Keyword Trends & Research Tools

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 8:23pm Monday 30 March 2009

Are you tired of reading articles and books on SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Internet Marketing? By now you will know that keyword selection and optimization is essential for driving traffic to your website and the way to improve your search engine ranking.

There are a number of great free tools available for gathering user search data. For a more comprehensive solution and in-depth data, you will have to pay for it. These sites listed below will give you the appropriate user traffic data, and keyword trend to decide if you want to optimize for a particular keyword.

WordTracker - Full featured, subscription-based keyword research tool. Free version.

Compete - Full featured search analytics tool with limited free access.

Keyword Country - Full featured, subscription-based keyword research tool.

Facebook Lexicon - Keyword research tool for searching Facebook walls chatter.

Technorati Keywords Charts - Chart the blog keyword mentions with an embeddable chart.

Google Insights for Search - Full-featured keyword research tool.

Google Trends - Compare search terms side-by-side.

Google HotTrends - The hottest search terms right now; updated hourly.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool - Keyword research for commercial search terms that are bid upon for Google ads.

Yahoo Search Marketing - includes a keyword research tool.

Microsoft AdCenter Labs - has a whole host of keyword research tools, including search funnels and audience intelligence tools.

Keyword Discovery - Full featured, subscription-based keyword research tool, the site has a free trial.

Keyword Directory - identify specific search terms that drive traffic to web sites within each industry category.

Twist - Like Google Trends for Twitter.

Spy - Spy tracks real-time keyword mentions in Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, Blog Comments, Yahoo News, Blogs and Google Reader and allows you to subscribe via RSS.