What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the SEO process of discovering which words or phrases users type into a search engine when looking for information, products, or services online. By knowing the exact search terms, you can provide them with relevant content that satisfies their intent.
Keyword research is important for SEO because:
- If you don’t know the search phrases people use in Google, you risk optimizing your website for the wrong keywords.
- Without analyzing the potential of a keyword, you don’t know if it’s a keyword you want to rank for.
- Keyword research will help you understand your industry and identify your true competitors.
- With keyword research, you get to know the size of your potential audience, a metric useful in setting marketing goals and creating growth plans.
You can follow a three-step process to perform keyword research:
Step 1: Find Keywords - this includes tools and techniques for finding keyword ideas.
Step 2: Analyze Keywords - determine the best keywords for your campaigns using various metrics.
Step 3: Target Keywords - map your chosen keywords to pages and use them in your content.
Step 1: Find Keywords
The first step is to find potential keywords for your campaigns. You can use several techniques combining manual methods and keyword research tools.
Get To Know Your Niche
Start with two questions: what is your website about, and who is your target audience? Every keyword you choose later should connect the two.
Knowing who you have to compete with will help you create a realistic keyword list and an SEO strategy that can get you results.
Go to Google and start typing search terms related to your niche. Visit all websites that come up on the first page of Google and take note of things like:
- Their posting frequency (how often they update their website with new content).
- Type of content they publish (text, videos, etc.).
- How their website is structured (what they have on their homepage, menus, etc.).
- How strong their website is: big brands and sites with many backlinks are harder to outrank.
The main idea behind this exercise is to identify your main competitors and get new ideas about topics/keywords you can target. Our guide to SEO competitor analysis takes this further.
What is important to understand before doing keyword research for SEO purposes is that there is a big difference between the keywords you would like to achieve high rankings and the keywords you can actually rank high on Google.
If your website is new, some keywords might be impossible to target (usually, these are highly competitive keywords), so it’s good to know this from the beginning to adjust your keyword strategy to go after keywords that you have more chances of reaching the first page of Google.
Create Topic Buckets
Once you finish the above, it’s time to get more specific by writing down topic ideas. Do your brainstorming and write down anything that comes to mind related to your niche, industry, and products.
Put yourself in the position of the Google searcher and try to think what search terms they might type in Google.
If needed, revisit the websites noted above and closely examine their page titles. This can give you more ideas about topics related to your niche that you might not have considered.
Group your ideas to form topic buckets. Each topic bucket should include related ideas.
Let me give you an example of how this works.
Let’s say you are in the digital marketing niche and want to find keywords to help you get clients for your digital marketing agency.
Your target market is small businesses and startups looking for different services related to digital marketing. Your topic buckets might include the following:
- General Information Bucket. This bucket includes ideas related to general questions about digital marketing.
- Small Business Bucket. This bucket includes search terms that a small business owner might use in Google when looking for digital marketing agencies.
- Services bucket. This bucket includes search terms for specific marketing services like SEO and social media marketing.
If this is your first time doing keyword research for your website, you may have many topic buckets. This is perfectly fine.
Remember that this is an ongoing process and not something you must complete 100% on the first go. To begin with, write your basic ideas and move on to the next step.
Find Seed Keywords
Now that you have a list of ideas grouped into topic buckets, the next step is to find seed keywords.
Seed keywords are broad keywords that relate to your main topic and can be used as a starting point for your keyword research.
For instance, in the 'General Information Bucket,' your seed keyword might be 'digital marketing.' In the 'Small Business Bucket,' it could be 'small business digital marketing.'
AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude are a quick way to brainstorm. Describe your business and your audience, and ask for seed keywords and the questions your customers might search for. They don’t have real search volume data, though, so treat their suggestions as ideas and check each one in a keyword tool.
To check and expand your ideas, we need the help of keyword research tools. I will demonstrate the process using Semrush, but you can use your favorite tool to go through the process.
If you don’t have a Semrush subscription, you can take advantage of our exclusive offer and get a 14-day free trial of Semrush Pro.
Log in to Semrush and open the Keyword Strategy Builder (previously called Keyword Manager).
Enter your ideas (from your topic buckets) and start your analysis.
Semrush will group related keywords into topics, with suggested pages for each one.
Find Long Tail Keywords
As you work through the list of your seed keywords, you will realize that most (if not all) are highly competitive.
In other words, when you search for these keywords on Google, you find hundreds of websites competing for one of the top 10 positions.
If you have an established website, this may not be a big issue, but if you are starting now, it is a huge problem.
What should you do? Adjust your keyword research strategy and start looking for less competitive keywords, i.e., long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific search phrases. Each one is searched less often, but together they make up a large share of all searches, and they are your best opportunity to start ranking high on Google for keywords that can bring targeted traffic to your website in a relatively short time.
You might think that the issue with long-tail keywords is that they have less search volume, and while this is true, less is better than nothing.
In other words, there is no point in spending your time and effort on popular keywords that are impossible to rank for. Better start with the low-hanging fruit and build your way up.
Once you achieve high rankings for several long-tail keywords, you also increase your chances of ranking for seed keywords.
How do you find long-tail keywords? There are several ways to find long-tail keywords.
You can manually search Google and look for the ‘People also ask’ or ‘related searches’ section. You can also go to Wikipedia and Amazon and see what people are searching for.
The fastest way is to use two Semrush functions, the ‘Keyword Magic Tool’ and the ‘Topic Research’ tools.
Open the Keyword Magic Tool and use the ‘Advanced Filters’ to search for keywords that have 4 words or more. Just enter the number 4 into the ‘Words Count’ box and click Enter.
Now, you see keywords with 4 or more words. Select the keywords that match your business, examine their search intent by analyzing the Google results, and add them to your main list.
Another way to find long-tail keywords is to use the ‘Topic Research’ tool. Select Topic Research from the menu, type your ideas, and run the search.
Open a subtopic card and look at its questions, which you can filter by question word (what, how, why), to find what people ask about your business and products.
Use Your Own Data and Online Communities
Some of the best keyword ideas are not in any keyword tool. They come from your own website and from the places your audience talks.
- Google Search Console: if your website already gets traffic, the Queries report shows the searches you already appear for. Keywords where you rank on page two are often the quickest wins. See how to check your keyword rankings.
- Your own data: your site search, the questions customers ask by email or in sales calls, and the words they use in reviews are the language real buyers use.
- Forums and social media: read Reddit and Quora threads in your niche, and type your topic into YouTube’s search bar to see its suggestions. The questions people ask there often have no search volume in the tools yet.
Find Your Competitor's Keywords
While doing your keyword research, you created a list of websites that are your direct competitors. You visited their websites and analyzed their content; now it’s time to learn for which keywords they are ranking and the amount of traffic they receive from Google searches.
In Semrush, open Organic Research and type in a competitor’s URL.
What you see are the keywords your competitors are ranking for. Open the full list of organic keywords and use the advanced filters to find keywords with a decent search volume, excluding brand-related keywords and keywords that do not fall into your line of business.
This exercise aims to find keyword ideas you might not have thought of before and use them to enrich your keyword list.
You can also follow the procedure above to determine which keywords a competitor’s page ranks for.
In other words, instead of using the domain in the search box, type in the URL of a specific page.
What you see now are all the keywords that the particular page ranks for, the monthly search volume, and whether they generate traffic to the website. For more ways to do this, read how to find your competitors’ keywords.
Find Trending Keywords
Besides the above steps, you must monitor your niche for trending and new keywords that rise to the surface.
According to Google, 15% of the searches it sees every day are new.
This means that the keyword tools won’t show a big search volume for these keywords or not show them at all.
Most probably, they’re keywords your competitors are unaware of, so this gives you a competitive advantage since you can rank for them faster.
I personally use this method a lot, and it works great for almost all niches and industries.
Google Trends is the tool to use for this exercise. Go to Google Trends and enter your seed keywords.
Filter the results by area (if you are targeting specific areas), categories, and Google search channels.
Look for the RELATED QUERIES section and drill down to get more details for a specific query.
A piece of advice: don’t give up too soon on this tool; try different filters and different keywords/topics, and you can find some great keywords to target before everyone else does. Our guide on how to find trending topics has more sources.
Add in your calendar a reminder to repeat this exercise at least once every 3 months.
Step 2: Analyze Keywords
After finding keywords, the next step is to analyze them to choose the ones that are the best fit for your business.
Examine Search Intent
The search intent is simply the type of information users are looking for when they perform a search. It usually falls into one of four types:
- Informational: the searcher wants to learn something, like ‘how to do keyword research’.
- Navigational: the searcher wants a specific website or page, like ‘Semrush login’.
- Commercial: the searcher is comparing options before buying, like ‘best SEO tools’.
- Transactional: the searcher is ready to act, like ‘SEO packages for small businesses’.
For some keywords, the search intent is obvious, but for others, it needs more investigation. Searching for ‘SEO packages for small businesses’ is clear; searching for ‘SEO’ is vague.
The best way to determine a keyword's search intent is to type the keywords in Google and examine the first page of the results.
Google is doing a great job of understanding the user’s intent, so what they show on the first page is very close to what users seek.
Look at what else is on the page, too. Many informational searches are now answered by an AI Overview at the top of the results, so ranking for them brings fewer clicks than it used to. Commercial and transactional keywords usually send more visitors per ranking.
You need to do this exercise to find and eliminate from your list keywords that have a different intent than what you are offering. You don’t want to waste your time targeting keywords that won’t get you the right type of traffic.
For example, I initially added the keyword ‘Freelance Digital Marketing’ to my list. When you search for this keyword on Google, you will see that most of the results are resources for becoming a freelancer.
Since I aim to find keywords to get clients, this keyword is not a good fit. The searcher's intent is not to hire a freelancer but to learn how to become one.
Search Volume
Search volume is the average number of times a keyword is searched per month. It tells you how much traffic a keyword could bring if you rank for it.
Higher is not always better. A keyword with a few hundred searches and a clear intent can bring more customers than a broad keyword with thousands. Also check the trend: a keyword that is growing is worth more than one that is fading.
Read our guide on what a good keyword search volume is for examples.
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty (KD) estimates how difficult it would be to rank well in Google organic search for that keyword. It is given as a percentage; the higher the percentage, the more difficult it is to rank high for the specific keyword.
Each tool has its way of calculating keyword difficulty, but in general, the lower the value, the better.
In all Semrush reports, you can see the keyword difficulty of a keyword. The column is marked as KD%.
When analyzing your keywords, you should look for keywords with a low keyword difficulty but a decent monthly search volume.
Domain Authority
I’ve mentioned this several times, but it’s time to make it more specific. When you search for a keyword on Google and notice that big and well-known websites occupy the first 10 positions, it is very difficult for a small business website or blog to get there.
For example, when searching for ‘Digital Marketing,’ you’ll see websites like HubSpot, Moz, Wikipedia, and other giant websites.
This means that although ‘digital marketing’ is a term I would like to rank for, Google tells me that this is not possible, so I take that term out of my list and instead look for variations (long-tail search terms) that are possible to target.
Step 3: Target Keywords
Once you reach this point, you should already have a list of keywords (both seed and long-tail keywords) you would like to rank for.
Go through the keywords one by one and decide whether to keep or remove them from your list by answering the following questions:
- Is the keyword search intent in sync with your marketing goals?
- Is the keyword difficulty low compared to other keywords?
- Does Google rank normal websites in the first 10 positions or only big and well-known websites?
- Is there a decent search volume (above 50) for that keyword?
- Can you provide good content for that keyword?
If the answer to all the questions is YES, then keep that keyword in your list; otherwise, if the answer to any of the above is NO, remove it.
Create a Keyword Map
Before you write anything, assign your keywords to pages. This is called a keyword map, and it can be as simple as a spreadsheet with three columns:
- Page: the URL of an existing page, or the working title of a page you will create.
- Primary keyword: one main keyword per page.
- Secondary keywords: the long-tail variations and questions that page will also answer.
Give each primary keyword to one page only. When two of your pages target the same keyword, they compete with each other and often both rank lower, a problem known as keyword cannibalization.
Use Your Keywords in Your Content
Once you have your keyword map, you should use your keywords in your content. This is explained in detail in our guide on how to write SEO-friendly blog posts. The most important guidelines are:
- Use your focus keyword in the page title tag and H1 tag
- Use your focus keyword in the page URL
- Use long-tail keywords in your H2 and H3 headings
- Use related keywords in the image ALT text
- Use related keywords and synonyms in your copy
You don’t need to add your keywords to the meta keywords tag. Google does not use it for ranking.
The Keyword Research Course shows you how to perform keyword research like a pro and find keywords that generate traffic and sales, with practical lessons you can apply to your own website.
Keyword Research Tools
To perform keyword research, you need the help of tools. There is a lot of data to analyze, and it’s impossible to do manually.
These are the tools that I use and recommend. If you are on a budget, start with the free ones: Google Keyword Planner for search volumes, Google Search Console for the keywords you already rank for, and Google Trends for new ones.
Semrush (Paid)
This is my favorite tool for keyword research, and I use it daily for all digital marketing tasks. It’s not free, it comes with a monthly subscription, but it’s worth every cent.
For keyword research, you can use Semrush to do topic research and find seed keywords, long-tail keywords, and related keywords.
If you don’t already have an SEO tool subscription, Semrush is the way to go.
Before selecting Semrush, I tested several other tools, but none has the functionality of Semrush at this price range.
You can register for a 14-day free trial and test it yourself.
Google Keyword Planner (Free)
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to do keyword research for PPC (Google Ads) purposes, but you can also use it to do keyword research for SEO.
The tool is free, but you need a Google Ads account. You don’t need to run a campaign; you only need to complete your account setup, including your billing information.
Once your account is set up, open the Tools menu in Google Ads and select Keyword Planner.
UberSuggest (Free)
Another free keyword research tool that is worth exploring is Ubersuggest. You can use it to do both topic and keyword research.
The free version limits how many searches you can run each day. Creating a free account unlocks more data, such as historical search volumes, and the paid plans raise the daily limits.
Google Search Console (Free)
Google Search Console is the tool to optimize your pages after publication.
Keyword research is an ongoing process, and the best tool to use to find out the actual keywords your pages are ranking for is Google Search Console.
Why is this an important step? When you optimize a page for a keyword, it does not always go as planned. Google may rank the page for different keywords, and the way to 'correct this' is to find out which keywords the page has more chances of ranking for and add those keywords to your content.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Create an account and verify your website.
- Open the ‘Search results’ report under ‘Performance’.
- Filter by page, then look at the ‘Queries’ tab and the average position of each query.
- Identify keywords that are not included in your content.
- Change your content to add those keywords naturally.
- Ask Google to recrawl the page with the URL Inspection tool (Request Indexing).
Google Trends (Free)
As explained above, another tool you can use to find out about new and trending keywords is Google Trends.
Go to Google Trends and perform several searches using different filters to discover what is trending in your industry.
