Good keyword research is your foundation for developing a successful website and internet marketing campaign.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.

As Joshua Wexelbaum of Keywordresearching.com explains,

“If you are marketing on the internet, you need to know what words people are using in their searches. Without knowing the most popular words in your industry, you cannot effectively target the people who are searching for what you sell.

Once you find the keywords that are relevant to your industry or niche, you can use these keywords on your website to attract natural search engine traffic. You can also use these keywords in your pay per click advertising campaigns on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.”

There are many great tools that will allow you to do some basic keyword research for free.

First Book Mark this- the Google Keyword Toolbox: www.googlekeywordtool.com
This page includes the Google keyword tool and the top 50 Google Tools

I would also suggest you download the Google Official SEO Starter Guide here

Here is a quick list of free tools I have used and found helpful.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
recommends keywords based on a keyword you enter or a URL

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook
Free tool based on wordtracker.com API

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
free keyword suggestions from Wordtracker

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
free keyword tool from Trellian

http://wordze.com
one of the better “classic” keyword research tools on the market.
They offer a free limited access membership.

http://www.wordstream.com/keywords
allows you to export a list of thousands of keywords for free

http://labs.google.com/sets
creates a set of keywords based on a keyword you enter

http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions
shows questions people searched for that contain the root keyword you type in

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
Has a free trial

Trend related:

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
shows keywords that are recently hot. Also archives older hot keywords

http://www.google.com/trends
shows seasonal search trends for most popular keywords.

http://www.google.com/insights/search

shows keyword trends, hot keywords by category, and top geographic regions for a keyword

SEOBook.com offers many more free seo tools including competitive research tools and link analysis tools.

Their SEO Basics Knol will help you get the basics of SEO down in about an hour, for free.