We’ve talked a lot about keywords in the last few weeks. We went over how to drill down and uncover your core list and then how to take those top terms and generate many variations of those terms using keyword modifiers. At this point, you should have a fairly well-developed keyword list, but there’s always a chance to expand and find new terms, new iterations, new misspellings, new topics, etc.

One of the most common questions I am asked is about which tools I use for keyword generation. Well, here you are! Right from my own Firefox bookmarks folder. I’ve certainly shared some of these tools in previous posts but here’s a good straightforward list:

Keyword suggestion tools

• Google External Keyword Tool – The “big daddy” of keyword tools straight from the belly of the beast. Check out the beta link to the advanced version.
• WordStream – Really great aggregator of other suggest tools
• Microsoft AdCenter Labs – Keyword suggest tool along with a multitude of “experimental tools” like the search funnels, keyword research, keyword mutation tool, etc.
• Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool provides keyword ideas based on actual Google search queries and matched to specific pages of your website with your ad and search share.
• WordTracker’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

Engine suggestions

Suggestions in the drop-down menus that appear when you start typing in a search box:

• Google Suggest Keyword Suggestion Scraper Tool – This tool grabs the top queries from Google Suggest which normally appears in a drop down menu under the Google search bar as you type a query.
• Soovle is a free tool that provides the search suggestions from various engines around the net including Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc.

Visualization tools & word clouds

• Quintara Word Cloud
• Google Wonder Wheel.
• Visual Thesaurus
• Clusty – A search engine that provides results parsed into categories.
• Wordle – Creates a visual keyword cloud based on the terms you enter.

Topical/categorical

• GoRank Ontology Finder (Related Keywords Lookup Tool) – Checks the top 1000 Google results for your keywords by running a related word query. Not really for synonyms but rather other words in that topic.
• Google Trends – See search terms and activity around certain topics.
• With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
• Google Sets – Enter a few items from a set of things and Google will try to predict other items in the set. Can be handy to uncover terms related to your keywords.

Synonyms & word meanings

• Thesaurus.com – You can’t beat the basic thesaurus for finding terms.
• Princeton University’s WordNet lexicon tool goes beyond the thesaurus and really drives into the different meanings of specified words.
• Lexical FreeNet – A powerful tool that shows the relationship between words.

Typos and misspellings

• Keyword typo generator by SEO Book
• Produces misspelled text
• Keyword typo generator by SEO Chat

Keyword Manipulation

• SEO Tools Bad Keyword & Number Stripper – Use this tool to remove bad keywords from your keyword lists.
• AdWords Wrapper – Simply enter a list of keyword phrases and the Google AdWords Wrapper will turn it into 4 separate lists; a combination of broad, phrase and exact match, a combination of phrase and exact match, phrase match only, and exact match only.
• Jumbo Keyword tool – A myriad of features such as auto-lowercase, auto-dedupe, delete blank lines, create phrase, exact, and broad match versions of keywords. Make sure to click the advanced tab for the most options.
• iwebTools Quick Dedupe – Paste in a list of terms and it will quickly remove duplications

Keyword Density

These tools detect how often terms appear in content.

• Dave Naylor keyword density tool
• SEOChat keyword density checker
• GoRank keyword density analyzer and comparer – Compare the keyword density of different pages
• SEOMoz term extractor – A keyword density tool but allows you to paste in text instead of inputting a URL.
• Text analysis tool – Allows you to find the most frequent phrases and frequencies of words. Non-English language texts are supported. It also counts number of words, characters, sentences and syllables.

Geotargeting

• For the low cost of a free blog mention, you can get ZipCodeGuy’s geo-database which has a list of all cities and counties in the U.S. along with some other good resources.
• Generate local AdWords & keyword lists – Enter a zip code and chose the radius around it you want to geotarget. The tool will combine your keywords with the cities and states within the radius. Really great tool!

Keyword monitors

These tools let you input a list of keywords, and then tracks rankings and competitor activity over time.

• AdGooroo
• The search monitor
• Keyword competitor

Permutation tools

These tools let you combine lists together—see PPC Magic: 3 Steps To Turning Hundreds Of Keywords Into Millions for more info.

• AdWords juggler tool
• Search phrase builder
• Keyword combinations
• Keyword lizard
• Combine keywords

Keyword competitor tools

Find out who’s ranking on specified terms along with other useful data.

• Compete search analytics
• Keyword Spy
• SpyFu
• SEMRush
• SEODigger

Engine upload tools

• Google AdWords Editor
• Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop
• Microsoft adCenter Desktop (Beta)

Negative terms

• WordStream’s negative keyword tool
• EngineReady.com’s negative keyword list – 420 negative keywords by major vertical, along with a list of general negative keywords that should work well for any industry.
• 26 must have negative keywords for B2B
• 200+ negative keywords to consider for B2B PPC

Modifier lists

• Keyword modifiers list by SEO Book – Spreadsheet showing common keyword modifiers organized by categories such as price, location, and other common variables.
• Keyword modifiers for dating industry – Okay it’s very niche, but it will get you thinking in the right direction for your own industry.
• Some purchase term modifiers

Miscellaneous tools

• Free Keyword Grouper – This tool from WordStream can transform your list (up to 10,000 keywords) into an organized keyword structure ready for high-performance PPC campaigns and an SEO-friendly information architecture.
• The Free Keyword Niche Finder – An innovative new keyword tool from WordStream that returns structured keyword suggestions rather than a disorganized list. Just enter a keyword to find your most relevant and profitable keyword niches for pay-per-click advertising and SEO.
• Apogee’s meta data research tool – Sure, it’s easy enough to view the source code of a site and see its meta keywords, but this makes it even easier.

This week’s question: ”Do you have any other tools you use for PPC that aren’t on this list?”

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Related Topics: PPC Academy | Search Marketing: Search Term Research

About The Author: Josh Dreller is the Vice President of Media Technology for Fuor Digital, an agency concentrated in the research, planning, buying and stewardship of digital media marketing campaigns. Josh can be reached at jdreller@fuor.net. See more articles by Josh Dreller