nowadays I don't use anything anymore cause I'm poor and can't afford any tool. I will buy "group buy seo tools" in a week or so, and then I will use all tools that I can get my hands on, make the average of their scores, and then apply my experience and common sense when deciding on which keywords to go after. Relying solely on tools and not using common sense is not a good idea.
I remember manually checking several important metrics 3-4 years ago for the keywords I was interested in, and the keywords I found doing manual research have blown out of the water any tools that I was using back then. But it's been so tiresome and time consuming that I would usually give up after finding 5-6 keywords lol
Back then I used to follow these steps precisely, and it worked wonders....
1) log out of my google accounts (this is a crucial step that most SEO newbies don't do, and it's what will make or break your keyword research most of the time because google serves you results based on your location, searching history, thinking patterns and so on. And if you don't log out of your google account the results you get are tailored to you, they're biased and won't reflect the real competition).
2) for double safety, I would then use VPN to connect to a USA-based IP (I only work with USA markets, so if you want to check the competition to other countries you'll have to get an IP for that country so that the results you get are specific for that country, obviously).
3) open an incognito / private tab (for triple safety because yes, I am paranoid and I freak out easily LOL), type google.com into the browser and then insert the keyword that looks cool / interesting to me into google and hit "enter"
4) if the first 5 spots in google are big, popular, niche sites I don't even go further with keyword research. I close everything and go play video games cause I am too big of a wuss and if I see the first 5 spots occupied by big brands I know that I won't stand a chance of outranking those sharks. And I don't care about top 10 rankings, either. If I invest so much time and brain energy into doing keywords research I expect to rank at least in top 5, or else my work is pointless because #1 spot gets roughly 30-40% of the total traffic of a keyword, and spots #2 to #5 get even less than that, and if I target a keyword with 400-500 monthly searches and rank at number #6 for example I might get only 5-10% of the traffic and I don't like it. If I have to work so much to uncover golden nuggets - like I said - I want at least my effort to be rewarded, not to slave my life away for peanuts..
Regarding the big, popular, niche sites... I know that you might ask "well, how do you know which sites are big brands, or authority and popular sites in your niche?" .... Well, I always target niches that I'm genuinely interested in (not passionate about, just interested in), and I usually know what kind of big sharks swim in the waters in those niches, and if I see their names in the first #5 spots I imaginary show them the middle finger and move on. And if you don't know which sites are big sharks in your niche yet, don't worry, the more you do keyword research manually the easier you will identify them because those guys usually rank on 1st page of google for millions of keywords and get 10s of 1000s of visitors a day to their sites. You can't compete with those.... well, I can't compete with them, I don't know about you, so I stay away from them....
5) if I still see 1-2 big sites occupying 1-2 positions in top 5 I sometimes make an exception and take a look at the other URLs ranking in top 10. And if they meet most of the criteria that I mention below I might go after the keyword, but if the criteria mentioned below are not to my liking I would look at a different keyword. So, which other metrics do I look at if the top 5 is not occupied by the big sharks? Well....
6) websites with user generated content and general websites.... if I see at least 3-4 websites like quora, reddit, facebook, pinterest (youtube is an exception, I don't like seeing youtube videos on the 1st page of google for my keywords, I don't know why but I don't like seeing them and period!), forums, wikipedia, amazon, etc.... I think I have a good chance of ranking for that keyword.... unless it's an ecom keyword in which case I see amazon / ebay / bestbuy / etc and I usually drop it.... but I don't bother with ecommerce keywords anyway (I'm not good at ecom, I usually prefer informational blogs) so if I target non-commercial keywords and amazon is there I don't care. I can still beat them
7) title + allintitle.... I check if the keyword appears in the title of the pages that rank in first 5 spots of google. This is not a decisive factor, but when combined with all other things that I check it could influence my decision of whether or not I will target that keyword. So, if my keyword appears in the title of all 5 pages that are ranking in the top 5 spots of google, in any order, I then check the titles of the other 5 pages ranking on google (so, the pages ranking on positions 6 to 10) and if those pages have the keyword in title, too then this is a real competition and I don't like it. If the bottom 5 ranked pages don't have the keyword in title it's a good sign, but I still don't believe that the keyword is easy to rank for, so I go ahead and type this in google "allintitle:keyword" (I obviously replace the word "keyword" with my keyword) and if it only shows up to 100 results I feel confident and check the other things that I mention below.
8) the URLs of the pages ranking on google's 1st page. I'm not sure how important this metric is, but seeing only long and ugly URLs on the 1st page of google gives me confidence because I know that the owners of those websites with ugly URLs either don't know too much about SEO (so, I feel like I can beat them), or don't care about it because they are ranking with long, and ugly URLs anyway so this means that competition for that keyword is weak, in which case I most likely target the keyword. But this only impressed me as long as the first 5 spots are not taken up by big sharks like I mention in step 4. If they are big, authoritative websites in that particular niche they can have the ugliest URLs in the world and I wouldn't care cause I don't have the budget to fight them.
9) I then check the content. By the time I reach step 9 I usually (from experience) know if a keyword is worth targeting or not, but sometimes the metrics from the first 8 steps are so balanced that I have to go to step 9. So, step 9 is checking the content. I opened up each of the top 5 pages in a new tab and looked at their content. I check the number of words (just a rough estimate), I read a few sentences to see if the content made sense, I checked the sub-headings to see how many of them they have and what they read, I then checked to see whether or not they had in=depth content or just gibberish, how many images (if any) they have and whether or not they have the keyword in the ALT tag, and so on. And if I liked what I see I would usually, at this point, decide whether the keyword is worth targeting or not. Speaking of in-depth content... if 1 or more of the pages ranking in top 5 of google for my keyword have content that contains tables, infographics, lots of stats and technical stuff that I don't understand I stay away from that keyword. I might be a wuss (actually, I know that I am), but I want to rank with AI-generated content and for keywords that get traffic, I don't want to spend 1000s a month on stellar content, or - worse - write it myself and get burnt out after 1 week of writing (I'm not native English speaker, and researching and writing 1000 words of content is a daunting chore for me, it takes me 8-10 hours usually)... so anyway, like I was saying, if the content of those 5 people ranking in top 5 for the keyword is very specialized and has graphics, tables, stats, infographics (basically, everything that requires me a lot of effort to create), I move on to another keyword.... if all other metrics are balanced anyway. Otherwise, if all other metrics are positive I might still target the keyword, especially if the metrics are mostly positive and the keyword gets like 1000k+ searches per month. I might make an exception in this case and pay someone $20 to create a good piece of content for that particular keyword, but only as long as the content on those top 5 pages is not 2k-3k words long. Fuck that!
10) lastly, I look at the SEO metrics that I deem important, not what google or other SEOers tell me that are important. And I deem important metrics like DA / PA , RDs, and the quality of backlinks. I look at the DA of the domain (the root domain of the websites taking up the first 5 spots with either the root domain, or inner pages). So, if the DA of the top 5 pages is - in general - 10-15 and the PA of the pages that rank in top 5 spots is also 10-15 the keyword is pretty easy to rank for, even without backlinks and especially if most of the pages (here, I am referring to ALL pages ranking on google's 1st page, not just the top 5) are DA / PA 0 or less than 10 anyway.
Regarding RDs... if the top 5 pages have less than 50 RDs in general (some might have 0 RDs, some might have over 100, or whatever, but I make an average and then decide) and all other metrics are also positive on average, then it's a good keyword.
Regarding the quality of backlinks... if I see backlinks from web 2.0s, blog comments, even PBNs, or guest posts from low authority websites, etc.... or from image sharing sites, or reddit, or from blogs and forums, etc... these types of backlinks. If I see backlinks like these in the backlinking profile of the pages ranking in top 5 of google for that keyword I'm good, I can beat those. But if I see backlinks from Forbes, NY Times, .gov, etc... well, I might still go after the keyword if all other metrics are mostly positive and if the search volume of the keyword justifies the investment, but otherwise I skip it and check other keyword.
And that's about it. I used to do all these steps manually several years ago when I was an SEO newbie and dedicated, but now I don't have the patience anymore. But I've got my experience and now, I can have a quick glance over all these metrics and usually can figure out within a minute or 2 if the keyword is good or bad. But... I need to have all these metrics in front of me because otherwise I'm not interested in manually going over each one of them lol
