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No wonder you guys get overwhelmed by SEO and put it in the too hard basket half or most of the time. I almost did the same thing while writing this column and I’m supposed to be the expert! Seeing as SEO was one of the hot topics you guys couldn’t get enough of at the TOTECS Seminar, I sacrificed myself for you and have reviewed different SEO tools.

If you recall, at the start of the year, I did a four-week series on how to implement your perfectly researched SEO keywords into the TOTECS platform. Today I am going to take you back a step into keyword research territory, because without good research and a solid plan, there isn’t much point putting new keywords and content into your website.

I have been using Google Adwords Keyword Planner to research keywords for several years now. It gives you very specific data on keywords including the ability to narrow the search by country or city, which is probably my favourite feature, as it allows you to specifically see what your target audience is searching for.

The downside of the Keyword Planner is you technically cannot use it for free. It’s only free for Adwords users who are running advertising campaigns. This has become a point of contention in the office but what we learned was that there are some creative ways around this. Some of you might not be comfortable bending the rules, so I have spent some time researching free keyword planning tools to assist you in the research stages of your SEO journey.

THE BREAKDOWN

Google Trends is a basic free tool which allows you to see what is trending worldwide with the option to narrow the search to a geographical area. It allows you to compare and contrast a total of four keywords of your choosing.

Keyword Discovery offers a basic service which allows you to see how popular a keyword is (represented by a number) and automatically chooses related keywords to compare it to. A paid upgrade gives you access to a dozen more features including a complete 12 month search history.

Moz offers some great insights such as keyword popularity and rankings across different search engines. You need to sign up using your credit card and you get the first month as a "free trial" which you need to cancel within 30 days if you don't want any charges. Moz only starts tracking keywords and collating data when you request it. The data will be available a week after your initial request.

Web SEO is another super basic tool which shows a popularity of a keyword by a scale indicator (as opposed to numbers). I’d probably give this one a miss.

Wordstream offer 30 free restricted super basic searches with the keyword frequency displayed by a small graph. It blurs out a bunch of data in hope that you will sign up to get access to more information.

Wordtracker gives you basic data which isn’t clear to read. It provides you with an idea of how popular a keyword is, yet gives you no geographical breakdown. Similarly to Moz, you can get a free trial but you need to cancel within 7 days in order to avoid getting charged.

I signed up for, and used at least 10 other services which offer keyword analytics data. None came close to the Google Adwords Keyword Planner. The services listed above provide a starting point for any SEO related research. However, if you’re going to pay anyone for this data I would recommend signing for an Adwords account and get it straight from Google rather than using third party services.

As always, if you need some help or guidance we are happy to help. Shoot us an email or give us a call on 1300 123 500.

Til next week,
Kasia