Free tool
Find the keywords worth ranking for
Type in a phrase someone might search to find you, like “backlink checker”. See 100 related searches, how many people search each one, and how hard they would be to rank for.
How the tool works
- 01
We look your seed up in a live keyword index
A commercial index built from Google Ads and clickstream data, scoped to the market you pick. Nothing to install, no account.
- 02
We pull up to 100 phrases that contain it, biggest first
Full-text expansions — "backlink checker" gives you "free backlink checker", "backlink checker for competitors" — not same-category mega-terms that wander off topic. Each comes with monthly volume, difficulty, CPC and paid competition.
- 03
We label each with intent and flag the questions
Comparison, ready-to-buy, informational, navigational — inferred from wording, so you can see at a glance which rows are buyers and which are readers. Anything phrased as a question is marked, because those are the ones that turn into prompts.
- 04
You filter, sort and export
Filter by intent or difficulty, sort by whatever matters, and download the lot as a CSV. Then track the ones you choose.
How to do keyword research with it
Keyword research is not complicated; it is just easy to do badly. The version below is what we do for our own site, and it fits in an afternoon.
- 01
Start from what you sell, not from a keyword list
Write down the three or four things a buyer would type when they have the problem you solve — the category, the job, the outcome. Those are your seeds. If you cannot name them, no tool will.
- 02
Seed with the category, not the brand
"backlink checker", not "Ahrefs". Brand keywords belong to the brand; category keywords are the ones you can actually win, and they are where new buyers start.
- 03
Sort by volume, then filter by difficulty
Volume tells you what is worth having; difficulty tells you what you can have. For a new or small site, switch on "Difficulty ≤ 30" and look at what is left. That list is usually longer than people expect, and it is where you should start.
- 04
Read the intent column
Comparison and ready-to-buy keywords ("best", "vs", "pricing", "alternative") are the ones that convert — they deserve pages that help someone choose. Informational keywords build the topic around them and earn links; they rarely convert on their own. You need both, in that order of priority.
- 05
Pull out the questions
Toggle "Questions only". Every row there is a heading, an FAQ entry, or a whole article. They are also, word for word, what people ask AI assistants — see below.
- 06
Map one keyword to one page
Each keyword you choose gets one URL that owns it. Two pages chasing the same phrase split the signal and neither ranks. Keep a sheet: keyword, intent, the page that owns it, its current rank.
- 07
Track rank after you publish
This is the step almost everyone skips. Research is a hypothesis; the rank a month later is the result. Track the keywords you chose, see who sits above you, and treat every position as a list of things to do — which is what our own rank tracking is built around.
What the columns mean
- Volume
- Average monthly searches for the exact phrase in the market you picked. Rounded, a few weeks behind, and an estimate — but consistent across rows, which is what makes it useful for ranking keywords against each other.
- Difficulty
- A 0–100 estimate of how hard it is to break into the top ten, driven mostly by how many links the pages already ranking have. Under 30 is realistic for a newer site; over 60 is a long campaign. It measures the competition, not the value.
- CPC
- What advertisers pay per click for the phrase in Google Ads. A useful proxy for commercial value: if someone is paying $12 a click for a keyword, the people searching it are worth having.
- Competition
- Google Ads paid competition, 0 to 1 — how many advertisers bid on the phrase. It is in the CSV rather than the table because it is about ads, not organic ranking, and it is easy to confuse with difficulty.
- Intent
- Our read of what the searcher is trying to do, from the words they used. Comparison ("best", "vs", "alternatives"), Ready to buy ("pricing", "trial", "demo"), Informational ("how", "what", "guide"), Navigational ("login", "official"), or General when there is no strong signal. Check the live results page before you commit a page to a keyword — wording is a good guide, not a guarantee.
Keyword research for AI search
A growing share of buying research now happens as a question typed into ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Mode instead of a phrase typed into a search box. The good news is that the questions are not new. “What is the best backlink checker for a small site” is the question-shaped row in your result with a few more words on it.
So the question rows in this tool do double duty. On Google they are headings and FAQ entries. In an AI assistant they are prompts — and whether the assistant names you when someone asks is decided mostly by which roundups, comparisons and directories it has read about your category, not by your own pages. Our free AI visibility checker asks those questions for you and reports who got named. If you want the longer explanation of why, we wrote up how generative engine optimization works.
Questions about the tool
- Is the keyword research tool really free?
- Your first search needs no signup and no email. A second search asks for an email, because every run costs us real money in data. There is no trial clock and no card. Nothing is held back in the results — you get the same 100 rows either way.
- How many keywords does it return?
- Up to 100 per seed, biggest by monthly volume first, out of however many the index holds for that phrase (the total is shown at the top of your result). If your seed is broad, the 100 will be the head of a much longer list; if it is narrow, you may get fewer.
- Where does the data come from?
- A commercial keyword index built from Google Ads and clickstream data — the same kind of source the paid suites use. We pull the phrases that contain your seed, with the volume, cost-per-click, paid competition and SEO difficulty the index has for each. Intent labels and question flags are ours, inferred from the wording.
- How accurate is the search volume?
- It is a rounded monthly average for the market you picked, and it lags reality by a few weeks. Treat it as a ranking, not a count: a keyword showing 1,000 is meaningfully bigger than one showing 100, but neither number is what you will see in Search Console. Every tool in this category — free or paid — has the same caveat.
- What is a good difficulty for a new site?
- Difficulty is a 0–100 estimate of how hard the top ten is to break into, based mostly on the authority of the pages already there. For a site with few links, keywords under about 30 are realistic in months rather than years; 30–50 is possible with a genuinely better page; above 60 is a long project. The "Difficulty ≤ 30" toggle exists for exactly this.
- What is the difference between volume and difficulty?
- Volume is how many people search the phrase each month. Difficulty is how strong the pages already ranking for it are. The keywords worth your time are usually the ones where volume is decent and difficulty is low — and there are more of those in a list of 100 than you would expect, because most sites only compete for the top few.
- Can I export the results?
- Yes — the Download CSV button gives you every row (keyword, volume, difficulty, CPC, competition, intent, and whether it is a question) as a plain file you can open in Sheets or Excel. No email required.
- Which countries does it cover?
- United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Germany and France. Volume and difficulty are market-specific, so pick where your buyers actually are — a phrase that is easy in Canada can be hard in the US.
- Do you store my keyword or my email?
- We cache the result for seven days per keyword and market so a shared link does not re-run the lookup, and we keep an email if you give us one for a second search. We do not add you to a mailing list from this tool.
- Does keyword research still matter now that people ask AI assistants?
- Yes, and the overlap is bigger than it looks. The question-shaped rows in your result are the same things people type into ChatGPT and Perplexity, just shorter. Ranking for them on Google still matters, and being one of the sources those assistants read for them matters more every month. This tool gives you the phrases; the AI visibility checker tells you whether the assistants name you when someone asks.
- What does a free Sightivo account add?
- Tracking. Pick the keywords from this list that you actually want, and Sightivo checks your rank for each on a schedule, shows which competitors sit above you, and attaches the link and mention opportunities related to that keyword — so a weak position comes with a list of things to do about it, not just a number.