Sometimes the best SEO is just writing good posts about topics that people are looking for. The more specific you write about, the less competition you’ll face. However, it can be hard to know what exactly your soon-to-be-readers are searching for… Enter our four tools below. They’ll help you mine the Internets themselves to see what terms people are looking for and help you figure out what content to add to your site to make you more findable.

Wordtracker

A huge part of keyword research comes from finding the tools that work for you.  A tool that’s been an industry standard for ages is Wordtracker, it has a 7-day free trial and you can absolutely get a huge amount of information just using this tool for 7 days.

The wordtracker tool also comes with additional tools such as Gtrends, SEO Blogger and Wordtracker Keyword Questions. The latter is especially useful–enter a keyword and see what questions people have been asking about it. Then you can write a post or solve a problem you know for sure people want help with!

Google Search and Autosuggest

Of course, if you don't like Wordtracker, you can opt for using the internet giant itself.

Here’s how:

  1. Type any keyword into your Google search box—or better yet, type an open-ended, questioning phrase such as “how do you…”
  2. See what searches have been made recently.This can give you big clues as to what’s trending in your niche. Nifty, right?
  3. If you want Google to weight your previous search and visiting history into what it suggests, stay logged in. In many cases, Google has an understanding of you as a user, and knows your interests. This can be helpful because you’re probably looking for readers who are similar to you. So let Google make suggestions on your behalf.
  4. If you DON’T want google taking you into account, you can always logout, or better yet, use Incognito modes so that you seem like a generic user to Google. This will show you more general results for your autosuggest and may give you a different set of ideas.

Amazon

Similar to using Google for their autosuggest, Amazon has that feature too. And because people are often biased towards commerce when searching at Amazon, it’s a good way to see what people are looking for with intent to buy. If you discover a term that many people are searching for on Amazon, and you can rank for that term on Google, you can create content about that subject and link through Amazon’s Associates to make a commission on your referring traffic.

Google Analytics

Take a look at your existing traffic reports at Google Analytics and look at the entrance pages people are coming to your site through. Then, filter by search engine traffic (versus referral traffic) and you’ll get a good picture of what content is driving the most inbound Google traffic. Look for patterns. If you rank well for one topic, it’s likely you’ll rank well for a related topic. Here’s a link that will import a Custom Report into Google Analytics for you, making it super easy to see this information. (Note: when you click the following link you’ll go to Google Analytics, make sure you’re logged in first, and then just choose the website you want to see the report in. It’ll import the custom dashboard and you can return to it anytime.

Organic Landing Pages Report