keyword researchWith the recent changes served up by Googles’ new algorithm Panda, the playing field has become leveled in many ways. Gone are the days of the foreign content farms that churn out material for rock bottom rates and clutter up search engines. Some fair market supporters cry foul, but a majority of the content that was being put out hurt sites with quality content, and many of the writers were overseas and were able to charge rates those writers in the United States Canada and Great Britain simply could not match. Many of those content writers receive under $2.00 an hour average, and their work took the onus off quality, and onto quantity and keyword stuffing. Here are five tools that can help you stay competitive with the new changes and get the best content for your keyword research needs.

Google Engage and Adwords

Google seems to be at the forefront of everything these days and they wrote the proverbial book on keywords and web research. Their search engine is the most popular and powerful in the world, and Google Engage helps you navigate and research what you need. Google Engage offers training and preparation, and Adwords helps you find your niche and streamline your operation.

seomoz.org

seomoz.org gets you around the fallacy and misconceptions of keyword stuffing and gives you tools to find out what works and what does not. With Google Panda, the game has been refined and Google is on the lookout for keyword stuffing and is focusing on solid content, not the gibberish and keyword stuffing nonsense that has cluttered up the web. SeoMoz.org has free training videos and a powerful that lets you cut and paste your article into a field and analyze it for effectiveness. It gives you a percentage rating of your keywords, the relevance, and the higher the score the better. There are free applications on the site, and they offer a 30-day trial for their pro package that is $99.00 a month.

seobook.com

While it is not the prettiest site to view seobook.com, does provide you with powerful tools such as videos and articles to get the most from your keywords. The keyword suggestion tool and Google suggest tool make finding the right term a cinch. Seobook.com compiles tools from other sources and arranges them on their page and though plain, it does arrange links quite well so you can easily find what you are looking for and suggest tools that you may not have known about.

keywordcountry.com

keywordcountry.com is a pay service that provides you with a bit more in-depth service than most sites and hands on help than some of the other services that do not charge. Your time and effort are still required, but when you are paying the $299.00 yearly fee, it is much easier to get a tech support agent or customer support to help. They do offer a 30 day money back guarantee and packages start at $49.00 per month.

keyword-research.info

This is another straightforward site that compiles information into a central location. keyword-research.info was founded in March 2009 by Jeremy Biberdorf, the sites’ purpose states that they are there to help researchers and those that use keywords find and use the best information possible.

How are you doing keyword research? Share what applications, websites and tools you are using for keyword research on your websites.