How to Use Ubersuggest for Keyword Research Like a Pro

by | Nov 14, 2022 | Blogging, Freelance Writing Skills, SEO Blog Posts, SEO Keyword Research, SEO Tools

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Learn how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research (free and paid features), how to pick the best keywords, and how to use the Ubersuggest Chrome extension.

How to Use Ubersuggest for SEO Keyword Research — Featured Image

If you’re just getting started as a freelance writer, chances are you’re on a tight budget.

I know I was.

At the time, I used Ubersuggest’s free version for a bit and then got its monthly subscription — $29/month is much easier to digest than the $100/month other tools charge.

Now, is Ubersuggest the best keyword research tool?

No, it isn’t. But it’s a good starting point for new writers and bloggers. It’s also easier to learn how to use Ubersuggest than other, more advanced tools.

I’ve been in a position where I couldn’t afford better tools. I made do with what I had. In this blog post, I’ll teach you how to make the most of Ubersuggest and other free keyword research tools, so you can write SEO blog posts without breaking the bank!

What Is Ubersuggest?

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool for keyword research created by Neil Patel.

Aside from keyword research, you can do competitor analysis, SEO audits, traffic and backlink analysis, and more.

What sets this SEO tool apart from others is its incredible value for money.

How to Use Ubersuggest for Keyword Research

Open Ubersuggest, type in the keyword you want to look into, and choose the country you want to analyze. You can also set it for worldwide search instead of a single country.

This image shows how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research by typing a keyword, choosing the country, and searching.

It first gives an overview of that keyword, presenting data like search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and searcher’s age range, among others.

This image shows how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research. It shows the keyword overview, including search volume, SEO difficulty, and paid difficulty.

If you scroll down, you’ll see two major sections: “Keyword Ideas” and “Content Ideas.”

To expand on those sections, you can either click “View all keyword/content ideas” below each section or click “Keyword Ideas” or “Content Ideas” on the bar on the left.

This image shows how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research by clicking on "view all keyword ideas" or "content ideas."

The “Content Ideas” section can help you figure out what type of content is already out there and which is more successful — you can assess this by looking at how many shares it has on Facebook and Pinterest as well as how many monthly visitors it has.

But what matters right now is the “Keyword Ideas” section.

When you expand it, you can see the search volume, cost per click, paid difficulty, and SEO difficulty for the first 20 keywords (if you’re using Ubersuggest’s free version).

To unlock the information for the remaining thousands of keywords, you need a paid plan (more on that later).

This image shows how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research by checking each keyword's search volume, CPC, paid difficulty, and SEO difficulty.

First, it shows you keyword suggestions but you can explore other sections, like related keywords, questions, comparisons, and prepositions.

This image shows how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research by choosing between seeing keyword suggestions, prepositions, comparisons, etc.

How to Pick the Best SEO Keywords

Ok, you have thousands of keywords and data in front of you. What do you do with all this?

Well, you’ll need to find a balance between three aspects:

  • Keyword(s) that align with your niche and business goals.
  • Keyword(s) with, at least some, but preferably a lot of monthly searches.
  • Keyword(s) with low to medium SEO difficulty (depending on your domain authority).

However, depending on your business goals at the moment, you might want to prioritize high-intent keywords over keywords with a high monthly search volume (MSV).

“High-intent keywords refer to search terms consumers use that indicate a higher likelihood to take a particular business action — typically one resulting in a transaction.”

Lauryn Chamberlain, Yext

These keywords usually have lower SEO difficulty, meaning it’s easier for your posts to rank. But people typing those queries into Google are ready or close to being ready to purchase. Hence, it’s often more profitable to target those keywords even if the search volume is low.

The bottom-line is that you need critical thinking when picking keywords.

Setting Goals & Considering Search Intent

Let’s look into the first point.

Obviously, you need to choose keywords related to your niche, but what do I mean by “business goals”?

You’re writing blog posts to rank highly on Google and get more visitors to your website, but you can achieve a lot more with each post. Here are three examples:

  • You could target high-intent keywords to sell your products or to make affiliate income.
  • You could target keywords related to your lead magnet, product, or service to collect leads.
  • You could target educational-intent keywords to attract and educate your audience.

It all comes down to analyzing and matching user intent.

“The user intent, or search intent, states which goal or intention an internet user has when entering a search term into a search engine. [Search] intent is now a central factor in content and [SEO] and is eclipsing individual keywords as a dominant ranking factor.”

Search Metrics

There are two ways you can go about it:

  • Collect keywords, figure out their search intent, and narrow your list down to the ones that match your goals.
  • Define your goals first, and, then, find keywords with search intent that aligns with your goals.

Here are the four types of search intent and examples of goals you can achieve by targeting those keywords.

1. Navigational Intent

Navigational intent refers to people who are looking for a specific website or tool. They may type something like “Ubersuggest,” “Facebook,” or “Forbes.”

This image shows a Google search for "Ubersuggest" to exemplify navigational intent.
An example of a navigational intent Google search.

You should only aim to rank for navigational queries for your own website.

Imagine this blog post ends up ranking for the keyword “Ubersuggest,” it won’t serve any purpose because people typing that query are looking for Ubersuggest, not a guide on how to use it.

2. Informational Intent

This is probably the most common type of search. People are looking to learn something about a topic in general or to find an answer to a specific question.

In fact, if you got here via Google, you were probably typing something like “how to use Ubersuggest for keyword research.” Your intent was informational.

And this is where Google really shines. It doesn’t just show results for literal keyword matches; it further interprets search intent.

Take a look at the example below. When I searched for “ginger tea” Google assumed I was looking for recipes and went with that first.

It only showed results related to ginger tea benefits after a bunch of recipes — it even gave me video results for that query.

This gif shows a Google search for "ginger tea" to exemplify informational intent.
An example of an informational intent Google search.

Examples of goals you can achieve by targeting informational intent keywords include:

  • Attracting visitors to your website by answering their questions or solving their problems.
  • Generating leads by creating guides on how to use your own or affiliate products.
  • Increasing trust by establishing yourself as an expert in your field.
  • Generating leads by educating your audience on the benefits of your own or affiliate products.

Informational intent queries may include words like “benefits,” “information,” “how to,” “easiest way to,” or “why,” for example.

3. Commercial Investigation Intent

When people are looking for information about products they want to buy before actually buying them, their intent is commercial investigation. Here’s an example:

This image shows a Google search for "best gear for hiking" to exemplify commercial investigation intent.
An example of a commercial investigation intent Google search.

This type of queries can be more specific than “best gear for hiking”, though. Here are two more examples:

  • “Gregory Zulu 30 backpack alternatives”
  • “Black Diamond Trail Ergo Cork trekking poles review”

Examples of goals you can achieve by targeting keywords with informational intent include:

  • Attracting visitors to your website by answering their questions.
  • Generating high-quality leads to buy your own or affiliate products.

There’s a lot of opportunity to make money through commercial intent, especially, if you’re running an affiliate blog.

4. Transactional Intent

And, finally, people typing in queries with transactional intent are ready to buy — they don’t need any more convincing!

Guides, reviews, and other types of informational blog posts won’t cut it here.

Their mind is made up at this point.

You should only target these keywords if you’re selling that exact product — and they should be reserved for product pages, not blog posts.

Here’s an example of a search query with transactional intent:

This image shows a Google search for "babyliss pro nano titanium hair dryer" to exemplify transactional intent.
An example of a transactional intent Google search.

Transactional intent queries may also include words like “buy,” “for sale,” “discount,” “second hand,” or “used,” for example.

Finding a Balance Between Search Volume & SEO Difficulty

It’d be great to rank for a keyword with 10k, 100k, or even more monthly searches, right?

The problem is that, normally, you’ll face insane competition for those and only very established websites have the domain authority to compete in that league.

So, what you need to do is look for a balance between an acceptable amount of monthly searches and a reasonably low SEO difficulty score.

It might not seem like much when you’re targeting keywords with 10 to 500 monthly searches but as you write more and more blog posts, it compounds into decent monthly traffic to your site.

You could use the Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) SEO method to target underserved keywords and rank high faster.

What Is Search Volume?

Search volume is the number of times a keyword was searched on a search engine, like Google, per month.

What Is SEO Difficulty?

SEO difficulty (a.k.a. keyword difficulty or keyword competition) is the numerical representation of how hard it is to organically rank for a certain keyword on the first search engine results page (SERP).

This metric is based on many factors. In Google’s case, there are 200 ranking factors!

SEO difficulty goes from 0 to 100, with 0 being the easiest and 100 the hardest.

Ubersuggest’s New Beta Feature

To make this process easier for you, Ubersuggest recently added an awesome feature!

On the top right corner, above the keyword ideas spreadsheet, you can read “Page 1 Ranking Potential.”

Ubersuggest's new beta feature: page 1 ranking potential.

By clicking it, you’ll get the option to enter your domain and it’ll narrow down the suggestions to keywords that you have the potential to rank for on the first SERP — awesome, right?

Ubersuggest Pricing

Ubersuggest offers three paid plans depending on your needs:

  • Individual plan — $29/month
  • Business plan — $49/month
  • Enterprise/Agency plan — $99/month

Each one of these unlocks all features available at Ubersuggest. The difference is the number of daily reports, projects, tracked keywords, and pages crawled per site audit you get.

For example, with the individual plan, you can get 100 reports per day and run three projects at the same time; with the enterprise plan, the number of daily reports is 900 and you can run fifteen projects.

You can get the 7-day free trial to see if this tool is a good fit for you and your needs before committing to a monthly plan.

Ubersuggest Lifetime Deal

Ubersuggest also has an unusual but insanely valuable offer: a lifetime deal.

That’s right, pay once, get access forever!

Here are the prices for lifetime access, depending on your needs:

  • Individual plan — $290
  • Business plan — $490
  • Enterprise/Agency plan — $990

Given the prices of monthly plans, if you get the lifetime deal, after ten months of using it, it’s as if you have Ubersuggest for free… forever.

Each lifetime plan price tier gives you access to the equivalent monthly plan tier. You can check all the details here.

Ubersuggest Free Plan — How Do I Search for Keywords for Free?

The free plan gives you access to most Ubersuggest features except the historical keyword search volume on mobile and desktop, the searchers’ age range, and the organic click-through rate.

You’ll only be able to make three keyword searches per day and you’ll only get data, like search volume and SEO difficulty, for the first twenty keywords.

And that’s pretty much it — these are the only limitations free users get.

How to Use Ubersuggest for Free (& Make the Most of It)

To use Ubersuggest for free all you need to do is open it on your browser and type whatever topic or keyword you want to search.

Unlike most other free keyword research tools, you won’t need to create an account.

Of course, some features are limited. Above, you can learn what you get from Ubersuggest’s paid and free plans.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret so you can make the most of the free version of Ubersuggest.

With this small hack, you can search seven keywords per day instead of only three.

So, you open Ubersuggest, type in your first keyword, and click “Search” — that’s one out of seven.

Once you’re done analyzing that search term’s “Keyword Ideas” and want to move on to the next, scroll back to the top.

Look at the search bar. It looks different, right? It now says “Enter 1-3 keywords.”

This image shows how you can research more than one keyword at the same time on Ubersuggest.

First, you need to remove the keyword you searched previously. Click “Clear All” bellow the “Search” button.

Then, write one keyword and click the “+” button on the right side of the search bar — just make sure you don’t click the “Search” button by mistake before you’re done adding all the keywords you want to (been there!).

This image shows how you can research more than one keyword at the same time on Ubersuggest.

You can do this process twice with the two free searches you had left, leading to a total of seven keywords researched!

Another way to get more out of Ubersuggest’s free version is by using its Chrome extension.

How to Use Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

Let’s start with the basics.

Ubersuggest — SEO and Keyword Discovery Chrome extension is a free SEO tool that can be used for Google, Amazon, YouTube, and more.

It gives you insights about the keywords you search, including their monthly search volume, cost-per-click, and SEO difficulty as well as related keywords.

All you need to do is to install the extension and perform a search on a search engine like Google or YouTube — yes, it’s that simple.

The data is automatically displayed on the right side of the SERP and below each title tag.

If you scroll down, you’ll find more data below the keyword suggestions, including the traffic each website page is getting and how many backlinks it has.

Here’s a gif that shows exactly how to use Ubersuggest Chrome extension, the data it gives you, and where to find it (Side Note: it automatically set for my laptop’s language and I can’t change it):

This gif shows how to use the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, the data it gives you, and where to find it — How to Use Ubersuggest Chrome Extension.

If you’ve purchased an Ubersuggest paid plan, you have access to all keywords and data.

If you’re using the free plan, you’ll only get the first ten keywords with the highest search volume and you can only see the “related” keywords tab, not the “suggestions,” “questions,” and so on.

However, you get unlimited searches, which is kind of an upgrade from the Ubersuggest tool’s free version.

Well, they may not be unlimited but I’ve tried at least 20 and it’s still going so let’s say you get nearly unlimited searches!

Ubersuggest: SEO Keyword Research Tool — Other FAQs

Finally, here are the answers to some other frequently asked questions about Ubersuggest.

What Does Ubersuggest Do?

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool that you can use for detailed keyword research, to get content ideas, and to analyze SERPs for a given keyword.

Another great feature is the site audit. You can get data about your website’s SEO score, organic monthly traffic, organic keywords, backlinks, site speed, SEO issues, errors, and warnings. It then gives you recommendations to fix the problems found.

You can also use it for competitor research. It gives you in-depth data about a domain’s traffic, ranking keywords, backlinks, domain score, and top pages.

Is Ubersuggest a Keyword Research Tool?

Yes, Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool. But you can use it for much more than just keyword insights, including competitor research and site audits.

How Does Ubersuggest Work?

Ubersuggest works by analyzing keywords’ search volume, cost-per-click, backlinks, domain authority, and social shares to show you how competitive and valuable keywords are.

How Is Keyword Difficulty Calculated?

Keyword difficulty is calculated by analyzing and combining an array of metrics, including the domain authority of pages already ranking, the number and quality of their backlinks, the number of social shares, and other keyword-specific data.

Is Ubersuggest Free?

Ubersuggest does have a free plan. It works the same way as paid plans but with some limitations, including the amount of data you can access and the number of daily searches.

How to Use Ubersuggest for Keyword Research — Key Takeaways

Ubersuggest may not be the best keyword research tool out there but their super affordable plans are unbeatable — it’s the #1 tool when it comes to value for money.

Their Chrome extension is very handy as well. It gives you valuable and accurate information about each result on SERPs, including the domain authority, breakdown of monthly visitors, and social shares.

My honest recommendation is that you go for one of Semrush or Ahrefs if you’re serious about your business and can afford it.

But if you can’t, try to wing it by combining free plans from various keyword research tools (which will cost you time instead of money) or go for Ubersuggest’s affordable plan.

All in all, this is a super beginner-friendly tool that, despite its flaws, can be a great help to get small businesses off the ground.

P.S.: The Freelance Writer Bundle comes with a template and checklist to help you write SEO-friendly blog posts fast and easily. Download it now 👇

About the Author — Ines S. Tavares

Hey! I’m Ines 👋 Welcome to Free Worker Bee 😄

I’m a freelance content writer, creator, and solopreneur. Freelance writing allowed me to quit my 9-to-5 job and live life on my own terms. That’s why I created this blog: I want to give back.

I want to help at least 1,000 people become freelance writers and live their best lives. Get started today with my FREE Freelance Writing Course.

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