What is the best keyword research tool?

Keyword research is key for effective content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) strategies. To maximize performance and visibility, it's important to determine the right mix of long-tail keywords that are most relevant to your industry.

Fortunately, there are plenty of keyword research tools available that can help you to identify the best keyword phrases to use in content production, web page optimization, link building campaigns and more. Here are eight of the best keyword research tools on the market today.

1. Google Keyword Planner: With Google's keyword planner, users can search for keywords and get related search terms based on averages from monthly searches, competition levels and cost-per-click data. It's free to use with a Google AdWords account and essential for anyone doing keyword research.

2. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: This research tool combines clickstream data with intricate indexing technology so users can identify fresh keywords that actually bring in traffic. Additionally, users get insights about head terms by looking at SERP (search engine results page) analysis reports as well as long-tail term discoveries from related topics or questions.

3. SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool: This platform enables users to find targeted keywords using hundreds of billions of search queries from different countries or languages and uncover long-tail topics by using a keyword clustering feature that groups related terms together.

4. Moz Keyword Explorer: Combining all organic factors such as clicks, impression, CTR (click through rate) and volume with SERP features such as featured snippets or rich answers enable you to analyze key terms faster than ever before as Moz has compiled all valuable information into one easy-to-access tool.

Also included with Moz is a phrase match report which cross references how each term ranks against others in SERPs which helps determine whether your keywords are hitting their mark or if there is room for improvement.

5. KWFinder: Recording over 500 million keywords in its vast database helps KWFinder deliver highly accurate results while its suite of other features like the SERP checker help measure how competitive a particular term is currently within search results letting you know if it's really worth pursuing that particular topic further before investing resources into it .

6 WordStream: This user friendly platform allows amateur marketers understand what kind of terms are being used without having its complicated jargon getting in their way as it operates off of an intuitive question tree format breaking down topics into smaller categories until pages are found that contain semantically related phrases thereby generating high performing options for project managers to choose from .

7 SpyFu: With SpyFu anyone can easily study potential top ranking competitors and capitalize on the same words they actively target among organic searches justifying their ranking by extrapolating relevant data from their own networks including competitor domain names effecting traffic metrics but also advertising campaigns they might be running targeting additional conversions .

8 AnswerThePublic: Taking advantage of questions asked on social media this tool provides an ideal avenue for natural language processing allowing users find out exactly what certain queries could be leading towards giving them further insight when it comes to forming more current content around more uncommon yet relevant topics that may be trending given the context .