5 Effective AdWords Keyword Planner Alternatives

Keywords. Probably one of the most if not the most important part of any online marketing whether it be PPC or SEO, it is also especially important for creating your content plan. Creating a well-researched keyword list for your online marketing campaign or site can provide insight into what the competition might be like, how to gauge what to spend, and ranking opportunities you should take advantage of.

For most popping the list into Google Adwords Keyword Planner provides all the information needed as well as ideas for where to build out your keyword research. However as you may know you need a paid Google Adwords campaign running to gain access to all the good data. So you might find yourself in need of some alternatives.  

Well look no further, I’ve created a list of 5 keyword planner alternatives that I use when building out my keyword list and why I find them useful.

  1.  SEMrush

The first is SEM Rush. SEM Rush does have a free option that gives you 10 free searches a day. That’s a lot if you’re not in any rush (see how I used that) and use them wisely. If you need more consider getting an upgraded account.

SEM Rush gives you a lot of great information for both paid and organic keywords. You can see competitor information such as rankings, as well as search volume for specific keywords. You can also see average cost per clicks on keywords to get an idea of a budget for your campaign. Another cool piece of information SEM Rush shares is ad copy for specific keywords and phrases.

  1. MOZ

MOZ’s Keyword Explorer is another tool that gives you 1-2 keyword search per day free. It gives you lots of great information on search volume, and difficulty as well as keyword suggestions and SERP Analysis of domains ranking for that keyword.  The keyword suggestions can be exported to a CSV file as well.

Keyword Explorer is just one of the great tools MOZ has to offer, if you’re looking for a tool for your overall SEO I would recommend looking into all that MOZ has to offer.

  1. keywordtool.io

Keyword Tool uses Google Autocomplete to generate keywords relevant to any search. There is a free account that will give you information on suggested keywords, a great way to build out your keyword list. Another cool aspect of the tool is the ability to add in negative keywords to eliminate any unwanted searches.

The paid account gives you access to search volume and cost per click information as well as competition level for Adwords.  You can take a look at average monthly searches and export the list to Excel.

  1. Wordstream

Wordstream is better used as a paid tool, although it does have a free option that shows related keywords for 30 searches per day, which is quite a lot. To get access to all the keyword information requires a paid account.

If you decide to stick to the free account, the Wordstream Keyword tool offers keyword suggestions to help build out your keyword list, which you could then pop into Keyword Planner to get a better estimate of search volume.

  1. SEOBook Keyword Tool

This is a free tool that gives a lot of great information on not only the keyword you’re looking for but related keywords.  You can see monthly as well as daily search volumes for keywords and average cost per clicks. This is a great alternative to some of the paid tools I’ve mentioned.

There are a lot of options out there and while Google’s Keyword Planner is where I start my research for any digital marketing campaign I always like to pop on a couple of the other tools to see if they have some suggestions or opportunities I might have missed.  

Todd Mumford

Todd Mumford