This is a guest post written by Lior Levin who acts as a senior advisor to a kitchen stools online store called Kitchen Stools Direct. They sell kitchen stools and bar stools online.

Even those who have only dabbled in SEO know the value of a good keyword research tool.

Such a tool helps you target the best keywords possible, introducing you to new, related terms that you might have ignored, and offer powerful, practical suggestions on how to optimize your content for the terms your target audience is actually trying to find it with.

However, keyword research tools are legion on the Web. It seems that every site and every SEO tool is offering their own variation of this tool and the market has grown extremely crowded with dozens, if not hundreds, of capable contenders.

So how is a content writer, SEO or webmaster to pick the right one? Well, there are definitely a few that have risen to the top of the heap and here are five of the best keyword research tools out there, any of which would be a good place to start your hunt for a tool to meet your SEO needs.

1. Google Adwords

Google Adwords has a lot to love for keyword research. It’s free, very powerful and it is from Google itself. Google Adwords is a great tool for getting keyword advice straight from the source itself and its power hasn’t been lessened over the years.

For many SEOs, including those who have been in the industry for years, Google Adwords remains their first tool of choice and is regularly used in place of more expensive tools, especially for those who just need to perform the occasional search.

2. Keyword Spy

Beautiful, packed with information and, for single queries, free. Keyword Spy is a fast, effective tool for looking up information about domains, keywords and more including information on the volume of a search, the number of ads and the CPC for those ads.

Keyword Spy does offer paid accounts, starting at $89 per month, that increase the daily search limit, the results returned, offer tracking as well as other features that many SEO professionals will find appealing.

3. Traffic Travis

Traffic Travis is a free, downloadable application that you run on your PC Traffic Travis is user-friendly, powerful and fast.

Traffic Travis not only provides a great keyword tracking tool, but combines that with a slew of other powerful SEO tools including page analysis, PPC Analysis, ranking tracking and more.

There is a paid version of the software, which costs $99, and offers more results per query, more projects and other additional features.

4. SEO Spyglass

Though SEO Spyglass is best known for its research into backlinks and other SEO factors, it uses that information to offer a truly unique keyword research experience where the application shows you the keywords best for your site with your backlinks and anchor texts.

Like Traffic Travis, SEO Spyglass is a downloadable application with a feature-limited free version as well as paid versions that start at $99. SEO Spyglass also has the benefit of working Windows, Mac and Linux, instead of just Windows like most SEO applications.

5. Market Samurai

Known as one of the most powerful, information-rich keyword marketing tools on the market, Market Samurai provides a slew of information and filters for your keywords including checking the competitiveness of a term the Adsense CTR and CPC of the term as well as the local SEO traffic.

Market Samurai’s power, however, comes at a cost and that cost is $97 for a license. Though there is a free trial available, there is no free version of the app, which must be downloaded and installed.

In the end, no matter what your budget is, one of these keyword research tools will likely fill your needs.

However, which keyword research tool is the best is a very personal decision based on the needs of the individual and their preferences for user interface. The absolute best keyword research tool for you may well not be on this list.

Still, these five are a great place to start and, for most SEOs, will fill their keyword research needs very nicely.