Google’s own search interface is one of the most underused keyword research tools available — and it’s completely free with no signup required. When you start typing a search query, the autocomplete suggestions that appear below the search box are real queries that real people search frequently. At the bottom of every results page, “Related searches” shows additional related queries that Google considers semantically connected to your original search.

The “People also ask” box — the expandable accordion section that appears in many search results — is particularly valuable for affiliate sites. Every question in that box is a potential article topic with confirmed search demand. Click any question to expand it, and more related questions appear, providing an almost endless source of long-tail keyword ideas directly from Google’s own data.

Google Keyword Planner is Google’s own keyword tool, originally designed for advertisers running Google Ads campaigns. You don’t need to run any ads to use it — you just need a free Google account. It shows you search volume ranges for keywords, related keyword ideas, and seasonal trends in search interest over time.

The main limitation for free users is that search volumes are shown in ranges rather than exact numbers — “1,000–10,000” rather than a precise monthly figure. This is less precise than premium tools, but the ranges are accurate enough to distinguish between high-volume and low-volume keywords, which is the most important judgment call for a new site. Pair it with Google’s autocomplete suggestions and you have a solid, entirely free keyword research foundation.

Jaaxy is a keyword research tool built specifically for affiliate marketers, and the Lite version is included with all Wealthy Affiliate memberships. Unlike Google’s tools, which were designed for advertisers, Jaaxy is built around the metrics that matter most to content-based affiliate sites: monthly searches, estimated traffic if you rank on page one, keyword quality score (QSR — the number of competing websites targeting the exact same keyword), and SEO difficulty.

The QSR (Quoted Search Results) metric is Jaaxy’s most distinctive feature. It tells you how many pages are directly targeting your exact keyword phrase, giving you a cleaner competition signal than domain authority metrics from broader SEO tools. A QSR under 100 is generally considered low competition and viable for a newer site — a simple, actionable benchmark that beginners can apply immediately.

Ubersuggest, created by marketing strategist Neil Patel, offers a free tier that gives you a meaningful snapshot of keyword data including search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and cost per click. It also shows you the top-ranking pages for any keyword alongside their domain scores, backlink counts, and estimated traffic — giving you a competitive landscape overview that free tools like Google Keyword Planner don’t provide.

The main limitation is the three-search-per-day cap on the free tier, which makes it unsuitable as a primary research tool. But used strategically — to validate your top two or three keyword candidates after initial discovery through other free tools — it adds a useful additional data layer without any cost.

AnswerThePublic takes a seed keyword and generates a visual map of the questions, prepositions, comparisons, and related phrases that people search around that topic. It draws from Google and Bing autocomplete data to show you the full landscape of how your audience searches for information related to your niche — organized by question type (who, what, when, where, why, how) and comparison phrases.

For affiliate sites focused on informational content — the “how to,” “what is,” and “best X for Y” articles that drive search traffic — AnswerThePublic is an excellent idea-generation tool. It consistently surfaces long-tail keyword angles that would take considerably longer to find through manual Google searching, and the visual format makes it easy to spot content gaps in your publishing plan.