Keyword research is a crucial part of any successful affiliate marketing strategy. Choosing the right keywords to target can make or break your campaigns and determine how much traffic you drive. As an affiliate marketer in 2024, you need the best keyword research tools available to stay ahead of the competition.
In this detailed guide, I'll be sharing the top 10 keyword research tools specifically for affiliate marketers this year. Whether you're just starting or looking to improve your existing keyword strategy, this list has a tool for everyone. I've used all of these keyword research tools extensively myself, so I can personally vouch for their quality and usefulness for affiliate marketing campaigns.
Let's get started!
SEMrush is one of the most powerful and popular paid keyword research tools available today. The depth of data you get with SEMrush is truly impressive.
For affiliate marketers, SEMrush enables you to:
The sheer amount of data can be overwhelming at first. But once you learn how to use SEMrush effectively for keyword research, it's an invaluable asset for any affiliate marketing strategy.
SEMrush isn't cheap, but it's one of the best investments you can make as an affiliate marketer. The amount of useful data you get access to is well worth the cost.
Ahrefs is SEMrush's biggest competitor when it comes to paid keyword research tools. It offers very similar functionality and data, just with a slightly different presentation and focus.
For affiliate keyword research, Ahrefs excels at providing data on:
One unique aspect of Ahrefs is the ability to analyze backlinks for any domain. This can help evaluate SEO competitor domains that are ranking well.
Like SEMrush, Ahrefs provides far more data than the average user will ever need. It takes some time to get comfortable with the tool. But the wealth of keyword data at your fingertips is incredibly valuable.
While Ahrefs is very affordable for individuals, it's better suited for teams or agencies. But it's still one of the top paid tools for affiliate keyword research.
For a free alternative to paid tools, the Google Keyword Planner should be your first stop. As a Google tool, it provides direct access to up-to-date AdWords keyword data.
With the Keyword Planner you can see monthly searches, competition, suggested bid prices, and other useful info for keywords. It integrates directly with your Google Ads account too.
The main downside is that you can only view data for a limited number of keywords per search. So it's best used in combination with paid tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush.
But for a completely free keyword research tool, the Keyword Planner is incredibly useful for affiliate marketers on a budget. Just be prepared to put in more manual work to research keywords versus paid tools.
KeywordTool.io has become one of my favorite free keyword research tools over the past year. It provides very clean and fast keyword data, along with useful filtering options.
With KeywordTool.io you can filter keyword searches by:
The keyword data comes from multiple sources, not just Google. So search volumes should be more accurate than using the Google Keyword Planner alone.
For affiliate keyword research, I find KeywordTool.io's related keyword and long-tail keyword suggestions extremely helpful. You can go down the rabbit hole to find very targeted, low-competition keywords to target.
KeywordTool.io also has a bulk keyword analysis tool that lets you upload lists of keywords to analyze and research further. This makes it easy to process all the keywords from your top affiliate programs in one go.
While not as powerful as paid tools, KeywordTool.io is likely the best free alternative for in-depth affiliate keyword research.
Übersuggest is a free keyword research tool from Neil Patel. It offers quick and easy keyword searches along with data like monthly searches, CPC, and competition.
What I like about Übersuggest for affiliate keyword research is the "Questions" section. This provides a huge list of commonly searched questions that you can target with content.
As an affiliate, targeting people's questions is a great way to provide value. The question's keyword data cuts out a lot of manual brainstorming, making it much faster to find good keywords.
Übersuggest also shows the top-ranking URLs and ads for any given keyword you look up. This helps give you ideas for content topics by seeing what's working for other high-traffic sites.
Overall, Übersuggest is one of the quickest free keyword research tools for affiliate marketers. Even just 5-10 minutes of searching for keyword ideas with Übersuggest can ignite your creative process and generate great content ideas.
Keyword Surfer is a paid Chrome extension for keyword research. It shows live keyword data directly in your browser while you search Google and YouTube.
With Keyword Surfer, you can immediately see statistics like search volume, CPC, and competitiveness for keywords you come across while browsing. This helps take a lot of the manual effort out of keyword research.
You also get access to broad match keyword data, which is great for finding lucrative long-tail variations. This is incredibly valuable for affiliate marketers trying to get their content ranking for less competitive keywords.
At $39.99 per year, Keyword Surfer is very affordable compared to standalone tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. And you can use it directly alongside those tools to take your keyword research to the next level.
If you spend a lot of time manually browsing Google and YouTube for ideas, Keyword Surfer is a huge time saver. Being able to immediately see keyword stats right in your searches helps unlock great affiliate keyword opportunities.
Answer The Public is one of my favorite free keyword research tools for affiliate marketers in 2024. It provides an endless stream of commonly asked questions around any broad topic.
The key is to enter a broad keyword related to your niche, like "weight loss" or "VPN". Answer The Public will then show you hundreds of question keyword ideas like:
As an affiliate marketer, Question keywords are the holy grail. They get a ton of search volume from people actively looking for solutions.
And Answer The Public makes it incredibly fast and easy to uncover endless questions people are asking about any topic.
Whether you want to create content targeting these questions or do affiliate offers directly related to them, Answer The Public is an invaluable (and free!) keyword research tool.
Soovle is a free multi-engine keyword research tool. It aggregates keyword data from Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and more.
The key benefit of Soovle for affiliate keyword research is uncovering more long-tail variation keywords. By pulling data from multiple sources, it provides more keyword ideas than just Google alone.
Soovle provides keyword data like search volume, CPC, competition levels, and trend history. It also generates related keywords and questions to target.
As an affiliate, you can use Soovle early on in your research process to get a broad range of keyword ideas. It helps you identify low-competition long-tail keywords across multiple platforms.
You'll still want to verify search volumes and competitiveness through Google directly. But Soovle works great for expanding your initial keyword research efforts and finding untapped opportunities.
As the name suggests, Keyword Sheeter is a fast free keyword tool for generating tons of related keywords. It's perfect for when you need quantity over quality in your keyword research.
Simply enter a seed keyword and configure your settings. Keyword Sheeter will then produce hundreds or even thousands of keyword variations and ideas to target.
This is great for affiliate marketers who want to brainstorm as many keyword ideas as possible and then refine down later. Keyword Sheeter provides more quantity than quality. But it's a free and fast way to get keyword research started.
I recommend combining Keyword Sheeter with a tool like Answer The Public. Use Answer The Public for keyword questions then run those through Keyword Shtter to generate a variety
Google Trends allows you to analyze search trends over time for keywords and topics. This can be helpful for affiliate keyword research in a few key ways.
First, you can identify new topics and keywords gaining popularity over time. Getting content ranking early for up-and-coming keyword trends can help you ride a wave of growing search volume.
Second, you can see when the search volume for seasonal keywords rises and falls. This helps you create evergreen content optimized for seasonal affiliate promotions.
And third, you can analyze when old topics and keywords are declining in popularity. This helps you avoid investing effort into content targeting outdated keywords.
While not a full keyword research tool, Google Trends is a free addition to understanding search trends. Use it along with other tools to optimize your affiliate content for rising keywords and seasonal opportunities.
A: Thorough keyword research is crucial for affiliate marketers for a few reasons:
A: The best single free keyword research tool is Google's Keyword Planner. Since it pulls data directly from Google, it provides accurate search volumes and other metrics for ranking on Google.
KeywordTool.io is also an excellent free alternative with more features than the Google Keyword Planner alone. And tools like Übersuggest and Answer The Public are invaluable free resources as well.
For the best results, I recommend combining multiple free keyword tools to maximize the data you can access.
A: You can do affiliate marketing without extensive keyword research, but it is extremely unlikely you will see much success. Keyword research lets you identify buyer keywords that convert well and content topics people are actively searching for.
Without keyword research, you are just guessing about what topics and products might be good to promote. Taking the time to research lucrative keywords before creating any affiliate content will save you huge headaches down the road.
A: The two most popular paid keyword research tools are SEMrush and Ahrefs.
So you can access paid tools for as low as $100 per month. But costs can run into the thousands per month for large-scale agency usage. For most affiliates, the basic paid plans offer more than enough data.
A: I recommend doing thorough keyword research at least once per quarter. Search trends move very fast, so you need to stay on top of rising and falling keyword opportunities.
If you take one thing away from this guide, it's that proper keyword research is mandatory for affiliate marketing success in 2024. The tools you use are critical for researching the right keywords to target.
My recommendation is to combine a paid tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs with multiple free tools. Each keyword research tool provides unique data and ways to find profitable keyword opportunities.
The investment into a paid tool pays for itself extremely quickly through the insights it provides. But you can still get very far with a combination of thoughtful free keyword research and competitor analysis.
If you dedicate the time needed for ongoing keyword research, you'll have more affiliate content ideas than you can handle. And you'll ensure the content you do create has the best chance for driving organic and paid search traffic.
Keyword research takes consistent work, but it's one of the highest-leverage activities for affiliate marketers. Use this list of top 10 tools to jumpstart your keyword strategy this year.
