Most entrepreneurs launch their startup journey with hopes and dreams of success, but only a few can make it past the competition and ahead of the crowd. Lack of resources and finances is often the reason for small business failure. When the money is tight, few think of investing a chunk in marketing.
 

However, smart entrepreneurs know the importance of digital marketing for the survival of their venture, and they also understand that it does not always have to cost a lot to maintain standard SEO practices. There are plenty of cheap and even free tools available out there for small businesses.
 

Today, there is a tool for every aspect of online marketing. If you are looking for such tools, you must first identify your needs. Since every digital marketing strategy begins with keyword research, we are going to discuss some of the best tools that you can use for the purpose. However, before we dive in, let's take a look at the primary categories that search terms are divided into.

• Primary Keywords
• Secondary Keywords
• Long tail keywords
• LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords
• Keyword synonyms
   

As you may already know, optimization of sites begin right from the web design to development phase and carry on to content planning and social media marketing. Marketers often commit the mistake of not allocating the right amount of time and effort to every stage.
 

However, it is imperative that you spend enough time on keyword research to guide the content strategy and digital marketing endeavors in the right direction. With this approach, you will have a clear idea and control over where how to shape your site content to improve search engine ranking.
 

Ideal tools for keyword research
 

By keeping startups in mind, here we will discuss some of the top keyword research tools, which you can try for free.
 

Before discussing the tools, there are a few shortcuts you can try, which can be supplemented adequately with proper tools. With appropriate shortcuts and keyword research tools, you will be able to:
 

• Choose the most relevant keywords based on your industry, seasonal search, local search and more.
• Create a custom calendar for content based on long-tail keywords.
• Understand your market competition
• Learn about your competitors an
• d their strategies.
• Help your site climb on top of the SERPs.
   

To start with, you can rely on a clever combination of free keyword research tools rather than paying for the premium versions. Through a process of trial and error, you can come up with the apt tool that you can pay for in the future. Regardless of the nature of your website, target audience, goals, and focus, the following keyword research tools may give the real SEO edge you want. Let's get started.
 

1. Google keyword planner
 

It is the most popular and easiest tool for keyword ideas. You just need to fill in the required fields, select targets and category, enter your website URL as the landing page and hit on the "Get Ideas" button to download the results. Keyword planner may return hundreds of possible search queries. You can download it as a CSV file and keep it handy for further research to make a shortlist.
 

Google's keyword planner is the best starting point for keyword research, and it can provide you with the most comprehensive and perfectly targeted keyword list. However, do not conclude with it; it is just a start!
 

2. Google Trends
 

The next one is again a product of Google, and it allows the users to compare the popularity of different keywords. Google Trends can tell you which keywords have an increased potential of gaining more popularity in your niche field, which will allow you to explore the most trending keywords in the market.
 

For example, you may compare "lawn mower machine" against "lawn mower USA." You may find that the former is more searched for than the latter. The reason may be because "lawn mower USA" is too broad a term or that it sounds unnatural.
 

Experts suggest that Google Trends is the best keyword research tool in the free tools category that gives you comprehensive geo-targeted data. Therefore, you must give it a try!
 

3. Google Suggest
 

When it comes to suggesting long-tail keywords, Google Suggest is found to be the master. You just need to save the key phrases, which are generated based on the most productive and popular searches. You can give them top consideration. You can make a list of secondary words which can be added before and after your keywords to find successful key phrases.
 

Nowadays, we can also see that many people prefer voice search, and in that case, they may specifically ask a question
such as "Where do I buy a lawnmower?"
 

As you can see, long tail search queries may also be in interrogative form starting with what, when how, why, can, or does. For this, you need to carry out a question-based search in Google. You can do this by adding an asterisk (*) at the end as it is a wildcard operator in Google search.
 

For example, "How to * lawnmowers," "What * lawn mowers," "Where * lawn mower*," and such.
 

Asterisk acts as a blank which Google fills and populates the most searched question-based words.
 

4. KeywordTool.io
 

KeywordTool.io helps to discover long-tail keywords. You can find as many combinations and permutations to have a solid list of most useful long-tail keywords. Even though it is a free tool, there is a monthly fee if you want to dig further deep to get more information. However, you just have to work on the free version until you start to see real results.
 

You can find more correlated keywords (LSI Keywords) or typical contextual keywords by using this keyword tool. As per Google's latest algorithm, the search engine now ranks content based on various synonyms of a particular key phrase and also the contextual/correlated words. So, you must ensure that your page content has strategically inserted keywords and relevant synonyms.
 

5. Wikipedia
 

Wikipedia too is a fantastic tool for you to get contextual keywords. Just search for the keywords in your list and read the pages you get in results. You will find a goldmine of the most relevant LSI keywords. Wikipedia can also give a wealth of info related to your niche domain, and the site can also help you get some industry jargons, slang, and technical terms which you will find handy in your day to day operations.
 

There are other alternatives such as Google Correlate, WordNet, and Xenu Link Sleuth for you to try. Once you have a pretty long list of primary, secondary, long-tail, LSI keywords, and synonyms, you can then find the most relevant keywords for your niche and start optimizing on them.