Okay, so it has been a little more than a week since Part I, but SES NY takes a long time to recover from.
There are a ton of keyword research tools and tool lists out there, but it is still incredibly important to have all of your tools in one place. There are a lot of familiar tools in here, but there should also be a some lesser known ones here as well.
Let’s start this off with an SEO snack provided to you by one of my newest friends, Gareth
Free Tools
SEObooks ultimate keyword research tool is a great place to start. Another tool on the site, is the Google Scraper tool
We cant forget everyones old favorites, the Adwords Keyword Tool or Overtures Keyword Selector (although it doesnt always work)
Quintura shows keyword maps to help you to generate more keywords!
Track keyword trends with Blogpulse.
If anything, Kartoo is a lot of fun. It provides keyword maps of who is ranking for what terms. Results could be a little bette
Find your competitors Keyword!
Start off with figuring out how competitive a keyword is
Long tail keyword discovery shows you the 3, 4 and 5 term keywords for your (or a competitors) site.
SEO Digger is pretty awesome tool. Find out what keywords your site ranks in Googles top 20 for, or use this to spy on the competition
Keyword Spy is great at finding what your competitors are bidding on and ranking for and you test it out for free right on their homepage. The free version only lets you see 10 results, but the paid version for $90/month lets you see a lot more.
Digitalpoints Keyword suggestion tool is another good free option. It also lets you specify what country you are looking for data for. They also have a free keyword position tracking tool.
Paid
Wordtracker has a 7 day free trial for their tool, otherwise, it is paid for at $329 a year. They also have very good free version of their keyword research tool.
Trellians keyword discovery is another fantastic tool. It draws info from over 180 search engines around the world and has keyword brainstorming tools as well as the ability to import import keyword lists and add descriptors. This is paid for with prices varying, but a 1 year standard subscription will run you about $600.
Keyword Discovery also won Best Keyword Research Tool in 2007 on www.toprankblog.com
Wordze has gotten a bit of a following with tools that let you perform keyword research, get historical keyword data, perform competitive research, and download top searches. They cost $45/month
Wordze also had a great deal of praise TopRank Blog
Wordze review on copyblogger.
AdGooroo, which also deserves a mention in Yodas Ultimate Competitive Research Tools Post is also a great keyword research tool. It allows you see what terms your competition is bidding on so you can make sure you dont miss any opportunities. Prices range from $89/month to $399/month depending on what you need.
Spyfu also lets you see what your competitors rank for as well as help you find new keywords to use fro your own site. They let you perform some research for free, but if you want to dig deep, it will cost you $308/year or $6.75 for 3 days
Miscellaneous
Shimon Sandler listed some keyword stemming tools on his site a while back that are very useful. Basically, they help you to take the stem of a word and build out additional keywords by adding in the variations of that term. Here are a few good ones:
http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/wordcheck/index.php?word=work
http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx
Other Great Keyword Research Lists
The other Loren (Baker that is) recently wrote a post at Search Engine Journal asking what keyword tools his readers liked WordTracker, SEOBook, and Keyword Discovery seemed to make it out on top.
Mona Elesseily also put together a great list about spying on your competitors including Compete and Spyfu (mentioned above).
SEOBooks keyword research tool list is another great one.
Anne Smartys list on SEOMOZ is also very comprehensive
Coming soon . . . Must have Firefox Plugins