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Can you find keywords for your next article without paying for a tool?
Summary
You can gather and shortlist keywords for free. If your site already gets impressions, Search Console holds the real queries, and a regex filter pulls out just the ones that look like questions. Comparing demand is where free data falls short, because Keyword Planner hides very low-volume keywords and rounds the volumes it does show.
Start with the queries you already get
In Search Console's Performance report, choose Queries or Pages, then Custom (regex), and you can include or exclude many queries at once. The syntax is RE2, matching is partial by default, and it isn't case-sensitive. A filter like `^(how|what|why|can|does)` lists only queries that start with a question word. Add a country or device filter and you can see, say, the question queries mobile users in the US typed. A question with plenty of impressions and no page on your site that answers it is a ready-made topic. The limit is that you only see queries your site already appeared for.
Free idea tools compared
| Source | What you get free | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Google autocomplete | Predictions that reflect real searches on Google | Shaped by language, location, trending interest and your own past searches, so it isn't a popularity ranking |
| Ahrefs Keyword Generator | Up to 10 seed words, ideas for Google, Bing, YouTube or Amazon, with local and global volume estimates | The page doesn't say how many ideas the free version shows |
| Semrush without a paid plan | Keyword Magic Tool results | 10 rows on screen, no export, 10 seed keywords an hour, counted toward 10 reports a day |
Google says autocomplete doesn't just show the most common queries on a topic, which is why it differs from Google Trends and shouldn't be compared with it. Some predictions are also built from word patterns found across the web, alongside real searches. Autocomplete is good for catching how people phrase a question and poor for deciding which phrasing is searched more.
Where Keyword Planner falls short
Keyword Planner lives inside Google Ads, and you have to add billing information before you can use even the "get ideas" feature. Keywords with very low search volume, or ones Google treats as sensitive, never appear. Average monthly searches are rounded, shown only for exact matches, and averaged over 12 months by default, and Google warns that the numbers get less accurate when you target a small area. On a niche topic, many of the queries you care about can fall under that floor and come back with no number at all.
Work out your own number: the SEO Tools Cost Calculator finds the cheapest published plan for your sites, tracked keywords and users.
Sources
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/17011165?hl=en
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553?hl=en
- https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7368877?hl=en
- https://ahrefs.com/keyword-generator
- https://www.semrush.com/kb/262-keyword-magic-tool
- https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7337243?hl=en
- https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/3022575?hl=en
Figures come from each vendor's own pricing pages and documentation. We have not tested these tools hands-on, and no ranking here is paid for.