Keyword research can be quite a daunting task for every content marketer. Not only that, but finding the best keyword research tool for your needs can be difficult too. That’s why it is paramount to know what makes a great keyword research tool and why the best keyword research programs are way more useful than standard software.

A keyword research tool is indispensable for developing a successful marketing strategy. While all search engines favor high-quality content, you won’t be able to generate much traffic if you are not able to include the right keywords and key phrases within the content. This is why keyword research programs were created – to enhance the keyword selection process and to help you get an edge over your competition.

Finding the Best Keyword Research Tool

When it comes to choosing keyword research tool, you need to think out of the box. While there are countless free keyword research tools out there, most of them fail when it comes to providing reliable services. On the other hand, a paid program is faster, easier to use and extremely effective. While many paid programs offer free versions as well, paid versions offer full functionality and extra features.

Here are some of the best keyword research programs available on the market.

1. SEOmoz Pro: this tool stands out as one of the most recognized names in the industry, being an excellent program to build backlinks, track rankings, compare backlinks across multiple URLs, find out how many social media followers you have and test your website for crawl errors.

2. Majestic SEO: the toolkit from Majestic SEO includes a powerful site explorer and backlink checker. You can choose from various pricing options, including silver, gold and platinum. With this tool, you can have detailed reports about your website’s anchor text, keywords, citation flow and backlink history.

3. Keyword Spy: one of the advanced keyword research tool, Keyword spy stands out of the crowd due to its powerful features and unique benefits. With this tool, you can do almost anything that can possibly be done related to keyword research. You can track all activity in a given industry or niche, track your competitor’s activity or study new emerging markets.

4. Advanced Web Ranking: this powerful keyword research tool brings useful data from Google Webmaster API, Google AdWords, Google Suggest, Google Trends, SEMRush, 7Search, Wordtracker and Yahoo API. Using all this plethora of information, you can easily identify the most efficient keywords for your campaign.

5. SEMRush: with this tool, you can find out many precious secrets about your competitors’ paid and organic keyword strategy. You can easily search by competitor domain or you can discover new competitors using certain keywords in your niche. SEMRush gives you access to trends, volumes and many other information from ten different Bing and Google regional domains.

6. Long Tail Pro: this tool gives you an advantage when you need to look for a long tail keyword ideas which help you to rank your content. LTP has a very powerful tool for analysing any keyword and competition for that keyword. In very short time you will find which keyword will be easy to rank and for which you will need a lot of SEO skills. Get Long Tail Pro or read more here.

The Bottom Line

Even though choosing the best keyword research tool might seem difficult, all you have to do is to compare two or three programs that offer the exact features and benefits you want. In the end, keyword research should be a fun thing to do.