KWFinder guide

This is a step-by-step guide to KWFinder that will help you to get the most of your keyword research. You’ll get familiar with the tool basics, all the important metrics as well as recently launched features.

We’ll go through these parts:

• Basics
• Search by keyword
• Search by domain
• Keyword metrics
• Search volumes and trends
• SERP metrics
• Filter
• Keyword lists
• Import keywords in bulk
• Export results
• Shortcuts NEW

Basics

The reason why we’ve developed KWFinder was to create a keyword research tool in which you can find hundreds of keywords with low SEO difficulty.

Since 2014, KWFinder became one of the most popular tools on the market known mostly for its ease of use, user-friendly interface and accuracy of the keyword difficulty.

Go to KWFinder

Don’t forget to create your free trial in case you haven’t done so yet. It includes access to all 5 Mangools SEO tools.

Search by keyword

Starting the research by keyword means that you have an idea what keyword may be relevant for your niche. Let’s say your website is about coffee machines, so you can start with the keyword: coffee machine.

Just write the keyword to the search form under the “Search by Keyword” tab, select the location, and click on the green button “Find keywords”.

You’ll see up to 700 keyword suggestions based on one of three data sources:

1. Related keywords (default option)
2. Autocomplete
3. Questions

Related keywords are based on our database while Autocomplete and Questions generate additional keyword ideas based on the Google Suggest algorithm.

Search by domain

The “Search by Domain” option is great if you want to get the keywords that your competitor ranks for. You’ll basically see search terms that bring the most of your competitor’s website traffic.

1. Switch to the “Search by Domain” tab
2. Enter the domain or exact URL of your competitor
3. Select one of the 18 locations
4. Click on the green arrow

Switch between organic and paid keywords

The organic terms are keywords that the website ranks for in organic search results. Paid keywords are the ones that the website appears for in Google Ads results.

Competitor and location suggestions

Depending on your input, KWFinder will suggest possible competitors and locations you could analyze. Give us one competitor and we’ll find others for you 😉

Keyword metrics

Keyword metrics are shown in the left table.

Depending on the type of research (by keyword or domain), you’ll see the following metrics:

Trend (“Search by Keyword” only) – Trend of the search volume in the last 12 months

Pos (“Search by Domain” only) – The highest achieved position of the website in SERP

Search – Average monthly search volume (exact match) based on the last 12 months (default). Hover your mouse on “Search” and switch between 3, 6 or 12 months view.

EV (“Search by Domain” only) – Estimated visits per month based on SERP positions, their estimated CTRs and search volumes

CPC – Average cost per click estimate of the keyword in PPC advertising (you can change the currency in the tooltip – currency rates are updated once a week)

PPC – Level of competition in PPC advertising (min = 0; max = 100)

KD – Keyword Difficulty of the keyword based on the URLs and their Link Profile Strength (LPS) on the 1st Google SERP (min = 0; max = 100)

Keyword Difficulty

The Keyword Difficulty or SEO Difficulty estimates how hard it is to rank on the 1st SERP when optimizing for the keyword. It’s indicated on a scale from 0 to 100.

How we calculate the Keyword Difficulty:

1. In the beginning, we calculate the overall Link Profile Strength (LPS) of every URL on the 1st Google SERP. It’s based on the widely-used Moz metrics (Domain Authority, Page Authority) and Majestic metrics (Citation Flow, Trust Flow).
2. Once we have the LPS values, we calculate the Keyword Difficulty (KD) taking into account both high-authority and low-authority URLs in the 1st SERP. It’s because the low-authority ones can outrank the others thanks to their relevance.

Keyword Difficulty caching

You can get the Keyword Difficulty by clicking on the keyword row. Generally, the data can be cached for up to 30 days.

For keywords that no one clicked on within the 30 days, the score is naturally cached for a longer period of time. These values have decreased opacity (they are washed out).

Hover over the KD value to see the exact date when it was last updated.

Keywords without cached Keyword Difficulty

You will find many keywords without any KD value. That means that no one ever clicked on these keywords. They may represent an interesting opportunity for you since none of the KWFinder users decided to analyze them before.

Just click on the magnifier to get the latest KD value.

Search volumes and trends

In KWFinder, you will find exact search volumes. Many of them will differ from the data you’ll see in Google Keyword Planner because we try to detect clustered search volumes (close variants) whenever possible.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible in all cases since Google clusters the search volumes continuously.

Historical search volumes and trends

The upper part of the right screen displays 2 trend charts:

Monthly Search Volumes – historical search volumes starting from 2015 (depending on the keyword)

Interest Over Time – Google Trends chart with data starting from 2004 (depending on the keyword)

SERP metrics

SERP analysis is an inevitable part of keyword research. It will help you to find out whether:

1. You picked the right keyword in terms of search intent
2. You can outrank the SERP competitors

The SERP metrics are located in the lower half of the right screen:

Google SERP – the 1st page of Google Search results for the selected keyword.

DA (Domain Authority) – predicts how well the domain will rank in the SERP compared to others. Scale: 0 – 100 (developed by Moz).

PA (Page Authority) – predicts how well the specific page will rank in the SERP compared to others. Scale: 0 – 100 (developed by Moz).

CF (Citation Flow) – predicts how influential is the URL based on the number of backlinks. Scale: 0 – 100 (developed by Majestic).

TF (Trust Flow) – predicts how influential is the URL based on the quality of backlinks. It indicates that backlinks from trustworthy websites will increase the Trust Flow while backlinks from questionable websites will lower the score. Scale: 0 – 100 (developed by Majestic).

Links – the number of external authority-passing links to the URL.

FB – the number of Facebook shares for the URL.

LPS – it estimates how difficult it is to rank on that particular position. The higher it is, the harder it is to compete with the URL (min = 0; max = 100).

EV – estimated visits per month on the SERP position.

For the advanced local Google SERP analysis based on 45+ SEO metrics, visit our other tool SERPChecker.

SERP data caching

Similarly to the Keyword Difficulty, the SERP data can be cached for up to 30 days.

The exact date when the data was fetched is shown above the SERP table.

You can fetch new SERP data to get the most updated search results. It counts as 1 SERP lookup.

Advanced features in the SERP table

Click on the “three dots” menu to:

• See the URL profile in SiteProfiler
• Show backlinks of the URL in LinkMiner
• Show keywords that the URL ranks for

Filter

Filtering the results lets you narrow down your research to find the most profitable keywords for your website.

Start by eliminating low traffic keywords by setting the minimum search volume and the maximum keyword difficulty your website can beat or select the number of keywords when searching for long tail keywords or pick a combination that suits you best.

There are many criteria to choose from when you click on the “Filter”.

Keyword lists

Keyword lists let you save the terms that you plan to optimize for, to keep your research organized.

Creating a list

Select the keywords, and click on “Add to list” to create a new list or update one of the existing lists.

If there are keywords already in one of your lists, you will see a yellow star next to them.

In the modal window, you’ll have an option to “Create new list” or “Add to list”. You can also add the keyword to a list by clicking on the grey star.

Opening a list

Click on the “Lists” in the left part of the top menu bar to access all your keyword lists.

To open the list, just click on it. You can also edit, download or delete the list here.

Editing a list

When you open one of your lists, you can do further actions such as:

1. Deleting keyword(s) by selecting them and clicking on the “Remove” button.
2. Exporting the list to a CSV file.
3. Renaming or Deleting the list.

Import keywords in bulk

You can import your own lists of keywords to KWFinder in various ways:

• Write the keywords as separate tags
• Upload your TXT or CSV file
• Drag & drop your file

How many keywords can I import?

• Basic plan: Import up to 200 keywords 100-times a day = 20,000 keywords
• Premium plan: Import up to 700 keywords 500-times a day = 350,000 keywords
• Agency plan: Import up to 700 keyword 1200-times a day = 840,000 keywords

Keep in mind that regular limits apply when analyzing the SEO difficulty and SERP results for the imported keywords.

Export results

You can export the results in 2 ways:

• From the “Suggestions” table
• From keyword lists

Export from keywords table

Select keywords, click on “Export” and choose one of the 2 options.

Export from keyword lists

Click on the “Lists” in the navigation bar at the top of the app to open the “Keyword lists” menu, find the list and click “Export” icon. You can also export keywords from a list once you open one. For detailed screenshots, scroll back to “Keyword lists”.

Shortcuts

Press ” Shift + / ” or click on the keyboard icon on the right of the top menu bar.

A modal window will appear with all the shortcuts and explanations of what they do. These are just a few of them:

Didn’t find what you were looking for?

All your opinions on the KWFinder guide, tips or questions are welcome. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments below. In case you still have troubles using KWFinder, don’t hesitate to ask via live chat or email.