What are the top SEO keyword research tools available?
I’m aware that Semrush and Ahrefs are among the most popular, but they can be costly.
Currently, I’m using Mangools, which costs around $29 per month, but I find their daily keyword research limit quite frustrating.
Do you have any recommendations?
I’m also aware of free tools, but their capabilities are somewhat limited.
I apologize in advance for the length of this answer, but here’s a detailed approach I’ve recently started using for keyword research, and it’s completely free. Please note that I’m still monitoring how my final content performs with Google Search Console (GSC).
Step #1: Visit keywordsheeter.com (not an affiliate link) and enter your seed keyword. This tool scrapes the Google Search bar and quickly generates hundreds of potential keywords.
Step #2: Go to Google Keyword Planner. You’ll need to set up an AdWords account if you haven’t already. In the keyword planner, paste about 250 potential keywords from Keywordsheeter. Ensure you select the United States as your target location and filter the results to show keywords with at least 100 monthly searches.
Step #3: Use Ahrefs. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Check Keyword Difficulty” under Free SEO tools. For a new blog, aim for keywords with an Easy difficulty rating of 0-9.
Step #4: Start creating your content based on these keywords.
The entire process typically takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Ahrefs’ keyword difficulty rating focuses on organic traffic volume, while Keyword Planner emphasizes ad placement volume.
I’ve just begun using this method for my new content, so I can’t share specific results yet. However, I find it to be a more engaging approach to keyword research. I hope this information proves helpful to you.
This is fantastic, Thank you mate 
This is incredibly useful, wow, just wow 
Keyword sheeter is amusing; I remember when it initially appeared on Blackhatworld over 10 years ago. The only downside is that it generates autocomplete keywords endlessly until you manually stop it.
A similar tool is Topicfinder.com, which provides tens of thousands of keywords with attached SEO data. This makes the keywords and the ranking pages more structured and meaningful.
My usual approach is to begin with Topicfinder to identify intriguing pages and keywords, and then I delve deeper into them using Ahrefs or Semrush for closer inspection.
I recommend taking a look at Surfer. It offers valuable insights like search volume, keyword difficulty, and SERP analysis, helping you pinpoint high-potential keywords for your blog. Surfer’s Content Editor is especially handy, providing specific recommendations to optimize your content based on top-performing pages.