Develop a Keyword Research Tool With C# & Python

In this post, I will show you step by step how you can easily develop a Keyword Research Tool similar to mine with the help of Google Suggestions Free API.

You can use keyword tools to:

1. Find Content Ideas
2. Explore Keywords To Rank On Search Engines.
3. Or, best of all, sell it as a Subscription SaaS Product with some other features.

Last Week, I reverse-engineered 2 paid Big Keyword Research Tools to learn how they work and how you can build the same.

Even if you are not very experienced in programming, you can still easily follow up with this tutorial and develop your own keyword research tool with Python or C#.

So, what are those two websites?

How does “Answerthepublic.com” Work?

Answerthepublic.com is a website that allows users to type in a keyword or phrase and receive a list of related questions, prepositions, and long tail keywords that people have searched for on Google.

This can be useful for content creators who are looking for ideas for new articles, videos, or blog posts.

But, when you take a look at the pricing. You want to stay away from it! Don’t you?!

How does “Keywordtool.io” Work?

Keywordtool.io is a keyword research and analysis tool that helps users find and analyze the best keywords for their website or online business.

Both tools help you generate keyword ideas and suggestions. However, they are not available to everyone because of the heavy pricing we mentioned above.

So, if you want Your Own FREE Keyword research SEO tool, follow along, and let’s make it happen!

Here’s what we will cover:

1. How Most Keyword Research / Keyword Idea Tools work
2. How To Read Google Autosuggestions Programmatically?
3. Develop a Keyword Research Tool in Python
4. Develop a Keyword Research Tool in C#

How do Keyword Research Tools Work?

Well, it depends on the scope and functionality of the Tools you’re making, the complexity, and the SEO metrics you want your Tool to Provide.

In our case, we are providing “Google “Search” and “Question” Suggestions.

Let’s see how they are getting the results,

How do KeywordTool.io and AnswerthePublic.com get results for keyword suggestions?

Let’s open Google and type the same query we type into KeywordTool.io

Type “Python Tutorial,” press space, and type the letter “f”. You will see Google suggests keywords, ideas, and search queries!

Now, try adding “how” before the “python tutorial” keyword in Google Search and see what Google suggests! As you can see we’re getting similar suggestions as the tools above.

Now that we know how the whole process works, let’s see how to implement it from our code and Automate the Process to save you Time and Money.

How To Read Google Autosuggestions Programmatically?

Before we move on, I highly recommend you watch this short video to visualize the process and strengthen your concept. It is not obligatory; you can skip it and continue reading!

Mainly, We have two approaches:

1. Using Web Automation and Scraping
2. Using Google Search Free API Call

I chose the second approach simply because with web automation, the operation will be slower, and you may get Re-captcha to solve, and things will be more complicated.

API Call for Google Keyword Suggestions:

If you open your browser and paste this URL below, you will call the Google Suggestions API.

http://google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&gl=COUNTRY&q=Your_QUERY

You can change the country and the query to get different Google suggestions in XML format using this call, as shown below:

That’s it! We will call this URL from within the code and read the XML output!

To help more, I developed this tool in both C# .NET and Python. Both work the same way, so choose the one that you prefer!

Keyword Research Tool in Python

Here’s how the Python code will look like:

1. First, we import requests (Used To Call API) and xml.etree.ElementTree (User To Read XML)
2. Define a Class named QuestionsExplorer, and a method inside, GetQuestions, and it takes some arguments questionType, userInput, and countryCode to collect the Keywords and return them.
3. Build the search URL based on user input. and call the API
4. Read the API response results.
5. Loop Through the XML results. And append them to the QuestionResults Array.

Keyword Research Tool in C#

I Tried To Implement The Code in the same way as in Python. First, we create the class, and it has a method.

<pre class="EnlighterJSRAW" data-enlighter-language="csharp" data-enlighter-theme="" data-enlighter-highlight="" data-enlighter-linenumbers="" data-enlighter-lineoffset="" data-enlighter-title="" data-enlighter-group="">//start
class QuestionsExplorer
    {
        public List&lt;string&gt; GetQuestions(string questionType, string userInput, string countryCode)
//end</pre>

Then, we create an object of the QuestionExplorer class in the Program’s Main Method, which is called the GetQuestion method.

<pre class="EnlighterJSRAW" data-enlighter-language="generic" data-enlighter-theme="" data-enlighter-highlight="" data-enlighter-linenumbers="" data-enlighter-lineoffset="" data-enlighter-title="" data-enlighter-group="">//start
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Xml.Linq;
namespace GoogleSuggestion
{
    //Define Class
    class QuestionsExplorer
    {
        public List&lt;string&gt; GetQuestions(string questionType, string userInput, string countryCode)
        {
            var questionResults = new List&lt;string&gt;(); //List To Return
            //Build Google Search Query
            string searchQuery = questionType + " " + userInput + " ";
            string googleSearchUrl =
            "http://google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&amp;gl=" + countryCode + "&amp;q=" + searchQuery;
            //Call The URL and Read Data
            using (HttpClient client = new HttpClient())
            {
                string result = client.GetStringAsync(googleSearchUrl).Result;
                //Parse The XML Documents
                XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(result);
                foreach (XElement element in doc.Descendants("CompleteSuggestion"))
                {
                    string question = element.Element("suggestion")?.Attribute("data")?.Value;
                    questionResults.Add(question);
                }
            }
            return questionResults;
        }
    }
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Get a Keyword From The User
            Console.WriteLine("Enter a Keyword:");
            var userInput = Console.ReadLine();
            //Create Object of the QuestionsExplorer Class
            var qObj = new QuestionsExplorer();
            //Call The Method and pass the parameters
            var questions = qObj.GetQuestions("what", userInput, "us");
            //Loop over the list and pring the questions
            foreach (var result in questions)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(result);
            }
            //Finish
            Console.WriteLine();
            Console.WriteLine("---Done---");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
   
}
//end</pre>

Get the full code in the below GitHub link:

Conclusion

In this post, I showed you how to build a keyword research tool based on Google’s Suggestion API using two popular programming languages: C# and Python.

You may wonder how you can improve it and build a tool like mine with search metrics like CPC, Monthly Search Volume, and Competition. Here’s a free guide that will help you!

Take care, and Happy Coding!