Keyword Research (Suggestion) Tools

I got asked today about which were the best tools to use for keyword research. Here are some of the tools which will give you an idea of what, potentially, your target market is likely to be typing in to the search engines.

Overture Suggestion Tool (USA)- displays results from the previous month

Overture Suggestion Tool (UK) - as above but for UK

Word Tracker - you can use their free trial version (for a certain number of keywords) but need to pay £140.00 / $242.24 per year for the full version.

Google Adwords is probably the best tool to use for keyword research (suggestions), though it doesn't exactly tel you the number of times a search word has been typed in to its search engine. To get started you will firstly need to set up an account, which is pretty straighforward. Once you set up an account you will need to activate it (having received email notification). Once activated, you will be able to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which includes the NEW "Keyword Variation" and "Site-Related Keywords" features. These tools are great for viewing the popularity of a search term and the volume of advertisers for that term (I will include some screenshots and a more detailed overview in a folow-on article).

MIVA Keyword Tool (formerly eSpotting) offers a keyword generator which gives you an idea of the popularity of a keyword across its network (UK) over the past 30 days. This is actually quite a simple, yet neat tool and ideal for keyword research.

**Update**
Online Marketing Blog also points to these Keyword Research Tools:
Keyworddiscovery.com and Google Suggest  - incidentally, the latter can be used with Google Toolbar within Firefox:

Related Article

SEOmoz has an interesting article on this subject: When Wordtracker is Not Enough - Some Alternative Tips for Keyword Suggestions and Traffic Estimations

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