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Competitive intelligence (CI) gives you the clarity to make the right moves for your business—whether that’s meeting customer needs, finding new opportunities, or outsmarting competitors.

Marketing agency Thrive proves this perfectly.

I spoke to Aaron Whittaker, the VP of Demand Gen and Marketing at Thrive, to understand how they use CI.

His team gathered intel to solve a specific challenge. Prospects were choosing AI marketing solutions over traditional agencies.

The team used these insights to create battlecards, increasing the win rate by 35%.

In this article, I’ll explain the key components of a competitive intelligence framework.

I’ll also break down four phases for conducting competitive intelligence research.

What Is Competitive Intelligence?

Competitive intelligence is the process of turning raw competitor data into actionable insights.

This helps your business make strategic decisions and stay ahead in the market.

A competitive intelligence report helps you answer three critical questions:

1. Where are your competitors heading?
2. Why and how are they making these moves?
3. How can you respond effectively to stay ahead?

CI research works on two levels: tactical and strategic.

Tactical intel focuses on improving your short-term strategy.

This includes decisions related to new launches, marketing campaigns, and more.

Strategic intel shapes your overall business strategy.

It helps you understand your market better, so you can make smart choices about where to focus and how to stand out.

Competitive Intelligence vs. Market Research

Competitive intelligence and market research are both important methods of gathering data to make smarter business decisions. But they work in different ways and have unique goals.

CI research tracks your competitors to find growth opportunities and predict market shifts.

The goal?

To strategically gain an advantage and stay ahead in a rapidly changing market.

On the other hand, market research studies:

• Consumer behavior
• Market conditions
• Demand patterns
• Growth trends

It analyzes the current market to discover gaps you can fulfill.

These insights support tactical decisions in product development, marketing, and other goals.

Here’s how competitive intelligence differs from market research:

3 Key Components of a Competitive Intelligence Framework

A strong competitive intelligence framework boils down to three essentials: find the right data, analyze it effectively, and put it into action.

Let’s discuss each component in detail.

Data

Collecting relevant, targeted data is the first step in CI research.

Start with secondary sources to get a broader view of the competitive landscape.

Check out competitor websites, help portals, and industry reports.

I chatted with Stanislav Khilobochenko, the VP of Customer Services at Clario, about CI data sources.

He explains how he uses platforms like G2 and Trustpilot to capture the voice of the customer:

Analysis

Look closely at your data to extract meaningful insights and find growth opportunities. This can help you confidently choose the right next steps for your business.

The real value is in analyzing multiple data sources in parallel. Think web research, customer feedback, and sales conversations.

Each source provides a different perspective, and combining them creates a fuller picture.

Here’s how the process might look if you own a project management platform:

• Goal: Help sales reps close more deals
• Analytical insight: Customer reviews reveal a need for niche integrations, while sales conversations highlight lost deals due to limited integrations
• Business decision: Plan your product roadmap to build more integrations

So, your sellers can use this information to attract more customers. Information they wouldn’t be able to use without analyzing the right data.

Activation

Once you complete your analysis, share your findings with relevant stakeholders.

You can choose different formats, such as battle cards, competitor profiles, and meetings. More on that later.

The activation phase is all about using competitive intel to plan ahead.

I wanted to understand this phase better, so I spoke to Federico Jorge, the founder of Stack Against. He creates search-optimized comparison pages for SaaS companies based on in-depth competitive intel.

In one of his projects, he helped a client gather intel on a small competitor that was acquired by a large company.

Overnight, this competitor went from being an ankle biter to a huge threat that started to go after his client’s share of the market.

How to Collect Competitive Intelligence in 4 Phases

Fast-moving markets. Evolving customer preferences. Unexpected competitor moves.

You need competitive intel to survive and thrive in the face of these challenges.

Let’s cover a 4-phase framework for conducting competitive intelligence research based on experts’ advice.

Phase 1: Goal Setting and Preparation

In the first phase, you have to prepare the groundwork for your competitive intelligence research.

This involves outlining why you need this intel and who you’re competing against.

Define Why You Need Competitive Intelligence

Without a defined purpose and scope, competitive intelligence data is just noise.

Setting a clear “why” saves you from wasting time on irrelevant information.

The result?

You get insights directly aligned with your business goals to guide your decisions.

So, start by outlining your core problem or growth opportunity.

Do you want to:

• Enter a new market?
• Find key differentiators?
• Improve your brand positioning?
• Make product enhancements?

Along with your goals, think of specific questions you want to answer with this data. Also define the key stakeholders who will use this intel.

For example, let’s say you want to finalize a new pricing structure for your software product.

Poor goal-setting:

“We need to know how our competitors are pricing their products.”

Good goal-setting:

• Goal: Build a well-informed pricing strategy
• Questions: How have our top three competitors priced their enterprise plans? What changes have they made to their plans in terms of price point and capabilities?
• Stakeholders: Product and sales leadership

Map Your Competitive Landscape

With your goals in place, you now need to identify:

• Direct competitors: Businesses offering the same products or services as you
• Indirect competitors: Businesses offering products or services that act as a substitute for yours

Start with a simple Google search to find your direct competitors.

Let’s say you run a local bakery.

Search for keywords like “custom cakes near me,” “wedding cake shops,” or “best bakeries in [your city].”

You’ll find direct competitors ranking well in organic search, like the ones visible here:

Then, go a step further with a tool like Semrush’s Organic Research to find more competitors.

Add your domain (or a competitor’s website) and hit “Search.”

In the “Competitors” tab, you’ll find the Competitive Positioning Map.

It highlights your biggest competitors based on traffic volume and number of keywords.

Scroll down to see a more extensive list of organic competitors.

You can analyze competitors with metrics like competition level, shared keywords, and organic traffic.

Use this exercise to prepare and maintain an active list of your primary competitors.

Expand this database with indirect competitors and create these tiers:

• Primary: Direct head-to-head competitors
• Secondary: Occasional overlap in market/customers
• Tertiary: Indirect competitors with substitute solutions

Phase 2: Collect Data Systematically in Stages

Once you have locked in your list of competitors, it’s time to collect data.

Here are some of the most popular data sources you can use:

But random data won’t cut it.

I chatted with experts, and they recommend collecting data systematically in four stages.

Stage 1: Analyze Online Presence

Start with the easiest layer—your competitors’ online presence.

You can use tools to see exactly what’s working for your competitors online, from their top pages to their content strategy.

Edward White, Beehiiv’s Head of Growth, shared how he used Semrush to perform an SEO competitive analysis:

24 months later, Beehiiv’s website went from ~0 to 1 million clicks/year.

To get started with your own similar analysis, go to Semrush’s Domain Overview and add one of your competitors’ websites.

(I’ll use the furniture rental site Fernish as an example.)

The Domain Overview report shows this site has an authority score of 31 and nearly 12K backlinks.

The tool also reveals Fernish’s organic and paid traffic over the past two years.

It also shows me that the majority of Fernish’s traffic comes from the U.S., followed by Indonesia and Canada.

Lots of useful data, but we want to go deeper.

The “Compare domains” tab provides a deeper analysis of Fernish’s top four competitors.

I compared three competitors on their authority score, traffic, and backlinks.

The report also showed the traffic share among the four brands, with Fernish getting 13% of the total traffic.

Once you’ve identified your top competitors in organic search, go to the Organic Research tool to find more information about each competitor.

I focused on this report for Inhabitr, one of Fernish’s top competitors.

This report tells me the keywords where Inhabitr is ranking well and attracting organic traffic.

It also categorizes these keywords by search intent to help me understand Inhabitr’s SEO strategy.

I can see the top pages driving the most traffic to this site.

This report also shows the type of keywords each page targets and how much traffic it gets.

Looking at the SERP Features Trend report, I realized that Inhabitr’s content strategy focused mostly on local SEO.

However, the brand now also seems to be leveraging image SEO to improve its organic search performance.

These kinds of competitive insights can help you adapt your own strategies based on what’s working well for your rivals.

Stage 2: Understand Market Context

Learn how the market perceives your competitors with:

• Social listening tools: to monitor brand mentions and perform a social media competitor analysis
• Analyst reports: to understand how competitors fit into the broader competitive landscape
• Review platforms: to collect customer feedback and discover their challenges and unmet needs

For public companies, annual reports provide valuable insights into operations and financials.

Aaron Whittaker of Thrive Internet Marketing Agency shared an interesting insight to expand your research scope.

He explained how his team went beyond visible metrics (like pricing and features) to gain an edge over competitors.

Stage 3: Conduct Field Research

Use hands-on research to find insights that aren’t available through external analysis.

Sign up for trials, purchase products, and document the entire marketing funnel.

Pay attention to your competitors’ sales process, customer support, and overall user experience.

This is where you’ll find opportunities for differentiation.

Stage 4: Gather Network Intelligence

Collect data through a network of buyers, employees, and vendors.

Check your win/loss reports or sales calls. They’ll show you the competitors you’re losing to.

Interview these buyers to find out why they chose a competitor over you.

Sam Niro, Senior Manager of Competitive Intelligence at Talkdesk, shares her best practice:

Consider historical context throughout your data collection process.

If you’re a two-year-old company competing with a five-year-old brand, check their metrics from three years ago.

This provides more relevant benchmarks for your growth trajectory than their current performance might suggest.

Phase 3: Analyze Data and Extract Meaningful Insights

Now, you’re ready to dig into the data and connect the dots to find actionable insights about your competitors.

Data Organization

Raw data alone doesn’t drive decisions—analysis does.

You have to clean, organize, and validate data before extracting actionable insights.

I asked Federico Jorge, the founder of Stack Against, to share his best advice for this phase of CI research.

He emphasized the importance of keeping the bigger picture in mind during analysis:

Data Analysis

Let’s break down three methods to analyze data:

Trends Analysis

Analyze your competitors’ actions over time to find patterns in their behavior. Like product launches, pricing changes, positioning changes, and more.

As trends emerge, you can predict your competitors’ next moves and adapt your strategy.

It also allows you to spot gaps and undiscovered opportunities in the market.

Picture this:

You run a meal-delivery business.

Trend analysis tells you:

• Two competitors added plant-based options in the last quarter
• Five of them started a weekend-only delivery service
• Many highlight “locally sourced” in their content

These patterns indicate customers prefer plant-based options and care about food sourcing. There’s also a demand for weekend-only plans.

You can use this information to add to or improve your own services. And reduce the risks of being left behind in the market.

Strategic Group Analysis

Use strategic group analysis to understand the competitive landscape at a macro level.

In other words: don’t view each competitor in isolation.

Instead, find the challenges and opportunities for each group.

It reveals what makes each competing group successful or vulnerable.

For example, the analysis below covers different types of competitors for the coffee brand, Starbucks.

I analyzed each group’s varying tactics, strengths, and vulnerabilities.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis adds more depth by examining a company’s:

• Strengths: What they do well
• Weaknesses: Where they struggle
• Opportunities: External factors they could use to grow
• Threats: External factors that could harm them

Here are some questions to consider for applying this method (you can perform this on your own business/website and on your competitors):

This approach gives you a complete picture of your competitors’ positions.

Use these insights to make smart decisions for investing your resources.

Here’s an example SWOT analysis of automotive brands:

The real value comes from connecting these analyses to action.

This phase should tell you where competitors are today and where they’re heading.

Phase 4: Activation and Implementation

In the final phase, you have to convert insights into meaningful resources for all stakeholders.

You also need to plan the way forward and decide the next steps to update this intel.

Create Useful Deliverables

Here are a few deliverables to create to share your CI findings with relevant stakeholders:

Battle Cards

Prepare visual one-pagers to emphasize areas where you outshine the competition.

Add talking points to counter each competitor and help sellers confidently handle objections.

Here’s a battle card template to follow:

Centralized Hub

Document all of your CI findings on platforms like Notion or Confluence.

Categorize the resources by teams and make this hub searchable for easy access.

Competitor profiles

Create in-depth profiles analyzing a competitor from all aspects.

Marketing and product teams can use them to plan their campaigns and plan the roadmap.

Here’s an example of the beauty brand Glossier’s competitive profile:

Implement a Distribution Plan

Create a dedicated Slack channel to share real-time insights. It helps in quickly sending updates about competitor moves to plan ahead.

Here are a few other ways to effectively distribute your research insights:

• Weekly messages with updates from social media and your competitors’ latest campaigns
• Monthly emails reviewing intel related to changes in pricing, features, and more
• Quarterly meetings with each department to discuss key intel and reassess key competitors

You can also set up alerts about significant events, like acquisitions, leadership changes, and more.

Monitor and Update Your Strategy

Remember that markets and competitors constantly evolve.

Don’t take a one-and-done approach to competitive intelligence research.

Instead, you need workflows to regularly monitor and update your intel.

Schedule regular check-ins with your sales, marketing, and customer success teams to get constant feedback about your competitors.

Key Applications of Competitive Intelligence

Ready to see competitive intelligence in action?

Here’s how different teams can use competitive intelligence research.

Sales Enablement

Sales teams use CI to study competitors’ sales tactics and buying experience.

78% of CI pros translate these insights into battle cards.

As a result, sellers can deliver a strong pitch, handle objections effectively, and present social proof.

This intel also highlights key differentiators against every competitor.

Product Development

CI data helps product teams keep tabs on competitors’ new launches. It also collects customer feedback to map user expectations.

These insights help teams prioritize new features to outpace the competition.

You can also use this data to plan your product roadmap based on unmet customer needs.

Aaron Whittaker (Thrive) shared a great example of using CI data for product development:

Market Positioning and Strategy

Competitive intelligence research examines a competitor’s positioning, target audience, and overall marketing strategy.

You can learn how competitors position and differentiate themselves in the market.

Use this analysis to take a fresh approach in your messaging and resonate with your buyers.

It also helps identify underserved markets that you should target.

Pricing and Revenue Optimization

Pricing intelligence data goes a long way in building your pricing strategy.

Collect intel about competitors’ pricing models to optimize your pricing structure.

Check this data against factors like perceived value and customer loyalty. Then, plan your pricing model to maximize revenue.

Use Competitive Intelligence to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Competitor intelligence turns data about your competitors into strategic decisions for business growth.

As you build your CI research process, keep three principles in mind:

1. Set clear goals before collecting data
2. Focus on actionable insights rather than random data
3. Share findings in relevant and easily accessible deliverables

The real value of competitive intelligence comes from studying the right competitors.

Before diving into research, do a thorough market analysis to find which brands impact your market.

Use our full guide to learn how to conduct market analysis to build a strong foundation for your CI efforts.

The post How to Build a Competitive Intelligence Strategy from Scratch appeared first on Backlinko.

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The difference between getting discovered on YouTube search and being invisible?

Strategic keyword research.

By optimizing videos with the right terms, you can dramatically increase your organic traffic.

Take YouTuber Caren Magill’s ADHD coaching channel, for example.

With 4.95M lifetime views and 116K subscribers, it’s safe to say Caren has found a successful niche.

But this wasn’t luck.

Caren optimizes her video’s titles, descriptions, and tags with terms that attract her target audience.

The good news?

You can do it, too—all you need is a reliable keyword research tool.

To help you with this task, I evaluated five of the most popular YouTube keyword tools.

And gave each one a “Best for” rating based on its standout features and overall value.

Before I dive into the reviews, let’s explore why keyword research is crucial for your channel’s success.

YouTube Keyword Tools at a Glance

Why YouTube Keyword Research Matters

Keyword research reveals what your audience wants to watch and helps your videos appear in search results.

This is why it’s a vital step in growing your channel’s reach and engagement.

Decode Audience Search Intent

On YouTube (and search engines), people search with different goals in mind. They might want to learn something, compare options, or find entertainment. This is called search intent.

Keyword research lets you match your content to your audience’s search intent to attract engaged viewers that turn into subscribers.

For example, informational searches like “how to deadlift” show viewers want to learn specific skills, while commercial searches like “best home gym equipment” indicate they’re comparing different options.

Matching your content to these search patterns helps you attract more engaged viewers.

Find High-Performing Keywords

Smart keyword research helps you discover topics with high search volume but low keyword difficulty—the sweet spot for growing channels.

For example, instead of competing for overcrowded terms like “gardening tips,” more specific searches like “apartment gardening” can be easier to rank for but still drive significant traffic.

Identify Trends to Maximize Discoverability

Popular YouTubers anticipate viewer demand—and keyword tools reveal exactly when that demand is building.

Using keyword research tools helps you:

• Spot rising topics before they peak
• Create timely content when search interest is growing
• Build momentum from trending searches

For example, when the TV show “Squid Game” announced its second season, keyword tools showed surging searches for “squid game season 2” and “squid game season 3″—revealing perfect opportunities to create videos before peak interest.

Now that you know why keyword research is important, let’s explore the best tools for it.

5 Best YouTube Keyword Tools (Free & Paid)

I tested the most popular YouTube keyword tools to see which ones performed best at keyword analysis, competitive intelligence, and trend spotting.

Here’s what I discovered.

1. VidIQ: Best for Deep Keyword Intelligence

VidIQ helps YouTube creators find content ideas and maximize their reach organically.

Its helpful browser extension lets you perform keyword research, audit your channel, track competitors, and more.

Conduct Keyword Research

VidIQ’s keyword analysis stands out as the most detailed of the tools I reviewed.

It provides:

• An overview with key metrics
• Related keywords
• Matching terms
• Trending videos

For example, when I searched for “affiliate marketing,” I could see its SEO score, search volume, and competition level, along with multiple other helpful metrics.

This includes long-tail keywords, relevant questions, and variations containing my primary keyword.

This information will allow me to focus on niche topics that tend to attract smaller but highly engaged audiences.

Like “Amazon affiliate marketing,” which gets fewer searches than “affiliate marketing” but has lower competition, too.

When you search for a keyword, VidIQ highlights the top 10 trending videos for that term so you know what you’re up against.

It also tells you how many views each one has and its engagement rate.

For example, I clicked on one of these videos, and the tool revealed it was performing 15 times better than this channel’s average video engagement.

This tells me I should investigate further to find out why it’s doing so well—whether it’s niche keywords, quality content, a trending topic, eye-catching visuals, or something else.

I recommend repeating this process for five or so competitor videos to gain valuable insights you can use to improve your own video’s optimization and performance.

Create and Track Keyword Trends

Trends move fast on YouTube—what’s viral today might be forgotten tomorrow.

VidIQ’s real-time trend tracking keeps you ahead of the competition.

Set up custom trend alerts to discover hot topics in your niche before they explode.

Here’s how:

1. Give your alert a relevant name
2. Add target keywords and competitors
3. Set a views-per-hour (VPH) threshold as your benchmark
4. Choose how often you want to receive email notifications
5. Click “Update alert” to go live

Outperform the Competition

Use VidIQ’s competitor analysis tools to find keywords and content types that drive the highest traction in your niche.

Track your competitors’ content performance through:

• Engagement rate
• Views per hour
• View velocity

For example, I noticed a competitor’s video gained over 400,000 views with a 3.9% engagement rate and over 100 views per hour.

So, I exported its keywords to see which terms the YouTuber used to drive this impressive traffic and growth.

I also learned when the video was published and how many subscribers it attracted.

Data like this reveals exactly which topics and search terms drive the most views in your niche, giving you a clear strategy for your own videos.

VidIQ Pricing

• Free: 7-day free trial
• Boost: $19/month
• Coaching: $199/month

2. Keyword Analytics for YouTube: Best for Finding Popular Seed Keywords

Keyword Analytics for YouTube is a Semrush app (available without a subscription) that lets you research seed keywords, top-ranking videos, and trends in your niche.

Fine-tune your search by time period and location to zero in on the most relevant data for your content strategy.

Identify Popular, Low-Competition Keywords

Search any term in Keyword Analytics for YouTube to learn its search volume and competition.

For example, I searched “learn Spanish.”

This keyword gets 140K monthly searches and has a 67 competitive rate in YouTube search.

Hover over the competitive rate for any term for more context.

For instance, “learn spanish” has an “average” level of competition in YouTube search.

This means it’s ideal for channels with 1M+ subscribers.

To find less-competitive keywords, scroll through the list.

This helped me find terms like:

• “Learn spanish for beginners”: 13K search volume; 56 competitive rate
• “How to learn spanish fast”: 194 search volume; 31 competitive rate
• “Best free way to learn Spanish”: 65 search volume; 24 competitive rate

How can you use these lower-competition keywords?

• Create a series of videos targeting these terms to improve your visibility in YouTube search
• Add them to your video’s description to attract more viewers

Find Top-Ranking Videos

Need a little creative inspiration?

Go to the “Most viewed videos” tab in Keyword Analytics to find the most popular YouTube videos in your preferred country.

Filter by the last 24 hours, week, or month to find trending topics you can turn into popular videos.

Want to see the top-ranking videos for a specific keyword?

Switch back to the “Top Keywords” tab and search for your desired term.

For example, I searched “spanish for beginners,” and the app revealed the top YouTube videos for this term.

Hover over the video to see its full title (take note of the keywords) and how many subscribers the channel has.

This gives you a decent idea of the competition you’ll be up against when deciding which terms to target.

Get Trending Keyword Data

If you target viewers in a particular region, you’ll find the “Fast-growing keywords” feature particularly helpful.

This is because it tells you trending topics that will help you attract a local audience.

For example, I learned the top keyword in Italy (at the time of my search) was “Sinner,” the last name of a popular Italian tennis player.

The tool also shows the overall change in keyword performance for each term.

Hover over the trend graph to see how monthly search volume fluctuates.

Use this data to create timely, relevant YouTube content when search interest is at its peak.

Keyword Analytics for YouTube Pricing

• Free: 7-day free trial
• Monthly: $10/month; unsubscribe anytime

3. TubeBuddy: Best for in-Browser Keyword Research and Optimization

TubeBuddy is a YouTube browser extension designed to optimize and grow your channel.

Some of its key SEO features include:

• Find and analyze keywords for your channel
• Create thumbnails and upload videos in bulk
• Generate optimized titles, descriptions, and tags

Even better?

The tool integrates directly into your YouTube dashboard.

So, you can take advantage of its features without leaving your channel.

Get Actionable Keyword Insights

Analyze any keyword in TubeBuddy’s Keyword Explorer to see important metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty.

For example, I searched “how to make pasta” in the tool and learned this keyword gets 782K monthly searches but is surprisingly not overly competitive.

It also revealed videos currently ranking on YouTube for this topic have “excellent” optimization.

This tells me something crucial: I’ll need to focus heavily on optimization to give my video a good shot at ranking.

Another cool feature is the overall SEO score, which factors in multiple ranking signals.

This helps you gauge the potential of a keyword.

Not sure which keyword to use? The tool lets you compare two options.

To test this out, I evaluated “how to make pasta” and “homemade pasta recipe.”

Keyword Explorer shows that “homemade pasta recipe” has an SEO score of “Good” and a “Very Good” search volume of 156K.

It’s also a fairly low-competition keyword, making this term promising.

In comparison, “how to make pasta” has a much higher search volume (782K), a “Very Good” SEO score, and a “Fair” competition level.

This indicates even stronger potential—voilà, I’ve found a winner!

Generate and Optimize Titles and Descriptions

TubeBuddy’s SEO Studio lets you instantly generate AI-powered titles and descriptions for your videos.

Improve your SEO score by following the tool’s optimization recommendations, such as “include your target keyword naturally in the title.”

Spy on Your Competitors

Next, I used TubeBuddy’s Videolytics tool to evaluate competing videos and identify keyword opportunities.

This powerful tool shows you why videos succeed or struggle by revealing:

• Performance metrics: Views, likes, comments, and social shares
• SEO insights: Optimization scores and which tags drive traffic
• Competitor strategies: What top channels do differently
• Improvement tips: Recommendations to boost your video’s visibility

This data helps you create better content and get more views by understanding exactly what works in your niche.

TubeBuddy Pricing

• Free: Limited free plan available
• Pro: $7.50/month
• Legend: $32.99/month
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing

4. Keywords Everywhere: Best for Analyzing Competitors’ Keywords

Keywords Everywhere is a handy browser extension and keyword tool for YouTube.

It lets you analyze every keyword through data-packed widgets like trend charts, popular tags, and engagement scores.

Get Detailed Keyword Insights

Keywords Everywhere taps into Google Keyword Planner data to show you real-time search volume, competition, and cost-per-click (CPC).

For example, when I searched “weight loss,” the tool suggested related terms like “weight loss diet” that had lower competition.

This instant insight helps you pick keywords that will rank higher and attract more views.

Keywords Everywhere also breaks down exactly what makes videos successful.

For example, I found that videos about “weight loss” have 3.35 million views on average.

60% of these videos contain “weight loss” in the title, and 50% contain the keyword in the description.

This data shows you how to optimize your content by strategically placing keywords where they matter most to boost your visibility.

Analyze Top-Ranking Competitors

Keywords Everywhere also tells you what’s working for your competitors.

I looked at an in-depth breakdown of the top 20 videos for the keyword “weight loss.”

And learned metrics like view count, views per day, ranking difficulty, and SEO score.

But the one that stood out to me the most was “Age.”

This metric tells you how long ago a video was published.

For example, most of the videos for my keyword are at least a year old (and likely outdated).

So, now I know there’s a good chance I can outrank the existing content by sharing fresh perspectives.

Besides this detailed top-20 breakdown, you’ll also find a summarized analysis of all search results for a given keyword.

This overview tells you helpful info, like how many subscribers and views each video has.

But it also analyzes video titles and descriptions for length and quality.

Generate Keywords in Bulk

I also experimented with the Bulk Keywords Data Tool to expand my initial keyword list.

A bulk keyword tool saves hours by analyzing hundreds of terms instantly instead of one by one.

Seeing all keywords together also reveals valuable patterns in viewer search behavior.

Once you add your seed keywords, the tool suggests related terms.

Use these insights to naturally weave relevant keywords into your video description and transcript—helping YouTube better understand and recommend your content to interested viewers.

Keywords Everywhere Pricing

• Bronze: $2.25/month
• Silver: $6/month
• Gold: $25/month
• Platinum: $80/month

5. Google Trends: Best for Real-Time Keyword Trend Tracking

Google Trends reveals real-time search patterns across web, image, and YouTube searches, helping you spot opportunities others miss.

Compare keywords, track trends, and discover what’s hot in specific regions—all for free.

Find Keywords for Specific Locations

Want to know where your content will resonate the most?

Google Trends can show you.

For example, when I searched for “travel destinations,” it revealed unexpected hotspots in Idaho, Connecticut, and Kansas.

I can turn this insight into targeted content like “Best travel destinations in Idaho” to reach a local audience.

Discover Related and Trending Topics

Google Trends shows you related topics for every search, so you can add relevant keywords and subtopics to your videos.

But it doesn’t just show you what’s popular—it reveals what’s about to be big.

For example, a search for “coffee makers” uncovers emerging trends like “coffee makers that use k cups,” which recently increased in interest by 350%.

For each trending term, you’ll learn:

• Search volume
• When the term started trending
• Specific queries fueling its popularity

Create content around these rising topics, and you’ll catch viewer interest at the perfect moment.

Compare Keywords to Find the Best Opportunities

Google Trends lets you compare keywords head-to-head to see which ones truly resonate with viewers.

When I compared “vegan meal prep” versus “quick vegan recipes,” the data revealed “vegan meal prep” consistently attracts more interest.

These direct comparisons help you focus your efforts on topics viewers are actively searching for rather than guessing what might work.

Google Trends Pricing

Google Trends is free to use.

Fast-Track Your YouTube Channel’s Growth

Want your YouTube channel to get more views and subscribers?

You need to target the right keywords.

And to find those keywords, you need the right Youtube keyword tools.

Whether you use TubeBuddy to optimize videos or Semrush for deeper analysis (or both), keyword research can set your channel up for long-term growth and success.

For best results, combine keyword research with a strong promotion strategy.

The post Top 5 YouTube Keyword Tools <br>(Field-Tested For Growth) appeared first on Backlinko.

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