lets you enter a keyword and then shows you metrics such as monthly volume, difficulty and priority scores, and organic click-through-rate. What’s more, it lists keyword suggestions, which can be filtered (think: volume, inclusion or exclusion of specific keywords, and keyword grouping). Finally, it provides a SERP analysis with insight into page and domain authority for the results on page one.
To use this tool, you can create an account and access the free, limited plan. Alternatively, you can subscribe to a Moz Pro plan and unlock additional features – there’s a free 30-day trial available.*
AlsoAsked.com
AlsoAsked.com is a free* tool that lets you enter a search term and then returns the questions that people also ask around that topic. You can use it not only to get plenty of content inspiration but also to satisfy user intent by integrating answers to also asked questions in your copy.
SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
The Keyword Magic Tool lets you type in your seed keyword and then shows you a keyword list with data like search volume, trends, and keyword difficulty. You can filter these results by choosing a predefined range or setting a custom one for various SEO metrics, by including or excluding specific keywords, and by selecting a combination of categories (all or questions plus broad match, phrase match, exact match, or related).
You can start using the Keyword Magic Tool by creating a free account with limited access. For more features, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid subscription or sign up for a free 7-day trial.*
Ahrefs Content Explorer
Content Explorer lets you “find the most popular articles on any topic,” as advertised by Ahrefs. Moreover, it shows you insightful metrics for the results, such as organic traffic, traffic value, and social shares. Above all, it lets you see topic trends over time that can help you create in-demand content.
There’s no free plan for this tool. But Ahrefs offers a 7-day trial for $7 for its Lite and Standard plans. With either of these subscriptions you can access not only Content Explorer but also other SEO tools.*
Seed Keywords
Seed Keywords is a simple but unique, free* tool that lets you create a search scenario and then generates a URL to share with your network. Your friends and colleagues can then answer your question and help you find keyword ideas in the process.
Which SEO tool or combination of tools is your favorite? Would you add any other SEO tools to this list? Share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below!
*As of the time of this writing
