What free keyword tools actually do
A keyword research tool does some combination of four jobs: it suggests new keyword ideas from a seed, it reports monthly search volume for those keywords, it scores the competitive difficulty, and it shows you who currently ranks for them. No free tool does all four well. Paid tools blend the four into one workflow at the cost of a monthly subscription. The free stack works because you combine three or four free tools and let each one cover its strength.
The free stack, ranked by usefulness
1. Google Search Console (GSC)
What it does: shows every search query your own site already gets impressions for, with positions, click data and CTR. Australian-localised by default if your site has AU traffic. Free, official, no signup beyond Google.
Best for: any site with at least a few months of history. The most valuable source on this entire list, by a margin.
Weakness: only shows queries you already rank for or get impressions for. Useless for keywords completely outside your current footprint.
Verdict: mandatory. If you set up only one tool, set up GSC. The technical SEO audit covers the broader setup.
2. Google Keyword Planner
What it does: related keyword suggestions and monthly Australian search volumes from inside Google Ads. Free with an Ads account (no campaign required).
Best for: AU search volume data on commercial keywords. The numbers are the closest thing to source because they come from Google itself.
Weakness: low-volume terms get lumped into ranges (10 to 100, 100 to 1k, 1k to 10k). For sub-100 long-tail you cannot see the exact number. Volume is averaged over 12 months and can mask seasonality.
Verdict: mandatory for AU volume data. Set location to Australia, language to English.
3. The live SERP plus autocomplete plus People Also Ask
What it does: Google itself, used as a research tool. Type your seed, read the top ten for intent, scroll to People Also Ask for question variants, scroll further for Related Searches, watch autocomplete as you type.
Best for: intent verification, question discovery, SERP feature awareness, competitor surfacing. Free, fast, always up to date.
Weakness: no volume data, no difficulty scores, no aggregation. You are doing the work manually each time.
Verdict: mandatory. Routinely skipped by 90 percent of agencies. The fastest route to intent confidence. See understanding search intent for the SERP-check workflow.
4. Ahrefs Free Tools
What it does: a small number of free daily searches across Ahrefs's keyword explorer, with volume, difficulty score and top-ranking URLs. Free with email signup.
Best for: difficulty scores and SERP previews on a shortlist of priority keywords. Enough free searches per day for a small-business research session.
Weakness: very limited daily quota; deeper backlink and competitor data is locked behind paid plans.
Verdict: excellent for difficulty filtering in step 5 of the workflow. See keyword difficulty explained for how to read their scores.
5. SEMrush Free
What it does: similar to Ahrefs Free. Limited daily searches across keyword research, domain overview and a few competitor reports.
Best for: the SEMrush KD score, which blends in SERP feature signals the others do not. Useful as a second opinion on tough difficulty calls.
Weakness: the free tier ran tighter than Ahrefs's last time we benchmarked them. Be ready to swap between tools.
Verdict: a useful sidekick to Ahrefs Free. Pick the one whose interface you prefer if you only want one.
6. Keywords Everywhere
What it does: a browser extension that shows search volume, CPC and competition inline on every Google search, on YouTube, on Amazon, on eBay, on Bing. Strictly speaking freemium: a small credit pack starts at a few dollars a month, but the workflow saving is huge.
Best for: casual research as you browse. Every Google search becomes a keyword research session.
Weakness: credit-based pricing means heavy use eats credits fast. Volume data is generally good but check against Keyword Planner for AU-specific work.
Verdict: for anyone doing more than occasional research, the small monthly outlay pays back in week one.
7. AnswerThePublic
What it does: visualises the question variants around a seed keyword in a wheel diagram. A few free searches per day.
Best for: generating FAQ content and long-tail question lists.
Weakness: the visualisation is more striking than the underlying data. Half the questions are dud Google autocomplete leftovers.
Verdict: nice complement for content briefs but not core. See long-tail keyword strategy for question-based long-tail.
8. Ubersuggest
What it does: Neil Patel's freemium keyword tool. A few free daily searches with volume, difficulty and content ideas.
Best for: a quick volume check when you do not want to log into Keyword Planner.
Weakness: data quality is decent but inconsistent against the other tools. The interface pushes hard on the paid upgrade.
Verdict: fine as an occasional third opinion. Not core.
How we combine them in a real research session
A typical Perth client research session uses four tools in this order:
- Open Search Console. Export top 1,000 queries from the last 12 months. This becomes the foundation of the seed list.
- Run each seed through Keyword Planner. Pull related keyword suggestions and AU monthly volumes. Build the candidate spreadsheet.
- Live SERP for every shortlisted keyword. Tag intent, note SERP features (AI Overview, local pack, video), record top three competitors.
- Ahrefs Free for difficulty on the shortlist. Drop keywords above the realistic 12-month ceiling.
That is 90 percent of the work. Keywords Everywhere runs in the background to add inline volume to ad-hoc searches. People Also Ask gets scraped for FAQ ideas. Done.
For the full step-by-step workflow that sits on top of this stack, see how to do keyword research, step by step.
When it is time to start paying
Three honest triggers from running both free and paid stacks across hundreds of client retainers:
- You have 30 or more pages ranking and want competitive rank tracking. Free tools cannot reliably track rank movements at scale. A paid Ahrefs or SEMrush plan from this point gives you the rank-tracking grid you need.
- You need real backlink data on competitors. Free previews show the top 5 or 10 referring domains. For genuine competitor backlink analysis you need a paid plan. See competitor keyword gap analysis for how this fits the broader research.
- The time cost of swapping between five free tools exceeds the subscription. A paid tool is one workflow. Five free tools is five logins, five exports, five interfaces. For most growing businesses the break-even is somewhere between month nine and month twelve.
Most Perth small businesses can comfortably run a year on the free stack before any of those triggers hit. Some can run two years.
Tools we do not use
A short list of free tools we have tried and dropped:
- Keyword Tool dot io. Decent suggestion volume but the paid upgrade pressure is constant and the free output is heavily gated.
- WordTracker Free. Limited free searches and the data has not matched our spot-checks against Keyword Planner for AU volumes.
- Google Trends as a primary tool. Useful for seasonality context but not granular enough for keyword-level work. Use it as a sidekick, not a source.
- Generic AI "keyword tools" launched in 2024 and 2025. Most are wrappers around a public dataset with an LLM layer. Inconsistent on AU data.
Common mistakes
- Setting every tool's location to Australia and language to English.
- Triangulating volume across two sources before committing to a keyword.
- Using GSC as the spine of the seed list for any site with existing history.
- Treating the live SERP as a tool, not as an afterthought.
- Paying small for Keywords Everywhere; the time saving justifies the credit pack.
- Relying on one tool's data without a cross-check.
- Leaving location set to United States (the default in most tools).
- Ignoring Search Console because the interface looks unfriendly. Worth the half-hour to learn it.
- Paying for Ahrefs or SEMrush before the site has 30 ranking pages worth tracking.
- Trusting AI-generated volume estimates without verifying against Keyword Planner.
Perth and WA context
Three Perth-specific notes on the free stack.
Australian volumes are thinner than US volumes for most niches. The free tools were largely calibrated against US data. Be ready to make decisions on 10 to 100 monthly searches, not 10,000. The long-tail chapter covers why that is fine.
Regional WA needs hand-rolled research. Karratha, Kalgoorlie, Esperance and Port Hedland often have keyword volumes so small that even Keyword Planner under-reports them. Read the live SERP, read the local industry publications, read the LinkedIn job ads in that region. The signal is there even when the tool numbers are zero. See SEO Karratha and SEO Kalgoorlie.
The Perth metro is well-covered by the free tools. Suburb-level volumes for Fremantle, Joondalup, Cockburn, Mandurah and the rest come through cleanly in Keyword Planner with Australia as the location setting. The free stack handles metro-level research fine. See SEO Fremantle, SEO Joondalup, SEO Cockburn and SEO Mandurah for the metro pattern, and the local keyword research chapter for the modifier matrix.
For the wider workflow these tools plug into, see how to do keyword research. For what to do with the keyword map once it is built, see the On-Page SEO pillar. For our own free tool that pulls Lighthouse scores, ranking pages and keyword data in one report, see the free SEO audit or browse our website audit service.