One of most common questions I see and get is what is the best keyword tool? While everyone has their own opinion. My favorite ones are all free!

You have probably heard of all of these but here goes:

Google Keyword Tool- Why do I love it?

I really like this tool because it works great for ppc. You can select the keyword match type you want (phrase, broad, exact). You can select how many columns you want to see (ex: CPC), you can even get estimates on the position you will get for your keyword based on what you bid.

On top of that I love that in the second part of each keyword list you can get more ideas of what the searcher will look for. For example if you put in dog training, on the second list you would see dog obedience, puppy training, and obedience training. Now it does show other results that the searcher might also look for but I really feel like this list of additional and sometimes wide keywords is a great way to add to your successful campaigns.

As for the search amounts shown on Google Keyword Tool they are all monthly.

My next favorite is the Free Wordtracker Tool

I love putting this is because it is the most helpful tool in finding a long tail keyword that has several searches, all of the results you see are the searches per day.  Just playing with this tool and searching on google.com you should be able to find all sorts of niches you can easily enter into with little to no competition.

What Else Have I Tried:

When it comes to keyword research I have tried many:

Nichebot- you have to watch the videos first, but even after that, it is more complicated than I would like.

Wordtracker- I think this is a must for people who do article marketing or maybe SEO?

Wordze- I used this the longest of all of these, I paid for about 6 months with this one. If it were free I would still use it, but it was more useful for other internet marketing ventures than I found it for ppc.

Keyword Spy- I think once you get successful campaigns this is a great tool to help you expand your campaigns. However, the information isn’t always up to date, and it is easier for me to go through my own keyword research instead of reading through someone else’s. Maybe I will use again in the future.

WordButler- This was a bonus for signing up for ppc classroom, I got it free for a year. After awhile it stopped working when I would put my lists of keywords in, so I deleted it from my hard drive. When it did work, it was helpful to put a full list of keywords in and see how much the cpc was and how many clicks a day I might get.

MarketSamurai- I still use this, it is free for the keyword research. I import all my keywords, find out how much they cpc is, how many clicks per day, and you can even check out the different match types. The problem is, you can’t do too much playing with this, when you are just looking around for niches, you can’t add to your keyword list, or search google to add more, each one has to be on a new page, and that makes it difficult to combine the whole project.

WordPot- This was a useful free tool, but too many restrictions for the free version and not enough covered in the paid version to make it worth paying for, in my opinion. It was months ago though, so things may have changed.

Keyword Elite- I still have this and like it a lot, but Im impatient, it takes awhile to make a list sometimes. Other than that, its great at making long lists, and getting keywords from lots of places.

and probably more that I can’t think of right now…

Either way, What is your favorite keyword tool?