Can decent keyword research be done without paying for premium tools?

Can decent keyword research be done without having to pay any money for the premium membership to the well know keyword tools? I usually try brainstorming then check those keywords in google keyword planner and other free tools available. But some paid tools seem to provide very different stat. For example i had a keyword which showed no search volume in google keyword planner but one of the paid tool showed like 1000+ search volume. I don't know the tool used because i got the data from another source. And also the paid version gave many other relevant keywords which i didn't find in keyword planner or Ubersuggest or even kwfinder.

I use wordze

Exactly! Do not depend on tools completely because each tool shows different results. Even the keyword competition. The best thing to do is manual research. Analyze the top 10 pages in the SERP and manually do a study on their ONPAGE/OFFPAGE SEO, domain, site speed etc.

No tool is perfect.

mindlesswizard said:

Exactly! Do not depend on tools completely because each tool shows different results. Even the keyword competition. The best thing to do is manual research. Analyze the top 10 pages in the SERP and manually do a study on their ONPAGE/OFFPAGE SEO, domain, site speed etc.

No tool is perfect.

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How much do you think allintitle and allinurl effect the keyword competition?

Good question.

There are lots and lots of factors that matters in SEO. All of the pages ranking on the top may not have the same level of optimization but still pages rank on the top. Strong and good backlinks plays most important role in ranking sites. Apart from these there are other factors that you can work on.

Compare each pages ranking in the top 10. Do better on page and off page than those sites. Of course a well optimized page needs google url structure and page titles. Beat them in every factors.

Hope it makes sense.

I love how the above experts tell you to do manual offpage research of your competition.. (how on earth are they planning to analyze backlinks of your competitors manually) Seriously, things like site speed are important but nothing comes close to having a strong backlink profile. I've competed with tough sites in some of the hardest niches that had the worst layout, design and onpage, but ranked top 3 purely for their links. Yes no tool is perfect but at the end of the day the only way to check a complete backlink profile of your competition is to use a tool.

Regarding on page, as I say it matters the most and least at the same time... If you don't pay attention to onpage at all, you won't rank.. If you do it properly, but have no offpage, you won't rank either (for mid/hard kwds at least). So you have to focus on both.

I recommend a set of tools (Majestic, Ahrefs, Semrush, moz, etc.). You can find deals on fiver that offer a set of all these tools for like $10/month. Basically for free (considering that it would cost you a few hundred bucks/month)

vladmedv said:

I love how the above "experts" tell you to do manual offpage research of your competition.. Seriously, things like site speed are important but nothing comes close to having a strong backlink profile. I've competed with tough sites in some of the hardest niches that had the worst layout, design and onpage, but ranked top 3 purely for their links. Yes no tool is perfect but at the end of the day the only way to check a complete backlink profile of your competition is to use a tool.

Regarding on page, as I say it matters the most and least at the same time... If you don't pay attention to onpage at all, you won't rank.. If you do it properly, but have no offpage, you won't rank either (for mid/hard kwds at least). So you have to focus on both.

I recommend a set of tools (Majestic, Ahrefs, Semrush, moz, etc.). You can find deals on fiver that offer a set of all these tools for like $10/month. Basically for free (considering that it would cost you a few hundred bucks/month)

Click to expand...

"most important" is most important

mindlesswizard said:

"most important" is most important

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I wasn't talking about you, you posted your message right when I was about to post mine

Can I have your Skype handle?

Thank you guys, will definitely keep those stuffs in mind.