What's your best Keyword tool to check for KW competiton

What keyword checker tool do you use and would recommend?

KWFinder is pretty good and is what I usually use. Although it's only a starting point and you should always do a manual check of all the SERP results to see what types of links are being pointed to judge there quality etc. and if they are possibly using PBN's. Don't forget metrics like DA/PA are easily fudged.

Holzr said:

KWFinder is pretty good and is what I usually use. Although it's only a starting point and you should always do a manual check of all the SERP results to see what types of links are being pointed to judge there quality etc. and if they are possibly using PBN's. Don't forget metrics like DA/PA are easily fudged.

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Thanks Holzr for the recommendation and advice.. Was just checking it out.. If you was to rank for a KW, what difficulty do you try and rank for?

ibzywibzy said:

Thanks Holzr for the recommendation and advice.. Was just checking it out.. If you was to rank for a KW, what difficulty do you try and rank for?

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It depends on 3 things:

1. Your experience in SEO
2. Your budget
3. Timeframe

With enough of a budget you could probably rank for anything (I'm talking about nearly unlimited budget for some keywords).

Also an important thing to note is what is the intention of a keyword?

Is it informative such as: how to guides etc like "how to survive a shark attack"

OR

Does it have commercial intent such as: buy shoes, nike shoe discount, best running shoes, Ipad review etc.

These commercial intent keywords will help you convert views into buys a lot more than informative keywords such as the one mentioned above. People searching for best running shoes are people who are looking to spend money. Someone looking for a way to survive a shark attack probably isnt.

Although it depends on what your monetizing goal is for your product. These examples were mainly aimed at e-commerce and affiliate sites.

EDIT: Just realised I didn't really answer the question. My advice is that if your new pick something with low ish search volume, commercial intent and the lowest difficulty score possible as you'll rank quicker and get to understand SEO etc. without burining through money and time.

One trick to also determine difficulty is to do a search on google for intitle:: "your keyword"

For example intitle:: "best vodka brand" brings up 232 results. Meaning 232 pages are using this exact phrase in their title. The lower the number the better.

In my little experience in SEO, I figured out that try those keywords which are long tail - phrase keywords (if you want to see the results). Aiming for common keywords can make you pull your hairs, however, a smart approach would be to rank those which have low competition and early scope of results.

Semrush is a good tool to check your competitor ranking keywords and backlinks. Remember backlinks, quality backlinks.

I have been in SEO from past 5+ years and the best tools according to my knowledge and experience is as follows:

• Google Adwords Keyword Planner
• Long Tail Pro
• Keyword Finder Tool
• Semrush

Holzr said:

KWFinder is pretty good and is what I usually use. Although it's only a starting point and you should always do a manual check of all the SERP results to see what types of links are being pointed to judge there quality etc. and if they are possibly using PBN's. Don't forget metrics like DA/PA are easily fudged.

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Already answered important points. But I would like to add a few points for manual analysis.

• Check on-page SEO issues
• Age of the page (the page ranking on SERP result)
• Content quality and length, the page is in linked with any Silo
• Overall domain authority of the website
• The page is fully responsive or not

Though there are more technical issues. But make sure these points must be checked by manual analysis.

Don't rely on one tool.
Use more than one. Keyword data is not accurate.
I use kwfinder, keywordtool, long tail pro

Thanks everyone for the recommendation and the help.. Really do appreciate it..

Don't rule out Ahrefs.

MisterF said:

Don't rule out Ahrefs.

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I've heard great things about them but unfortunately I can't afford it at the moment

Ahref and KWfinder.. My two best tools for keyword research.
Also, I recommend Keywordrevealer.com

Go for SEMRush and keywordtool.io These are the ones I've been using for the longest time and it's been providing me the data I need ever since.

Word tracker, free one.

Ahreafs