by Dipraj | Sep 29, 2020 | Google Adsense
Keyword research is critical for a content strategy that aims to succeed in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Yet, most of the tools that offer keyword research aren’t free. Even the ones that claim to be free are not true to their words. There are so many limitations these so-called free tools impose that you might want to give up the effort for the keyword research. How do you start without investing in paid tools? In this article, we discuss some of the best keyword research tools that are available for free. These tools provide useful data that you can use to target content to the right audience. You can use these tools to get search volumes, relevant keywords, and get inspired with content ideas.
But first, why keyword research matters to you and what you should be looking for when you set out to keyword research?
Why Keyword Research Matters and What to Look For
The foundations of a winning content strategy rest on keyword research. There is a reason for that. The world of the internet runs on words – words that are used to search, find, reach out to, communicate, share, and relate to. That’s why the internet is such an excellent tool for sharing and communicating. Search engines receive queries from visitors about what they are looking for. These queries can be about products, businesses, services, or simple information.
When search engines reciprocate with related businesses and products, these products or businesses are likely to register higher sales. If your content can meet the user’s search query, you have a chance to win this game. Yet, how do you understand the user’s language? Unless you do, you will not understand how to answer so that the user will find it useful. This is where keyword research comes in.
Keyword research focuses on what keywords your competitors are focusing on. Your competitors are also doing what you are doing. Therefore, you can learn from what they are doing right and replicate it to benefit your website. On the other hand, you can try to understand where they are failing and save your website from those mistakes. Keyword research will show you opportunities you can take advantage of. Thus, you will have a solid foundation from where you can confidently plan your website’s success.
Apart from the competitor analysis, you also get ideas about relevant keywords. These are the other keywords the user may be interested in. You can utilize these related keywords to create content accordingly. When your content caters to a cloud of such associated keywords, it can positively influence the visitor.
Keyword research helps you to be mindful of content ideas that have the potential for success. With proper keyword research, you will have clarity about which keywords to include in your content. This will make your content more relevant to your audience. That’s an advantage you can’t afford to lose.
Let’s get to the five best free keyword research tools.
1. Google Trends
Google Trends effectively shows you what keywords are trending around the world.
You can search for a keyword and know where it is trending and historical data for the keyword over the years. Also, you get the location data about the regions where your search term was popular.
The tool also provides related data about the keyword, such as related search queries and related trending topics.
You can also see data from Google Images, Google Shopping, and YouTube.
Go ahead and try Google Trends yourself.
2. Spyfu
Spyfu is a premium tool. The only reason we include it here is for the amount of data it gives for free.
Are you curious about how your competitor is using keywords? Just hit the competitor analysis, and Spyfu will show you all the top keywords they rank for, paid keywords, competition they face, and other essential data that can give you a bird’s eye view of what is happening with your competitor. The same goes for keyword research. Enter the keyword, and you get search volume for similar keywords.
Again, since this is a premium tool, you don’t get all the keywords for free. However, the data that you can view for free is enough to get you inspired and have a practical use for your content strategy. There is no limit to the number of keywords you can search for free.
3. Keyword Generator
Ahrefs has provided Keyword Generator – a keyword research tool that serves keyword ideas quickly and freely.
Once you enter a keyword, you get about 100-150 related keyword ideas along with volume for each keyword. For the first 10 keywords, it also shows keyword difficulty – a parameter that estimates how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword.
The interesting feature is that you can also find relevant questions for a particular keyword phrase. The search feature is available for each country. In addition to the Google search engine, you can get the data for YouTube, Bing, and Amazon.
This is a useful tool as you get the keyword ideas along with the search volume.
4. Keyword Surfer
Keyword Surfer is a useful Google Chrome extension that you will find useful for keyword research. There was a similar and popular Chrome extension – Keywords Everywhere – it recently became a paid tool. Keyword Surfer is free for now, and it is relevant.
You get to choose keywords for each country and see how much search volume is generated every month for a particular search query. All you have to do is to install this chrome extension and search the keyword on Google. With the search results, you will get results for keyword research on the right half of the screen. Also, when you type, you will see autosuggestions along with their search volume.
With this tool, you can effectively measure the relative importance of keywords and plan your content accordingly.
5. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a popular keyword research tool you can use for free. This tool allows you to get insight into the strategies that are working for your competitors. It provides helpful data such as organic keywords, paid keywords, total traffic per month, paid ad cost, among others.
There is also an interesting category called ‘Top SEO Pages’. Here you will see the pages that are popular and have a significant social share. The keyword tool gives a good number of keyword suggestions.
There is quite a bit of relevant data that’s available for free. For example, you can differentiate between mobile volume and desktop volume. You can also get an idea about the searcher’s age range. Keyword ideas are presented with the cost per click along with the search volume. Added to this are content ideas that mention the number of backlinks for a particular page.
Overall, Ubersuggest is a pretty useful tool with essential keyword data.
Should I Go For A Paid Keyword Research Tool Instead?
We understand why you have this question. The free tools don’t seem to add the required value. They are too limited. We know we have not covered many featured keyword research tools but we have our reasons. Most of those tools don’t really work for free. The ones we have reviewed here work reasonably well for free, albeit in their limited capacity. They are great to get you started.
Of course, there is no comparison between premium tools and free ones. You get value for money when you buy a paid tool. A free tool cannot give you that value. Mostly the premium keyword research tools give you the depth and volume of data that is not possible to be explored with free ones. The search parameters, content insights, keywords, and competitor analysis are worth the value you pay.
Are you doomed if you don’t have a paid keyword research tool? No. You can start well without a paid tool. Money should not be a hindrance to success but a stepping stone to it. We are sure you will switch to premium keyword research tools once it becomes possible for you, and you indeed should. Till then, you can safely use the tools we have presented in this article. We hope this list inspires you to get started with keyword research for free.
If you have any questions regarding keyword research for your WordPress website, feel free to ask in the comments section. We also answer questions related to WordPress hosting. As your WordPress website grows successful, you will need a WordPress maintenance service to help you manage your WordPress website. Do reach out to us. We are here to help you.
by Abhilash Bijwe | Sep 15, 2020 | Google Adsense, Tutorial, WordPress
Let’s learn how to convert your website into money. The best way to monetize your online content is to use Google AdSense. It is also the most popular and easiest way to earn money with your website. Follow up and learn how to add AdSense to WordPress.
Google AdSense – Introduction
Google AdSense is a network offered by Google that enables people to earn money through online content such as blogging or video. This network operates on HTTP cookies and has over 11.1 million websites registered under it. This advertising network advertises using text, image, video, or any interactive advertisement displayed on the site. Mostly these ads are targeted towards the relevant audience on the website.
CPC (cost-per-click ads) is the method used by AdSense to pay for your website. They pay you for every impression, like clicks or views. You get paid whenever a viewer clicks on the advertisement video. But the amount varies with different factors such as Ad size, Location, Device type, website quality, and few others and also the advertiser.
How to start AdSense?
To get started with AdSense, you have to create and sign up an account with Google AdSense. If you are already a Gmail user, then you don’t have to create a new account, your existing Gmail account is enough. You have to enter the URL of your website, whether it is a blog site, YouTube channel, or any other website. Provide the Gmail address in the given area and click on the ‘save and continue’ button. Later, sign in to your Google account and accept the terms of Google AdSense and create your AdSense account.
Wait for the response from Google to approve your application. The approval may take some time, extending from hours to weeks, depending on the publishers. After the support from the AdSense, you have to log in to your AdSense account. Here, you will get your ad code to display advertisements on your WordPress site.
You are allowed to place the ads on your website manually. But Google had recently added a feature called auto ads. In this new feature, you only have to paste the ad code, and Google will automatically decide and place the ads on each page of the site. Google chooses the position of advertisements on the website and the number of ads.
It is always recommended to go with manual ad placement for the beginners. Later on, you can shift to auto ads if you wish. Now let us look into both the methods.
1. Manually place Google AdSense ad code in WordPress:
Sign in and click on the ‘Ads’ tab on your AdSense account on the left side of the screen. Then switch to the ‘By ad unit’ tab. On clicking ‘Create New Ad,’ you can find three options: ‘Display ads,’ ‘In-feed ads,’ and ‘In-article ads.’ Select your ad type from these three options. For beginners, it is always recommended to select ‘Display ads’.
Give a name for this unit of the ad. This name is only for the internal purpose of your website. Select the various sizes of the advertisement provided by Google. But the recommended ones are square, horizontal, or vertical. Select the type of ads, whether to be responsive or fixed. During the start-up, it is always right to choose responsive ads. These responsive ads work well on all screen sizes and any type of device. Click the ‘Create’ button.
Now you will receive the ad code generated by the AdSense. The ad code generated by AdSense is unique for each user, and it also serves as a publisher ID.
You can use the unique code for your AMP version of your website also. Make a copy of the ad code in your clipboard or Notepad as plain text.
Use WordPress widgets to add Google AdSense in the sidebar of your website. You can decide where to place the ads in your site where sidebars are the most commonly chosen option. In your WordPress admin area, select ‘Widgets’ from the ‘Appearance’ tab. Select and drop ‘Custom HTML’ and paste the unique ad code given by Google AdSense.
2. Adding Auto ads Google AdSense in WordPress
It would be difficult for beginners to place the ads on their website. So, the Auto ads feature would be a great help to them. In this feature, you just have to paste your unique ad code and leave the rest to the AdSense. Google AdSense will place the ads on the highest paying location and decide on the ad size and type.
But this feature provides less control over the placement of the ad on your website, making it a disadvantage.
To add an auto-ads feature to the website, open your Google AdSense account and click on the ‘Ads’ tabs and then select ‘get code’ in the ‘By site’ tab. Click on that button to generate code for the auto-ads feature. You will receive a code snippet along with your publisher ID. Make a copy of the system in your clipboard or Notepad as a plain text.
Add this code snippet between WordPress’s header file to display it on every page of the site. If not, you have to add the AdSense code to every page of the WordPress website. Using WordPress AdSense plugins like Insert Headers and Footers to add the code would be the best way. The code gets disappeared when you change or update the theme of your WordPress. This could be the main disadvantage of this feature.
To use Insert Headers and Footers plugin, you have to install and activate it. After activating the plugin, go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Insert Headers and Footers.’ Now paste the code snippet in the header and click ‘Save.’ After making these changes, it may take some time to display ads on your website.
Frequently asked questions:
Here are the few frequently asked questions and also best practices to enhance your experience with AdSense.
1. What’s the preferable size for AdSense Ad?
The best size would be 336 x 280 and 300 x 250. This will fit every screen and also referred to earn a high pay compared to other sizes.
2. Where can I place Google AdSense?
The pay depends on the number of impressions or clicks made on the ads. Make sure you place the advertisements in the most prominent area on the website to get the best pay. It is also found that the ads on the top of the screen tend to get more clicks.
Few may recommend using a floating widget, but it is not allowed by Terms and Services by Google. So, this may end in banning your website from Google AdSense.
3. What is Page RPM in Google AdSense?
Revenue per Mile is the revenue per 1000 impressions. Multiply the number of clicks made on the ad and cost per click to get RPM. The multiplier value is then divided by the total number of views of the ad page.
4. Am I allowed to click on my Google AdSense Ads?
Clicking on your ads may ban your website from Google AdSense. Google is smart at this algorithm to find the clicks on the ads.
5. Is it possible to use my existing AdSense account with WordPress?
Yes, you can use the same account given for your blog site or YouTube channel for your WordPress website by changing the type of the account. You have to provide a URL of the site while filling an application form. Open your AdSense account and select the ‘Other Products’ option from the ‘My Ads’ tab. Complete the application form after clicking the ‘Upgrade Now’ button.
6. What is CTR in Google AdSense?
This click-through-rates differs for each website. You have only access to your site’s CTR. The clicking rate depends on the website’s topic, placement of the ad, and type of audience. Follow the optimization guides to improve the pay from the ad. The built-in tools present in the Google AdSense will display a message if CTR is poor for the website.
7. How does Google AdSense make their payment?
Your previous month’s earnings get displayed on the ‘Transactions’ page. If the earning reaches the threshold amount given by Google AdSense, then your payment will be processed, and you will receive the payment by the 21st of the month. The mode of payment is Western Union, Wire transfer, Direct Electronic Transfer, Checks, Rapida, and few others.
8. Am I allowed to add Google AdSense on my WordPress.com website?
Upgrade your account to a business plan to add Google AdSense to your WordPress.com website.
9. What are the dissimilarities between Google AdSense and Google AdWords?
Google AdSense makes your website monetize by displaying ads on your website. While you can advertise on other websites, also using Google AdWords.
10. What could be the reason for the rejection of an application?
The rejection of application may be due to the violation of their terms and conditions or their policies.
11. What are the basic requirements to get approved?
The basic requirements are:
- The content of your website should go along with the terms and conditions.
- You must be over 18 years old.
- Your website must be six months old in operation.
Even though meeting all the requirements, Google AdSense can still reject your application. So, always be cautious while filling the application form. Now you would have got a clear insight on adding Google AdSense to your WordPress website. Now it’s your turn to monetize your skills online and earn apart from your regular income.
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