Running in blindly with a keyword that you know nothing about is an awful idea in SEO. If you don't do your research, you can end up using a keyword that has few searches and is very competitive. While there are some really great keyword research tools, many of them cost a good amount of money. If you are not a professional, or if you haven't started making much money from your website, it can be a little tough to justify these price tags. However, there are some very good free keyword research tools you can use that will give you all the information you need.
Chances are that you are doing SEO for Google, so why not use Google's keyword research tool? While this tool isn't very good for gauging competition, because the competition listed on this tool is for AdWords users and not how hard it is to rank for the keyword, it can give you a good idea of how many monthly searches you can expect from the keyword.
Also, as an added perk, you can figure out the CPC price. If you are making a website for AdSense, then this is incredibly helpful.
To get the most out of Wordtracker, you need to pay for their services. However, they will let you look up several keywords a day for free. While you will not gain access to all the information from the keyword suggestion tools, you can still get a good idea about how often the keyword is searched and a rough idea of how competitive it is.
The suggestion aspect of this tool, which give you other keyword ideas based on your search, is better than most other free keyword research tools.
This is a downloadable program that is based on the Google Keyword Tool. However, it presents several advantages over the regular Google tool. You can easily organize and save your searches, and exporting them from this program to another one is very easy. If you are interested in building in a large list of possible keywords to target now or in the future, then this may be exactly what you need.
Not only that, but if you are new with SEO, then this program comes with several helpful articles on finding the best keywords and how to push your SEO to the next level.
Much like Wordtracker, this is a paid service with a free trial. There is one thing that separates Keyword Discovery from other keyword research tools, and that is how it gathers information. Usually keyword tools tally search numbers from the last few months, but Keyword Discovery tallies keywords from the last 12 months.
This is helpful in overcoming seasonal searching. For example, this tool will show a much more even search number for seasonal items like "beaches" or "snow shovels," whereas other tools will show inflated numbers during one season, and very low numbers the next.
Doing keyword research is essential if you plan to do SEO for any reason. While most of the best keyword research tools must be paid for, there are plenty of free tools out there to help you gather the information needed to find a successful keyword. They may not have all the features of a paid program, such as advanced competition metrics and commerciality factors, but they are able to give you the basic data needed to start a successful keyword campaign.
Try one of the four today. They are free, easy to use and you can quickly get on to targeting keywords.