Keywords are among the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). Before you do any SEO work, you need to research keyword ideas. After you have found a list of keyword ideas, you need to analyze them for how difficult they will be to rank on the first page. Fortunately, there are free keyword research tools available to help speed up the process.

Google's Keyword Planner (ads.google.com)

Start with Google's Keyword Planner. To use this tool, login to Google Ads with your Google account and select "Keyword Planner" from the drop down "Tools" menu. To get a list of keywords which are related to your main idea, you can simply enter a phrase, website, or category. For example, if you type "London hotels," you will be presented with keywords related to hotels in London.

On top of this, you can get valuable search volume data that will help you to decide about which keywords to target. You want to ensure that enough people are searching for your keyword, but not so many that the competition is too strong.

Ubersuggest (ubersuggest.io)

Ubersuggest is free and is one of the easiest to use keyword research tools. Type in your main keyword and click the search button. You'll then be presented with a list of keywords. For example, if you search for "London hotels," you might get a list of keywords including "London hotels with spa" or "London hotels at Christmas."

The free version of Ubersuggest doesn't provide any information regarding monthly volume. Therefore, you should copy and paste the keywords into Google's Keyword Planner to get the monthly search volume data.

Keyword Shitter (keywordshitter.com)

Keyword Shitter is another free tool. While it's more basic than Ubersuggest, it can often produce lists that contain hundreds (sometimes thousands) of keywords. Just type your main keyword into the text box and hit the "Shit Keywords!" button.

Keyword Tool (keywordtool.io)

Keyword Tool is another free tool that can help you to get keyword ideas. Enter your main keyword idea, select your language and your preferred version of Google, then click the search button.

Combining Results

Once you have lists of keywords from the aforementioned keyword research tools, you should paste them into a spreadsheet and remove all the duplicate keywords. You can then use keywords from this list to put back into the four tools. If you keep repeating this process, you'll soon have a list of thousands of related keywords. Now you can paste your list back into Adwords to get the search volume data.

Keyword Finder (kwfinder.com)

After getting as many keyword ideas as possible, you need to start assessing their difficulty in terms of ranking highly on the first page of the search results. Keyword Finder can help you to analyze the competition. By using metrics such as domain authority and page authority, it will give you an overview of the competition on the first page.

Ensuring that you have the best keywords is important for any SEO campaign. Fortunately, there are many free tools available to help you generate thousands of keywords, get information about their monthly search volume, and find out how difficult they are to rank on the first page of Google.

Use these free tools in combination with each other to build large lists of keywords. Also, using search volume data and analyzing keywords for ranking difficulty will help you to target the best keywords for your business.