$1k Blog

Over the last few days, I’ve been working extensively with a number of free keyword research tools. Now, I know there are some paid alternatives out there, but I can’t afford them, and, at any rate, I see no reason to invest into them just yet, since the research tools I’ve found so far seem to do their job just fine.

At any rate, I thought I’d take this opportunity to give something back to my readers and share the free tools I use for keyword research - who knows, those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the last few years might find them handy.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Overture
• Wordtracker
• Digital Point (a nice combination of Wordtracker and Overture)
• SEO Book (only came across it today - seems to be very powerful)

Now, a few notes as to the functionality of these tools.

Overture is great, but it’s slow and it only pulls results from Yahoo, which means that you have no idea what people are searching for on Google (which, after all, is probably what most of you are hoping to dominate, right?) One rule of the thumb I’ve heard is to multiply the Overture number of searches by 8 to get an estimate of Google searches for the specific keyword.

Wordtracker is great as it already includes Google results - however, the free tool I linked to provides daily search count, which is not always consistent with Overture results (some phrases will appear in Wordtracker but not in Overture, and vice versa). Use at your own risk.

Digital Point is slowly becoming my favourite because it provides both Overture and Wordtracker results - however, be prepared to enter really long authentication humans to prove that you’re not a bot (can be rather annoying at times).

SEO Book provides an estimate of Google and MSN searches (although it multiplies Yahoo results by 2 to get its Google estimate, which may be too conservative an estimate). All in all, a very nifty tool, but I’ve only been using it for a while, so I’m not at all sure if their Google search calculation formula is correct.

One final note of caution - never, ever rely on just one keyword research tool! Not all of the search instruments I listed above are 100% accurate, so it’s always best to analyze what looks like a lucrative niche with another tool or two just to be on the safe side.