Keyword Planner: 5 alternatives to the Google tool

Keyword research is one of the most important disciplines of search engine optimisation. If you know which terms are searched for most frequently, you can provide more tailored content on your website. One tool has been hard to avoid in recent times: Google’s Keyword Planner. It captures detailed information about monthly search volumes, regional differences, or the general competitive factor of individual search queries containing long tail keywords.

For a long time, the tool provided accurate results for free, but now these values are only available for paying customers of AdWords advertisers. Without an ongoing ad campaign, the tool only delivers approximate values instead of concrete figures. Furthermore, the Google service has been grouping similar terms (singular vs. plural, word variants for acronyms, etc.) together since June 2016, which has made SEO analysis generally more difficult. This guide therefore deals with potential alternatives to the Keyword Planner, and compares them with the search engine giant’s own research tool.

The demands and expectations of a keyword research tool are relatively clear: it should help to generate matching and high-performing search queries for your own website, and present the results in an appealing, and clear way. The most important value without a doubt is the monthly search volume of a search query. When it comes to considering possible Keyword Planner alternatives, it’s more important to see how detailed this value is for the keywords you’ve entered. Do users receive concrete figures, estimations or – just like when using the Planner without an AdWords campaign – only rough values.

Depending on the type of web project, you might want the tool to provide more detailed information about the search volume for certain time periods or locations. For example, if the keyword strategy is dependent on seasons or regions. Furthermore, the following points can determine whether a keyword research tool is suitable:

• Long tail keywords: does the tool help you find meaningful and well-performing keyword combinations?

• Estimating the chance of success: does the tool give you an estimate of how successful certain high-volume search terms are?

• Checking the competition: does the keyword tool reveal which websites already rank well for specific search queries?

• Costs: if the aim of your keyword research is to optimise an ad campaign, finding out the estimated costs for individual terms makes it much easier to plan your budget.

Which tools are the best Keyword Planner alternatives in terms of different evaluation aspects?

Regarding search volumes of keywords, this Keyword Planner alternative behaves similarly to the Google model: the exact number of monthly search queries is only available with paid packages 'Pro Plus' and 'Pro Basic'. Otherwise, Keyword Tool will not display any search volumes at all. If you use one of the fee-based alternatives, you will get twice as many keyword results. The 'Pro Plus' package also shows the competition and cost per click, based on the AdWords values.

Keyword Explorer summarises the results for a search term or topic in three different ways:

• Overview: the general overview page shows you a glimpse of all the information collected by the Moz Pro tool. This includes information on the search volume, the chance of ranking with the respective keyword, or the search term’s general potential. This page also lists the first five entries of the new keyword suggestions and the first three positions of the Google search results. The report contains three topic-specific reports collected by the Fresh Web Explorer.

• Keyword Suggestions when it comes to keyword suggestions, you will get up to 1,000 related search terms and long tail keywords for the chosen search term. For each suggestion, the Keyword Planner alternative displays the monthly search volume as well as a relevance analysis. The result can be specified using the filter function e.g. only suggestions with a particular search power, or only questions, are to be displayed. With a click of the mouse, you can export the complete list as a CSV file.

• SERP Analysis: in this section, Keyword Explorer provides an insight into the first search page of Google’s search and shows you the first results including any valuable additional information. This includes the site’s trustworthiness and the entire domain as well as a number of foreign domains, which link to the respective page or the entire domain. The number of Facebook shares is also displayed. It’s also possible to export the SERP analysis as a CSV file.

As with the free version of the Keyword Planner, Moz Pro Suite’s research tool also shows all search volumes, but only as approximate range values. The values for the competition and potential of search terms are expressed as a percentage.

Wordtracker is counted as one of the best Keyword Planner alternatives due to how much detail it shows. The free version also includes the exact search volume, information on the potential competition ('Comp') as well as the number of websites that contain the respective keyword in their title or (anchor) text ('IAAT') of the backlink. If there are enough evaluation criteria, the tool will also show you how effective certain keywords (KEI) are. The paid packages optimise keyword research (and the set resulting from it) using the following features:

• Selecting the time period: instead of just revealing the monthly average, Wordtracker can also give you the search volume for specific months.

• Selecting the range: the free version only contains information about the US and the UK, but with the paid version you can access over 200 regions worldwide and refine your research this way.

• Saving and exporting keyword lists: save individual keywords or complete sets as projects to be able to retrieve them at a later date. Alternatively, you can export the list as a CSV file.

• Advanced keyword options: as a paid user, you have access to additional settings for structuring suggested keywords. You can specify, among other things, whether plural forms should be included or whether only exact matches should be listed.

• Access to the Wordtracker API: if you use the Gold version of this Keyword Planner alternative, you can access your huge keyword database directly with your applications.

Before you decide to purchase a Wordtracker edition, you can test it free of charge for one week.

In the 'Keyword Analytics' section, SEMrush offers all the information you need to determine high-quality and competitive keywords. In this case, you can select which Google domain should be used as a basis for the search, and therefore obtain language-specific results. While the alternative to the Keyword Planner provides the organic search volume in a single, rounded value, you will get the estimated CPC (cost per click) for the paid search as well as an indication of how intense the competition is for the particular keyword. In addition, SEMrush provides a live overview of the organic search results, relevant ad texts, and the top videos on YouTube. For almost all of the results, you can view detailed reports or export them as Excel, CSV, or CSV semicolon files, should you desire.

In addition to information on the desired search term that you can also access for desktop and mobile traffic, the SEMrush service also makes suggestions for new, matching keywords. The following two lists are generated by the tool for this purpose:

• Matching phrases: in this list, the Keyword Planner alternative suggests possible new search queries that include the desired keyword or a variation. In order to generate high-quality, useful phrases, the search tool trawls through a matching, regional database.

• Suitable keywords: SEMrush analyses the top websites in the search engine rankings for the keyword that you’ve specified in order to generate a list of keywords that these sites have in common.

For both keyword lists, which can also be exported in the aforementioned formats, you will receive information about the search volume (rounded up), the potential costs, and the corresponding SERP sources for the suggestions. Users of the 'Guru' and 'Business' packages also have the opportunity to view historical data.

The search results are grouped into four topic areas: the main part is a list of suggested keywords or keyword combinations. A second list shows relevant domains that rank well with the desired main keyword in the Google search results. In addition, there is a graphic showing SEO degree of difficulty (scale from 0 to 100) and a chart that displays the search volume over the past twelve months. The keyword set for the main keyword (limited to 25 entries in the free version) has the following five indicators for each suggestion:

• Trend: small diagram presenting the performance of each keyword in the last 12 months

• Search volume: exact value for the average search volume of the past twelve months

• CPC: the estimated cost per click when the keyword is used for an advertising campaign

• PPC: competitive level of the search term in PPC marketing (pay per click), expressed on a scale from 0 (not contested) to 100 (strongly contested).

• SEO degree of difficulty: degree of difficulty with the respective keyword, which is determined on the basis of various SEO criteria (trustworthiness, link strength, social signals, etc.) of the best-ranked competitors.

You can use the filter feature to arrange different keyword suggestions according to your ideas and wishes. For example, you can specify that only search terms with a specific minimum or maximum CPC value should be displayed or that certain words should be excluded entirely. Once you have analysed and processed the results in the KWFinder, you can export the data as individual terms or the complete list as a CSV file.