It’s a thin line between keywords-rich content and keywords stuffing. At the same time, you need to remember that you are primarily writing for humans, not algorithms, so your articles have to be naturally readable and give value and information to the reader.
To write an article that strikes a nice balance, and genuinely improves your hotel’s website SEO, you need to do proper keyword research and include the right combination of valuable and relevant keywords. To be able to do that, you need to know what keyword research tools to use in the first place.
List of Tools:
Today, there is an overwhelming number of keyword research tools, and it can be hard to recognise which are worth giving a try and which one you should avoid.
However, to be able to create content that converts, I’ve tried and tested many tools that are out there and I’m always on the lookout to try the new ones.
That’s why I am listing down my current go-to keyword research tools that I have been using for all my articles and blogs, that I highly recommend to anyone.
Note: I will be updating this list in the future as I discover new great tools, so it‘s worth bookmarking this article!
Paid Keyword Research Tools
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the best and most popular tools nowadays, and for a good reason. It’s an all-in-one software designed to help you not only find the best possible keywords for any topic but also to help you with all other parts of SEO, making sure your article is completely ready to dominate the ranking.
SEMrush has a proactive approach. Once you become their user, you get up to date recommendations on how to improve specific web pages for better performance. You can also connect your Google Analytics account for even more metrics and insights, all in one dashboard.
Besides SEO, it also includes content marketing, social media, advertising and competitive research toolkits. Each of those toolkits has features you need to manage those areas.
For example, with the social media toolkit, you can schedule your post, track performance, analyse competitors for accounts on any social media platform.
In the content marketing toolkit, you have a writing assistant to help you craft the article, as well as a tool to evaluate your existing content, research topics, and track performance of your articles. You also have some management tools, content calendar to help you stay organised and be on top of everything.
What I personally love about SEMrush the most is that I don’t need any additional tool to use to make sure my content is on the SEO top notch. The fact that I can manage all other aspects of my online presence is a big bonus, and of course, the recommendations for improvement is like having an SEO expert working next to you in the office.
Get a free 7-day trial to test it out!
SEMrush does come with a slightly higher price tag, but you honestly won’t need any other tool to accompany it, and for the results, it can give you, it can be comfortably paid for itself and much more if used well.
If you haven’t tried it before, I highly recommend you to get a free 7-day trial and explore the software completely risk-free, before you commit to making any investments.
2. Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a great extension for Chrome or Firefox that shows you the monthly search volume for a certain keyword, average cost-per-click (CPC) in case you are thinking to run Google Ads for that keyword and competition data.
The best part is that it also looks into the “People also search for” section and shows you metrics for other related search terms. This should be a complementary tool however, as it’s not enough to give you a shortlist of keywords that you should use.
Keywords Everywhere was once a free tool, however, to prevent abuse of the tool, they have started charging for it since last year. But, the good news is that it is extremely affordable – for just $10 you get 100k credits, and it takes one credit for one keyword – so it’s more than enough to keep you going for months!
If you are really cautious with your budget, however, you can add the extension for free and get some idea of search volume using the chart:
Free Keyword Research Tools
If you can’t set aside a budget for a paid tool, no need to worry as there are some good free tools that can help you with the research. Again, I am listing only tools that I have been using and can recommend.
I do have to mention that, if you are going with the free-tools option, you have to be prepared to invest a bit more time into the research. These tools give you less information and insights into search volumes and trends, so to be able to get a list of valuable keywords, you will need to combine the data from different tools.
1. Moz
Moz is another tool that can help you with the entire SEO part and it’s one of the biggest competitors to SEMrush. However, I am putting them on this list because of the free tools they offer, starting with Keyword Explorer:
But, there are other free tools that can help you level up your SEO:
For example, you can also analyse your website domain and get a lot of valuable insights:
- domain authority,
- keywords your website ranks for and ranking distribution,
- top pages on your website (based on page authority),
- websites that have placed a link back to your website.
Another tool that is especially useful for hotels and hospitality businesses with a physical address is My Online Presence.
This tool shows you how your hotel or business shows up in a local search and what can you do to improve it.
You can also get a better understanding of Google algorithm with the help of MozCast, and level up a link building strategy with Link Explorer.
To access all those free tools, just head to this link.
Note:
As we use SEMrush, I can’t say much about Moz paid tools as I haven’t used them. But reviews are generally very favourable. It’s also an investment, but you can try it for free for a month before you decide if it’s worth it.
2. LSI Graph
This is a tool just for keyword research, and as I’ve been using it just as a complementary tool, I use just a free version of it and it gives some good insights:
Why I love to use this tool is because it’s great for finding long-tail keywords. Because it also shows the volume search for each, you can easily gather a list of valuable long-tail keywords from this tool.
It’s also very helpful that it lists links to top-performing content on that topic, so you can see what others are writing about it and how they are covering it.
You do have a limited number of keyword searches per day with free version though, but in case you are not publishing dozens of blogs per week, it’s still enough to cover you without the need to upgrade to paid plans. They don’t have free trials, but they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if your needs extend searches that you have with the free plan, you can try it out without risk.
3. Ubersuggest
This great tool created by Neil Patel, an SEO expert, has a good free offering. It gives basic information about the keyword, suggests other relevant keywords and gives a link to the top-performing content related to your keyword. So it’s kind of similar to LSI graph, except that it shows fewer keywords.
It’s good as a complementary tool, but you can’t rely solely on this for entire keyword research, unless you want to pay for more access. However, combined with the tools from above, it can definitely help you to find the best keywords for your content.
I hope this list will help you write keyword-optimised content that will get the attention of your target market it deserves.
Even though keywords are an important part of any website content, don’t forget that you are, at the end of the day, writing for humans. So giving value to your readers should be the first thing on the priority list, and optimising the content with the right keywords on the second.
If you like this article, I have a feeling you will like these as well:
Top Five SEO Copywriting Tips for Hotels
Hotel Copywriting: SEO Black Hat Techniques to Avoid
Five Reasons Why Your Hotel Needs a Blog
Stay safe and healthy,
Until next time,
