Used by many marketers all over the world, Keywords Everywhere is a great tool to help you find relevant search terms to optimize your campaigns, or leverage your content.
Unfortunately, since late 2019, Keywords Everywhere is no longer a free tool, which has left marketers looking for free alternatives.
If this is your case, we’ve compiled some of our favorite alternatives which we’ll share with you in this post.
Whether you’re looking for a free alternative, or a more advanced paid one, here are our 5 keyword research tools recommendations.
WMS Everywhere
WMS Everywhere is one of the best free alternatives out there to Keywords Everywhere.
This Google Chrome Extension allows you to see the search volumes for different keywords, right in Google’s results page – as did Keywords Everywhere.
There are a few things we love about it.
- The related keywords tab makes it easy to see the search volumes for different keywords, and its estimated CPC – which is very hand for PPC campaigns.
- The “People Also Searched For” tab makes it easy to see different keyword suggestions, which has helped us quite a few times find new keyword topics we hadn’t considered before.
- You’re also able to change the country in the settings menu, so you can see the different search volumes in each different country.
However, the tool does have a few glitches – hey, it’s still free.
One of the biggest ones we’ve found is that whenever a search query triggers Google’s Knowledge Graph, the WMS Everywhere sidebar doesn’t show.
This can be pretty annoying some times, but not too much of a problem.
Keyword Surfer
Keyword Surfer is very similar to Keywords Everywhere, and WMS Everywhere. It is also a Chrome Extension, and the display panel is also very similar to both tools.
The tool does have some differences to other two, though. For example, it does not display the estimated CPC for each search term, or the suggested/related keywords.
In its place, you can see how similar the suggested keywords are to your keyword – which, in our opinion, isn’t that useful to be honest.
On the other hand, the tool does provide a set of features none of the other tools have – the correlation charts.
In a clean, visual interface, you can see which websites are ranking for that keyword, or their expected monthly traffic (total website traffic).
For a free tool, there’s not much more we could ask for.
Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner is, out of the 5 options, the most adequate tool for keyword research for Paid Media.
It’s a Google tool, and Google tools are all interconnected. This means you can perform your keyword research on Keyword Planner and add the keywords you find directly to your campaigns with the click of a button.
Furthermore, the Keyword Planner comes with a few additional features that make this tool one of the most used in the market.
For example, the “Grouped ideas” tab is a great way to find new keyword topics that are relevant to your business, and that you hadn’t previously considered.
You can also type in your competitors’ URL and get some additional keyword ideas.
All in all, a very intuitive tool for PPC managers.
Keyword Explorer by Moz
This tool’s main target is SEO managers, without a doubt. It’s more complete in terms of data and deliverables than the options above.
Keyword Explorer by Moz gives you basic keyword data (volume, position, keyword difficulty) but also throws in each keyword’s expected organic click-through-rate (CTR), the pages ranking for specific keywords, and your competitor’s target keywords.
Again, the focus here is organic but it’s still just as useful a tool as any for keyword inspiration and optimization, whether the goal is to employ those keywords in an organic strategy or a paid one.
However, the tool is only free for a limited amount of searches. To access its full features, you need to subscribe to Moz Pro.
Semrush
Semrush is a paid platform but, as far as we’re concerned, it’s worth every penny.
Not only is it a keyword research tool, but it’s also a competitive analysis tool.
It’s surely the most complete out of the 5 and it provides data not only on keywords (paid search or organic), but also on your competitor’s target keywords and their paid search ads (ad copy, keywords, estimated traffic, and a lot more).
In a simple interface, Semrush provides keyword suggestions, along with their respective keyword difficulty, estimated traffic trends, CPC, and too many other features we could talk about – but that would deserve a dedicated post on its own.
It is an extremely useful tool for any marketer out there.
The Pro Version is $99.95 a month but it does offer a free trial so you can explore the platform before making any decisions.
Up To You
Are there any other tools you use that are missing from this post?
If there are, please let us know – we’d love to give them a try and share them with our readers!
2 comments
Keyword Surfer is no longer free. In fact, I would consider it quite expensive.
Hey Dan,
Thanks for the heads up – this post has been on my “to update soon” list for a while. Will work on an update soon, though.
However, I’ve just checked and the Google Chrome extension is still free, and still useful. As of lately, I’ve been using WMS everywhere, mostly. Did you find any of the other tools useful?
Once again, thanks for the heads up!