Keywords and competitors
Free keyword research tool
Look up any keyword's monthly searches, difficulty, cost per click, intent and 12-month trend on Google in the US, then get up to 50 longer searches that contain it, with the same numbers.
Free · No signup · 5 lookups a day
How it works
Type one keyword or phrase, the way someone would type it into Google.
We look up its numbers in US Google data, plus the longer searches that contain it.
You get the keyword's stats and trend, and a list of ideas you can sort, filter to quick wins and download.
How to read the numbers
- Searches a month is the average number of times the keyword was searched on Google in the US over the last 12 months. It's an estimate, rounded into buckets (you'll see 880, 1,000, 1,300 rather than 912). Treat it as an order of magnitude.
- Difficulty runs from 0 to 100 and estimates how hard it is to get into the top 10, based on how strong the pages already there are. Under 30 is usually realistic for a newer site; over 70 usually means big, well-linked sites own the results.
- Searcher wants is the search intent: whether people want to learn something, find a specific site, compare options or buy. It tells you what kind of page to write.
- Cost per click is what advertisers pay for one click from this search. It's a good hint of commercial value: people rarely pay $20 a click for a search that never turns into customers.
The bars show searches month by month. A steady line is a keyword you can rank for once and keep. A spike every December is a seasonal keyword: publish or refresh the page a month or two before it peaks, because new pages take time to settle in.
What a good keyword looks like
The best keyword for you is rarely the one with the most searches. It's one where people want what you offer, the page Google expects is a page you can write well, and the difficulty is within reach of your site today.
That's what the quick wins filter is for. It keeps ideas with a difficulty of 30 or less and at least 50 searches a month. It's a rule of thumb, not a law: a brand-new site may need to aim lower, and a site with years of links can aim much higher. But it's a sensible first list for a site that's still building its footing.
Longer searches are usually easier and closer to a decision. "cat tree" is huge and vague. "cat tree for large cats" has fewer searches, but everyone typing it knows what they want, and fewer pages compete for it.
Common keyword research mistakes
- Chasing volume alone. A keyword with 100,000 searches and a difficulty of 85 is a page-two result for most sites for a long time. Ten keywords with 300 searches each that you can actually rank for will bring more visits.
- Ignoring intent. If Google ranks product pages for a search and you write a blog post, or the other way round, the page struggles no matter how good it is. Match the kind of page people expect.
- One page per variation. "cat tree for big cats" and "large cat tree" are the same search to Google. Write one strong page for both, not two thin ones. Our keyword clustering tool groups keywords like this for you.
- Treating the numbers as exact. Volumes are estimates and difficulty is a model. Use them to compare keywords against each other, not to forecast traffic to the visit.
What this tool can't tell you
All the numbers are for Google in the US, in English. Volumes in other countries can be very different, and so can difficulty.
It can't see your own site. Whether you can rank depends on how strong your site already is on this topic, which no difficulty score knows. If you have Google Search Console, the queries report shows the searches you already appear for, which is the best keyword research there is for an existing site.
The ideas are searches that contain your keyword. For related topics that use different words, try the related keywords finder, and to see what a competitor ranks for, use keyword ideas from a website.
Questions people ask
Where do the numbers come from?
From a third-party search data provider that combines Google Ads search volume data with its own ranking database. It's the same source Romeo uses for customers. The figures are estimates for Google in the US.
Why do some keywords show no difficulty or no volume?
Very rare searches don't have enough data to measure, and difficulty is only calculated for keywords whose results the provider has analysed. A dash means unknown, not zero.
Why do similar keywords have exactly the same volume?
Google groups close variants, such as plurals and reordered words, and reports one shared number for them. We drop most of those duplicates from the ideas so the list isn't the same search ten times.
How many lookups can I do?
Five a day without an account, because each lookup buys live data. A repeat of the same keyword within a week costs nothing and doesn't count. Romeo customers get keyword research built into the product.
Is keyword difficulty the same as in other SEO tools?
No. Every tool calculates its own score from its own data, so a 40 here and a 40 elsewhere aren't the same thing. Compare keywords within one tool rather than across tools.
Want it done for you?
Romeo does the keyword research, then writes the pages
He finds the keywords your site can realistically win, checks which ones you already cover, writes the pages for the rest and sends each one for you to approve. Keyword research that ends in published pages, not a spreadsheet.
