13 Magnific Keyword Planner Alternatives You Must Try

I’ve seen so many times that marketers are searching for Google Ads Keyword Planner alternative.

For that reason, I’ve decided to write a blog post where I’ll introduce you 13 magnific keyword research apps that you can use today.

It doesn’t matter if you’re searching long-tail keywords or short-tail - you can find everything by using these tools.

However, I’d always suggest you to search for long-tail keywords since it’s easier to rank for those terms.

As you can see on the photo, it’s easier to rank for red Nike men running shoes than for shoes. What’s more, the more words phrase has, the more commercial intent is.

Let’s see which tools are the best alternatives.

#1 HyperSuggest

This is a relatively new tool in the SEO world.

Personally, I found UX and UI very user-friendly, and that’s especially the case for Germany SEO experts.

I can say that because the tool will display you keywords from Germany and in the German language unless you change it.

I think they should set English and United States as a default language and country, but the tool is still good without it.

Currently, the tool has four methodologies:

• Reverse suggest
• Normal suggest
• Both suggest
• W-questions

For example, if you choose W-Questions, English language, the United States as a country, and enter content marketing you’ll see the following results.

The tool pulls data from Google, YouTube, and Google Shopping.

Currently, the tool doesn’t offer a paid version, but who knows what might happen in the near future. What I’d like to see here is search volume and CPC data that comes from Google Ads.

It would make this tool much better because then users would know if some keyword has a great search volume and profitability.

#2 Keywordtool.io

Very similar tool to the previous one, but Keywordtool.io has additional features such as pulling data from Bing, Amazon, and App Store.

Also, the default language is English, and the domain name is Google.com which is the best for the majority marketers.

Keyword Tool claims that they are best alternative to Google Keyword Planner and other keyword research tools due variety reasons:

• Free version generates up to +750 long-tail keywords for every search term
• Extremely reliability (it works 99.99%)
• Free, even without creating an account

Now, let’s see the tool in the action. In the search box type content marketing, and click on the search button.

The results will come very fast. Now, there are two options:

• Keyword Suggestions
• Questions

If you click on Questions tab, you’ll see following phrases.

Unfortunately, the free version doesn’t let you see search volume, CPC, and Google Ads competition.

However, you can always select all the keywords, click on Copy All, and paste it in Google Keyword Planner. This way, you’ll get search volume, CPC, and competition for free.

#3 SEMRush

SEMRush is a completely paid tool, but this tool is not only for the keyword research - it’s something much more which makes it a true Keyword Planner alternative. Here, you can:

• Check backlinks
• Get the list of organic keywords that some domain ranks
• Get the list of paid keywords that some domain targets
• See organic traffic estimate
• Analyze keyword difficulty

and much more. Now, in the menu click on Keyword Analytics - SEO Keyword Magic.

SEO Keyword Magic is all you need for keyword research in one place, says SEMRush. In the search box, type content marketing and click on Search.

The result will come immediately.

Specifically, there are more 441 keywords, but what I really don't like is that it shows only average difficulty, and not the specific.

For getting specific keyword difficulty, you need to click on Keyword Difficulty menu, and enter the phrases there.  

#4 UberSuggest

Another Keyword Planner alternative - UberSuggest - is a completely free tool, but we still don’t know what will happen it the future since the tool has been acquired.

As we know, new features are coming and that will probably increase the quality of the tool.

But, who knows if the tool will be free or not? Until then, in the text field write content marketing and click on suggest.

Fortunately, you don’t need to copy suggested keywords in the clipboard, and paste it in Google Keyword Planner since the tool does it for you.

Here’s how it looks.

It works very simple. This is the pattern:

• [Your keyword] + [Top keywords]
• [Your keyword] + A
• [Your keyword] + B
• [Your keyword] + C
• [Your keyword] + D
• [Your keyword] + E

You’re always interested in keywords with a low keyword difficulty (I’ll talk about this later), high search volume, and high CPC.

Why high CPC?  Because if people are willing to pay $15 (e.g.) for only one click in Google Ads, it means that the keyword is very profitable.

Why would you target keywords that are not profitable at all? There’s no reason for doing such thing.

#5 Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz Keyword Explorer is a paid tool with limited free access. Anyway, if you wish to use it professionally you’ll have to buy a subscription.

The most useful benefit is a keyword difficulty metric which tells you if it’s too hard to rank for the specific keyword or not. It also shows you search volume and Ads CPC.

Now, in the search box enter content marketing and click on Try Free.

This is what you’ll see.

The photo above shows that for the entered keyword (content marketing), you should see:

• Volume
• Difficulty
• Opportunity
• Potential

Some of you might be wondering what is the difference between opportunity and potential, and here’s what.

Potential metric tells you how likely is that there’s enough space for your business, while opportunity estimates the relative CTR of organic web results (top ten results).

When other SERP features (ads, verticals, etc) compete for searcher attention, this score will be lower.

Your main goal is to find those keywords with high search volume, high potential, high opportunity, and low difficulty.

#7 Keyword.io

Personally, I think this tool is amazing and one the best free tools on the list, and here’s why. This Keyword Planner alternative has the greatest number keyword sources:

• Google
• YouTube
• Amazon
• Bing
• eBay
• Alibaba
• Playstore
• Fiverr
• Fotolia
• Pond5

Next, UX and UI are awesome, so if you decide to use this tool, I guarantee that you won’t have any problems with it because even a kid would be able to use it.

Now, in the search box type content marketing and click on SEARCH.

The results will come within a second.

As you can see in the photo above, the tool doesn’t tell you the search volume and CPC, which means that you need to copy it and paste in Keyword Planner.

Of course, if you decide to buy a pro subscription then you will have all the data.

Furthermore, there’s an API that you can use for programatically access to the data which might be useful if you would like to integrate it in your own app.

#8 Ahrefs

This is a very commercial tool, and practically it’s impossible to use it without paying a subscription, but I think it’s worth every dollar, and here’s why.

Firstly, spying your competitors is just one click away. You only have to enter the competitor’s domain and you’ll see the list of organic keywords that competitor ranks.

If you know for the competitor that ranks for so many keywords, then you filter the keywords and display only those with a low keyword difficulty.

Next, you can use their Keywords Explorer by clicking on Keywords Explorer in the menu.

Here, you just need to enter your phrase and click on the search button.

The results are awesome. They tell you keyword difficulty, search volume, return rate, clicks, and so on. Of course, you could expect that this phrase is highly competitive.

But, if you click on the Keyword Ideas - All in the menu, you’ll see lots of potential keywords. I just filtered results by the following criteria:

• Keyword difficulty up to 40
• Minimum 4 words in the phrase

The results are pretty awesome.

For example, I know that type of content marketing phrase isn’t so competitive.

#9 KWFinder

This Keyword Planner alternative tool gives you three options:

• Suggestions
• Autocomplete
• Questions

Suggestions use KWFinder know-how algorithm, autocomplete uses additional related keywords, and questions option finds for questions that Google users are asking.

Now, I’ll enter content marketing and click on the Analyze button.

The results are divided into two parts.

The left part shows you suggestions related to the keyword content marketing and it also shows you data such as search volume, CPC, competition, and the most important, keyword difficulty.

The right part of the screen shows you keyword difficulty, monthly search volume trends, and Google SERP.

Knowing a keyword difficulty is always useful because you are probably not interested in very high competitive keywords.

This feature is especially useful for new domains because they don’t have a high Domain Authority. Since I mentioned Domain Authority, I’d like to say that in the SERP results you can find the following Moz metrics: Domain Authority, Page Authority, MozRank, and MozTrust.

Also, you can see the number of backlinks, Facebook and Google+ shares, SEO difficulty rank, and estimated number of visits for each site.

#9 WordTracker

WordTracker is a commercial tool with very limited free features. In other words, if you want to see the full potential of this app, you’ll need to pay a subscription.

However, let’s see which features the app offers to marketers. In the search box, you can type content marketing and click on the Search button.

But before you click, keep in mind that you can target for free only UK, USA, and Global.

Now, the tool will give you only 10 keyword suggestions which might not be so useful.

What I found very useful is KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) metric which actually goes up when the keyword’s popularity increases, but goes down when there’s lots of competitors.

This way, you would be able to find those keywords that have a strong search volume, but low SEO competitiveness.

On the right side of the screen, you can see SERP preview which also gives you a brief estimate how competitive one keyword is.

For example, when you see sites like Content Marketing Institute and Copyblogger, you can know that the phrase is highly competitive because these sites have a strong Domain Authority.

#10 Serpstat

I found this app yesterday and I’ve spend a couple of hours playing in this app and it’s worth being on the list.

The app is, of course, commercial, but not expensive at all so it might be very useful for startups without an investor.

Now, in the search box type content marketing and click on Search. 

Serpstat has many features and please take a look at the menu.

 

You can do keyword research for SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, and SERP Analysis.

Since SEO and Content Marketing all very similar, but not the same, I think I should clarify the difference between these two features. SEO Research allows you:

• Keyword Selection
• Cluster Research
• Search Suggestions
• Top Pages
• Competitors

and Content Marketing feature allows you only the list of search questions.

Here’s an example.

The biggest con is that it doesn’t have keyword difficulty metric, so you will need to figure out if some phrase is competitive or not.

Here’s how Keyword Selection feature looks like.

What I really like here is Social domains column where I can see for which queries YouTube results appear, so maybe I could do some YouTube SEO.

#11 SpyFu

SpyFu is wonderful for spying the competitors, and you can use it both for Google Ads and SEO.

When I say Ads, I mean that you can see an estimate how much does your competitor spend on Ads every month, but not only that.

You can see the history of ads you can learn how the competitors optimize their ads, what they change, and so on.

Now, in the search box you can enter content marketing term and press the enter key. As you can see on the photo below, you should enter your competitor's website, but don’t worry.

You can enter a phrase, too.

Here, you’ll see a short overview and learn how monthly searches does the specific keyword has.

Furthermore, you can see Google Ads details such as average CPC, how many advertisers are there.

If you scroll down, you’ll generate tons of the keyword ideas. For example, you can get the list of most profitable related keywords.

Next, you can see which top ranked pages and you can learn how hard is to rank for the specific keyword thankfully to the Ranking Difficulty metric.

What’s interesting is getting an estimate of monthly click for each position.

#12 InstaKeywords

This Keyword Planner alternative claims that they are much better than other keyword research tools due variety reasons.

They say they give you 3 times more keywords than any other tool, including Ubersuggest. Also, they include valuable keyword research statistics such as keyword’s global search volume, local search volume, number of searches in the last month, CPC, and competition analysis score.

Now, let’s see if they’re better than other tools. In the search box, just enter content marketing and click on Generate suggestions.

Here’s what you’ll see.

The app found a total of 524 keywords, and as I could remember this is the largest number of long-tail keywords.

Now, although they claim the statistics are free, there’s one which isn’t - competition. The paid version of the tool is very cheap so if you’re interested in Ads competition metric you can buy a subscription, or you can export the data and import in the Ads.

I’d like to see a SEO competition metric which is available only in commercial tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush.

#13 Bing

Bing, the second search engine in the world, created its version of the keyword research tool.

Unfortunately, the tool doesn’t have a great UX and UI, but however, it provides you the search volumes on Bing. In the search box, enter content marketing and click on the SEARCH button.

The results will come here within a few seconds.

As you can see, the results are not the best, but they are not bad at all. For me, the biggest benefit is that you can check how many searches does specific keyword has.

Almost all other tools are focused on Google search engine, so this is a great way of checking the data for Bing.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed reading about these tools because they are all true Keyword Planner alternatives. Which one will you will take probably depends on the following factors:

• Price
• UX and UI
• Your requirements

Personally, I’d always suggest to companies that are bootstrapping to choose free or the cheapest option because you can find lots of long-tail keywords using those tools.

After your traffic grows, you can consider buying a subscription on tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush.

Another trick that you can use it to use a free trial. Month by month. That way, you’ll have enough time to find lots of low competitive keywords.