Affiliate Tools Online

Keyword Research is the backbone of internet marketing. Without it, you don’t know what kind of information, products, or solutions folks are looking on the internet. Without this knowledge, you can’t find a niche market or optimize your web site or blog for that market.

While I’m a big advocate of the online subscription keyword research tools (like Wordtracker), there are some free tools you can use to do some preliminary keyword research.

Even though Wordtracker is an keyword research tool with various subscription packages available, they do have a couple of free tools you can use too.

The first is Wordtracker’s Free Trial Research Tool. This tool was created to help acquaint you to Wordtracker’s paid version. It works very similar to the paid version, except it only provides keyword data for MSN (not Google or Yahoo).

Since MSN is the smallest of the top 3 search engines, your results are pretty limited. But it can still be used to do some preliminary research.

Another free keyword research tool provided by Wordtracker is called GTrends (short for Google Trends). This tool pretty much replaced Overture’s Free Keyword Research Tool (which no longer exists).

Enter a word in GTrends and you’ll see 100 related keywords along with their approximate search volume for Google (not MSN or Yahoo). Click on the little graph under the “G” column and you’ll get an approximation of competition for that keyword too.

Another free keyword research tool is in Google Adwords. If you have an Adwords account, you’re probably already familiar with this tool. Again, this tool only searches Google (not Yahoo or MSN), but it can help you find related keywords and give you an idea of how often they’re searched.

Google Sets is another keyword research tool. But this tool is different in that it tries to help you find more related keywords that folks might use when searching - as opposed to returning known searched keywords along with the approximate search volume.

Another tool you can use is called SEOBook. This tool lets you search GTrends, Google Sets, and more - all from the same interface. It will also help you find more related keywords using synonym’s.

Like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery offers both paid and free versions of their keyword research tool. The free version is limited, but it can still be used for preliminary research.

Although I personally prefer Wordtracker (it’s been around the longest, so it has a long proven track record), Keyword Discovery does have some unique features … like the ability to easily check misspelled words and keyword density.

Generally speaking, I do not recommend using the free keyword research tools if you’re trying to find a niche market or start a new internet business - but they can be helpful for preliminary research.

They can also be helpful if money is tight - but keep in mind that these tools will not offer the same reliability as the paid tools.

If you know of other free keyword search tools out there not listed here, please let me know.