keyword research report

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide

KEYWORD RESEARCH GUIDE

Learn how to conduct effective keyword research.

Updated: 09/04/24

Published: 01/30/14

Updated: September 04, 2024

Published: January 30, 2014

Keyword research has remained a constant in a rapidly changing search landscape. If you’re an inbound marketer looking to optimize your website, understanding how to do keyword research is a must.

In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is, why it’s important, how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy , and how to choose the right keywords for your website.

Table of Contents

What is keyword research?

Why is keyword research important, elements of keyword research, how to research keywords for your seo strategy, how to find and choose keywords for your website, best keywords for seo.

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Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Keyword research helps you find your SEO sweet spot — the overlap of keywords that aren’t too hard to rank for and keywords that you can confidently produce excellent content on. It also identifies the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google.

I talked to HubSpot Growth Manager Amal Kalepp , who says that keyword research “determines who your competitors are and which area of the search landscape you can rank for. Doing keyword research and understanding where your blog or website sweet spot is — that’s what gives you rankability.”

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Drill down into your website’s traffic sources and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people use to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have.

Remember, if you’re having trouble brainstorming with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues in sales or service. Ask them what types of terms their prospects or customers have questions about.

Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.

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Step 3. Understand how intent affects keyword research and analyze accordingly.

User intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google.

That means it’s vital that your web page addresses the problem a searcher wants to solve rather than simply including the keyword the searcher used.

So, how does this affect your keyword research?

It’s tempting to take keywords at face value, but they can have many different meanings.

And because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.

Let’s say you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an article you want to create. “Blog” can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and the searcher’s intent behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article.

Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post ? Or do they want to know how to launch a website domain for a new blog?

If your content strategy only targets people interested in the latter, you’ll need to determine the keyword’s intent before using it.

To verify a user’s intent, it’s a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself and see what types of results come up.

I did a quick search for “how to start a blog,” and it looks like most users are searching for info on how to start a website with a blog, not an individual blog post:

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• General SEO
• Keyword Research
• On-Page SEO
• Link Building
• Technical SEO
• Enterprise SEO
• General Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Paid Marketing
• Video Marketing

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO (Start to Finish)

• 1. How Search Engines Work
• 2. SEO Basics
• 3. Keyword Research
• 4. SEO Content
• 5. On-Page SEO
• 6. Link Building
• 7. Technical SEO

But there’s a way to avoid this problem, to almost guarantee that relevant people will find your content.

Keyword research .

Keyword research is the process of discovering valuable search queries that your target customers type into search engines like Google to look for products, services, and information.

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. If you publish a page on a topic that no one is searching for, that article won’t receive any traffic from Google (or other search engines)—no matter how hard you try.

Many website owners make that mistake, and it’s part of the reason why 90.63% of pages on the internet get no traffic from Google, according to our study .

Keyword research is not rocket science. In fact, you’re about to learn most of it in about 20 minutes.

But there are quite a few important caveats and misconceptions that you need to be aware of in order to make better SEO decisions.

So let’s dive right in.

• 1 How Search Engines Work
• 2 SEO Basics
• 3 Keyword Research
• 4 SEO Content
• 5 On-Page SEO
• 6 Link Building
• 7 Technical SEO

Getting started with keyword research

Keyword research starts from putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. What words and phrases might they use to find solutions to their problems?

Plug these into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer , and you’ll find thousands more relevant keyword ideas on top of what you just brainstormed.

It’s a simple process, but you need two things to do it well:

• Good knowledge of your industry
• An understanding of how keyword research tools work

That’s what this chapter is all about.

Try out free keyword tools

There are tons of free tools to help you brainstorm keyword ideas.

To get started, every keyword research tool asks for a “seed keyword”, which it then uses to generate a huge list of keyword ideas.

If you already have a product or business, coming up with seed keywords is easy. Just think about what people type into Google to find what you offer.

For example, if you sell coffee and coffee-making equipment, then your seed keywords might be:

• french press

When you have a few ideas (don’t obsess over them), put them into Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator Tool .

For every seed keyword you enter, you’ll get back 20 related keywords and 20 related questions (so that’s 40 keyword ideas already).

It also shows you how hard they’ll be to rank for (easy, medium, or hard), and a rough sense of how many searches they receive each month.

You can do this as many times as needed, for all of your seed keywords.

ChatGPT can also be useful. Paste your seed keywords into ChatGPT alongside a prompt like  Suggest 10 short keyword ideas for each of the following topics :

The downside of ChatGPT is that you won’t get realistic SEO metrics for your keywords, like keyword difficulty or monthly searches. But it’s useful for brainstorming tons of ideas to use with an SEO tool.

There are other free keyword research tools that can be useful (although they have some downsides):

• Google Keyword Planner – It’s a tool for those who want to run ads in Google. It can help with keyword ideas, but it only shows SEO metrics if you’re running paid ad campaigns.
• Google Trends – A cool tool for finding new and exciting topics, but it’s not very detailed: you can only see big,broad topics, and not specific keyword ideas.
• Answer the Public – uses Google’s autocomplete data to show you related keywords that people search for, but you only get 3 searches each day.

Hit the search button and head to the Matching terms report to see how many keyword ideas it gives us:

1.7 million keywords! No free tool will let you work with such a vast number of keyword ideas.

That may seem like an overwhelming number of keywords to work with. And it is. But don’t worry. You’ll learn how to narrow them down later in this guide.

See what keywords your website already ranks for

If you already have a website, you can find keywords that you already rank for. This is great for brainstorming new, similar keyword ideas, or for improving your pages to get better rankings for those keywords.

Once you’ve set it up, Google Search Console will show some of the search queries that your website is currently ranking for and getting clicks from.

The downside of Search Console is that it won’t show you any SEO metrics. So if you see a cool keyword sending you a few clicks every month, you won’t know whether it’s worth trying to improve your ranking.

Does that keyword get 10 searches a month, or 10,000? Is it easy for you to rank for, or so hard that it’s not worth the effort? Search Console won’t tell you.

But Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) will. This is our free plan, which is very similar to Google Search Console. But while Search Console will only show you the top 1,000 keywords your website ranks for, AWT will show you all of them. We’ll also show you their Keyword Difficulty score, and their monthly search volume.

See what keywords your competitors rank for

Now that you see the keywords your website ranks for…wouldn’t it be cool to see the keywords your competitors rank for?

You can do exactly that with Ahrefs. Search Google for one of your seed keywords and see who ranks on the front page.

Once you find a competitor website that seems similar to yours (if you sell coffee-making equipment, they do too—they aren’t a café or Starbucks), plug it into a competitive intelligence tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer to check which pages bring it the most traffic and what keywords these pages are targeting.

After repeating the process with a few of your competitors, you’ll find yourself with a pretty sizable list of relevant keywords. And you’ve barely even started your keyword research!

Whether these keyword ideas are purely informational (i.e., blog articles) or have commercial intent (i.e., product pages) is something we’re going to determine in later stages of our keyword research process. For now, your goal is to collect as many relevant keyword ideas as you can.

Make sure to repeat this process for as many competitors as you can. We have a handy report in Site Explorer , which will help you discover more of them. It’s called “Competing Domains” and shows you similar websites to the one you’ve entered based on the common keywords that they rank for in Google.

In this case, you should try using the Content Gap report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer . It finds keywords that one or more of your competitors rank for, but you don’t.

To use it, plug a few of your competitors’ websites into the top section, then paste your own site into the bottom field and click “Show keywords.”

You can learn more about content gap analysis in this video .

Study your niche

Everything we’ve discussed so far is enough to generate an almost unlimited number of keyword ideas. But at the same time, the process kind of keeps you “in the box.” What about finding new topics that no one else has covered?

You can solve this by going to the places where your target audience hangs out—industry forums, groups, and Q&A sites—and studying their conversations. For example, here’s a thread I found on the /r/coffee subreddit:

A quick check in Keywords Explorer , and I found this search query: “aeropress coffee to water ratio.”

It only gets 150 searches per month, but the fact that this topic got 42 upvotes on Reddit means that people really appreciate this knowledge. Plus, the content of that Reddit thread can serve as a foundation for my future piece of content.

Other than browsing industry forums, your existing customers can also be a great source of keyword ideas.

So the next time you talk to them, remember to pay attention to the language they use and the common questions they ask. That might lead you to some original keyword ideas to cover on your website.

Types of keywords

We’ve already talked about seed keywords. As you get further into keyword research, it’s important to understand other “types” of keywords you’ll encounter.

If you put seed keywords into a tool like Keywords Explorer, you’ll have the option of finding related keywords. There are two types: Matching terms and Related terms :

Matching terms

These are keyword ideas that match the terms (the words) in your seed keywords. The Matching terms report in Keywords Explorer has two modes: “Terms match” and “Phrase match.”

“Terms match” shows keyword ideas that contain all words of your seed keyword in them, regardless of where exactly they are and what order they’re in. So if our seed keyword is “coffee machine,” we’ll get the following keyword ideas:

• coffee vending machine
• machine gun kelly coffee shop

“Phrase match” only returns keyword ideas that have the words of your seed keyword in the exact order as you entered them. Like so:

• best coffee machine
• coffee machine with grinder

Related terms

Related terms are keyword ideas that are related to your seed keywords but don’t necessarily contain your seed keywords. It also has two modes: “Also rank for” and “Also talk about.”

• “Also rank for” shows you search queries that the top-ranking pages for your seed keyword also rank for.
• “Also talk about” shows you words and phrases that are frequently mentioned on the top-ranking pages for your seed keywords.

Keyword clusters

By now you might have thousands of keyword ideas. You probably don’t want to create a thousand pages to target all of those keywords, so you can use a process called keyword clustering to simplify your list.

Let’s say that you’ve got the following keywords on your list:

The top-ranking pages for both keywords are nearly identical. This means that Google sees the search query “whipped coffee recipe” as a subtopic of a more general query, “whipped coffee.” So you can rank for both keywords with a single page.

This process of grouping together related keywords is called clustering. In Ahrefs, we created a metric called Parent Topic that helps you group these related keywords together almost instantly.

Just add your keyword ideas into Keywords Explorer , go to the Clusters by Parent Topic tab, and you’ll see your keywords grouped together into clusters:

Here we can see 28 different keywords that are all part of the “whipped coffee recipe” cluster. There’s a good chance we could publish a single high-quality guide to whipped coffee recipes, and rank decently well for all of these keywords.

The big benefit of clustering by Parent Topic is speed—it’s almost instantaneous. But there are other clustering methods too, like term clustering , where you group keywords by common words or phrases rather than search result similarity. You can learn more in our guide to keyword clustering .

Keyword intents

Keywords have different types of intent. Some keywords will be searched by people ready to buy a product or service. These are called commercial or transactional keywords.

• best instant coffee
• cuisinart coffee maker
• coffee table with storage

Others will have informational intent – they’re searched by people just looking to learn.

• how much caffeine in coffee
• coffee cake recipe
• is coffee good for you

Sometimes people just want to find a particular website or location, known as navigational intent.

• coffee near me
• stumptown coffee
• drive thru coffee

Keywords can also be branded or unbranded , like “starbucks coffee” versus “black coffee”.

Understanding these intents can help you work out what type of content you need to create, and prioritize whether a keyword is really worth targeting.

Informational keywords will probably benefit from some educational blog content, while commercial keywords might need a product landing page so the visitor can actually buy .

You can check the intent of a keyword by looking at the search results. “Home coffee roasting” has a mixture of roasting machines for sale (commercial intent) and a Reddit discussion about roasting beans at home (informational):

You can learn more about keyword intents in our guide .

Keyword SEO metrics explained

Having access to millions of keyword ideas is all well and good. But how do you know which ones are best? After all, going through them all by hand will be a near-impossible task.

The solution is simple: use SEO metrics to narrow things down and separate the wheat from the chaff before adding them to your keyword list.

Let’s explore six keyword metrics you can use to do this.

Search volume

Search volume tells you the average number of times a keyword gets searched per month. For example, “donald trump” has a monthly search volume of 3.1 million in the U.S. alone.

• It’s the number of searches, not the number of people who searched – There are cases where someone might search for a keyword multiple times a month (e.g., “weather in singapore” ). All such occurrences contribute to the search volume of that keyword, even though it’s the same person making searches.
• It doesn’t equal how many visits it will send you if you rank for it – Even if you manage to rank #1, your traffic from that one keyword will rarely exceed 30% of its search volume. And that’s if you’re lucky.
• It’s an annual average – If there are 120K searches for a keyword in December and none for the remaining 11 months of the year, its reported monthly search volume will be 10K (120K/12 months).
• It’s country-specific – Keyword tools often display search volume for the selected country. But some of them also have an option to show you the global search volume, which is the sum of search volumes across all countries.

Almost every keyword research tool will have a search volume filter to let you focus on the keyword ideas with a specific range of popularity. It has two main use cases:

• Filtering out super high-volume keywords – If your site is new, then you probably don’t want to waste your time looking at keywords with 10K+ monthly searches because they’re likely to be too competitive for you.
• Filtering specifically for lower-volume keywords – Perhaps you want to find uncompetitive, low-volume keywords where you can easily get a little bit of traffic. These are often referred to as “ long-tail keywords .”

Such “zero volume” keywords will only bring a few visitors per month if you rank for them. But the thing is they add up! If you publish a hundred articles targeting such keywords, your annual total traffic may actually add up to a few thousand highly targeted visitors.

It’s a common rookie mistake to disregard low search volume keywords. They’re just as useful as their more popular counterparts. Often even more useful, since they’re more specific and often have high commercial value.

Another important thing to remember about search volumes is that they may vary slightly from tool to tool. That’s because each tool calculates and updates this metric in different ways.

All in all, search volume is an incredibly important metric in SEO. So I highly recommend that you read this dedicated article that I wrote about it.

Traffic Potential

The U.S. search volumes of the following two keywords are nearly equal:

Which means that the amount of search traffic that you may get from targeting each of them should also be nearly equal, right? Well, not quite.

Let’s take the top-ranking pages for each of these keywords and compare how much search traffic they get in the U.S. This can easily be done by copying their URLs into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer .

And it turns out that one of these pages is actually getting nearly 5X more search traffic than the other. How can that be?

Well, webpages don’t rank in Google for just a single keyword. If you look at the two screenshots above attentively, you’ll see that the top-ranking page for “sales page” is ranking in Google for 55 keywords (check the “Organic keywords” tile). While the top-ranking page for “submit website to search engines” ranks in Google for a total of 406 different keywords.

Here are some of them (as seen in the Organic keywords report in Site Explorer ):

We studied this “phenomenon” back in the day , and it turned out that the average top-ranking page would also rank for about a thousand similar keywords.

This means that you should not blindly rely on the search volume of a single keyword when estimating the search traffic that your page is going to get if it ranks for it. What you need to do instead is examine the top-ranking pages for that keyword and see how much search traffic they get in total from all the variations of that keyword, which they rank for.

Here at Ahrefs, we thought it was such an important thing to consider when analyzing keywords that we have developed a dedicated metric to address it.

It’s called “Traffic Potential,” and it shows how much search traffic the top-ranking page for your keyword gets.

In Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer , the Traffic Potential metric is located right next to the search volume. This saves you lots of time looking up what page ranks #1 for that keyword and how much search traffic it gets in total.

Both the search volume and Traffic Potential metrics are country-specific, though. So if you need to gauge the worldwide search traffic of a top-ranking page, you’ll need to use Site Explorer with “All countries” mode selected.

Keyword Difficulty

Experienced SEO professionals typically gauge the ranking difficulty of each keyword manually. That is, by looking at the search results for each keyword and analyzing them. They account for many different factors to judge how hard or easy it’ll be to rank:

• Search intent
• Content depth, relevance, freshness, authority
• Number (and quality) of backlinks
• Domain Rating
• SERP features

This process varies from person to person, and there’s no consensus on precisely what is and isn’t important here.

One person might believe that Domain Rating is important, and another might think that relevance plays more of a role.

The opinions might also vary depending on the type of search query that they’re analyzing, because for different kinds of queries Google gives preference to different things.

All of that makes life a little difficult for SEO tool creators, who try to distill the complex and intricate concept of ranking difficulty down to a simple two-digit number.

But after talking to many professional SEOs about the signals that an actionable Keyword Difficulty (KD) score should factor in, we realized that everyone agreed on at least one thing: Backlinks are very important for ranking.

As you can see in the image above, KD relates to the estimated number of linking websites your page needs to rank in the top 10.

Did you get that? It’s not the estimated number of linking websites you need to rank #1. It’s the estimated number you need to rank in the top 10. Getting to #1 is an entirely different battle.

Many people misuse the KD metric by setting the filter from 0 to 10 and focusing solely on the easy keyword ideas. But here’s why avoiding high-KD keywords might be a mistake:

• You should go after high-KD keywords sooner, not later – You’ll need lots of backlinks to rank for high-KD keywords, which takes a lot of time and resources. So it pays to create your page and begin promoting it as soon as possible. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there.
• Look at high-KD keywords as link opportunities – The fact that the top-ranking pages for some keywords have lots of backlinks is a sign of a “link-worthy” topic. If you create something original on that topic, there’s a good chance lots of people will link to you.

The bottom line is this: KD is not there to deter you from targeting specific keywords. It’s there to help you understand what it’ll take to rank for a given query (as well as the “link-worthiness” of a given topic).

Just know that you should always manually assess keywords before going after them and not rely solely on any tool’s difficulty score to make your final decision. No single score can distill the complexity of Google’s ranking algorithm into a single number. Be wary of tool creators who suggest otherwise.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

But it’s a different story for “project management methodologies.” This is clearly an informational search query, and the odds of selling your project management software to these people are not as high—hence, the much lower CPC of $6.

One important thing to know about CPC is that it’s much more volatile than search volume. While the search demand for most keywords stays roughly the same from month to month, their CPC can change any minute as more companies display ads for them.

This means that the CPC values that you see in various SEO tools are merely snapshots in time and aren’t particularly precise. If you want to get real-time CPC data, it is recommended that you use AdWords.

Given that search volume is an annual average, it can often lead you astray in terms of the future search demand of a given search query.

Notebook LM, an AI model that turns text into podcast audio, has a twelve-month average of 73,000 searches. But this average comes from many months with zero search volume… and a couple of months with over 400,000 searches.

In this case, the average is underestimating the likely search volume in the next few months:

Or take a seasonal keyword like “black friday”. The average search volume shows as 282,000, but this average comes from many months of much lower search volume (around 50,000 most months) and one month of much higher volume (2.5 million searches in November 2024):

The number of searches any keyword gets changes over time, and there can be a real benefit to ranking for a keyword that has low search volume now, but is already on the way to becoming popular.

You can easily find these trending keywords using the “Growth” metric in Keywords Explorer. Just add your keywords and sort by the Growth column to topics that are getting more popular (like “health benefits of mushroom coffee”) or less popular (like “home coffee roasting”).

If you haven’t heard about it before, Google Trends is also a nice free tool for analyzing trending searches. And we have written a pretty extensive guide on how to use it.

Business Potential

Prioritizing your list of keywords and deciding where you should invest your efforts first is probably the least straightforward and most “individual” part of the keyword research process. There are just too many things to consider:

• What is the estimated traffic potential of this keyword?
• What’s the ranking difficulty? Who are you competing against?
• What will it take to create a perfect page? Or maybe you already have one, and it needs to be improved?
• What’s the business value of this keyword? What would you get from ranking for it?

That last point is a particularly important one. While search volume, traffic potential, ranking difficulty, and search intent are all important considerations, you also need to factor in what ranking for this keyword will be worth to your business.

Here at Ahrefs, we’ve developed our own way of determining the business value of a keyword.

We call it “business potential,” and it’s a simple score from 0 to 3, which indicates how easy it will be to pitch our product while covering a given keyword.

If you sell Aeropress accessories, a keyword like “aeropress filters” would have a very high business potential score. At the other end of the spectrum, a keyword like “stanley thermos” would have a low score: despite being related to coffee, it’s not something that your business helps with.

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to prioritize topics that score 2 or 3 on the Business Potential scale. These topics are most likely to bring potential customers to your website—ultimately, that’s the most important goal of keyword research and SEO.

When we categorized all of the blog posts on the Ahrefs website, 77% of them scored high (2 or 3) on Business Potential:

(And as you can see, we had almost no blog posts with zero business potential.)

How to prioritize keywords

So… which keywords should you start working on first?

Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward answer to this question. As SEOs like to say, “It depends.”

• Are you working on a brand-new website or an established business?
• Are you the only marketer, or do you manage a large team?
• Are you responsible for the actual conversions or providing new leads to the sales team?
• How fast do you need to show results?

Keyword research is an act of balancing your unique circumstances with a set of metrics and concepts, which we’ve just covered: traffic potential, keyword difficulty, business potential, and search intent.

In some cases, your job will be to get as much traffic as possible as fast as possible, which comes down to finding the high-volume, low-difficulty keywords. Other times, you’ll need to focus on leads or conversions, in which case business potential will be the most important metric to focus on.

Keyword research is not the process of finding “easy to rank for” keywords. It’s the process of finding the keywords that make the most sense to your business.

You should also have short-, medium-, and long-term ranking goals. If you only focus on short-term goals, you’ll never rank for the most lucrative keywords. If you only focus on medium- and long-term goals, it’ll take years to get any traffic.

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Keyword Research: An In-Depth Beginner’s Guide

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization. This guide covers what it is and how you should do keyword research.

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization, and without it, you cannot expect to create sustainable and repeatable visibility.

Today, SEO is a much wider discipline than in the early days of the industry and has been segmented into many verticals.

But, at the core, SEO is about finding opportunities online and capturing relevant traffic to a website through visibility in search engines. Keyword research is at the heart of that SEO strategy.

This guide explains what keyword research is, why it’s important, and how you can make a start for a successful SEO strategy.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a process of finding words, queries, and phrases that users are searching for, which means a keyword that has search volume.

Research involves connecting the relevance of keywords to a website and its individual pages so that the user can find the best page to answer their query, known as search intent.

Keyword research also involves categorizing search queries into the different stages of a user journey and different categories of search, such as transactional, navigational, and informational.

Good keyword research enables users to find what they need:

• Shoppers who want to buy something can find the right product page.
• A user that wants to know ‘how to’ can find a page that explains a process in-depth.
• Users who want to research a person or brand can find out about that entity.

Keyword research should also carefully consider if ranking on a keyword is worth the effort it would take to rank highly and get visitors. Not all traffic is equal.

Download the ebook, How To Do Keyword Research For SEO .

Why Keyword Research Is Important For SEO

A search engine is an information retrieval system built around the queries that a user inputs to find an answer or relevant information to their search query.

The predominant focus of Google is to connect a user with the best answer to their query and the best website page so that a user is satisfied. Understanding this underlines SEO.

Good keyword research is the foundation of how a business can connect with its potential customers and audience. Understanding this helps to understand a good SEO strategy.

A business strategy starts with understanding its audience and their needs.

• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• What keeps them awake at night?
• What could solve their problem?

Keyword research is an extension of understanding your audience by first considering their needs and then the phrases, keywords, or queries they use to find solutions.

Keyword research is also important for SEO because it can show you where the opportunities are by knowing what your audience is searching for.

This will help you to find new areas of business and to prioritize where to focus attention and resources.

Keyword research will also help you to calculate where you can expect a return on investment to justify your efforts:

• Can a keyword deliver relevant traffic that has the possibility to convert to an end goal?
• What is an estimation of that traffic, and how much is each visitor worth to your business?

Basically, keyword research is the ultimate business research tool.

Read more: Why Keywords Are Still So Very Important For SEO

Keyword Research Basics

Monthly search volume.

Monthly Search Volume (MSV) is a predominant measure of keyword value. It’s a useful metric as a starting point to consider if anyone is searching for that keyword, but it shouldn’t be used in isolation or as the only measure of value.

Just because a keyword has a high MSV doesn’t mean it is the right keyword for you to rank on.

High-volume keywords generally deliver ‘browsing’ traffic at the top of the funnel. They are useful for brand awareness but not for direct conversion.

Low-volume keywords can be much more valuable because they can deliver users who are ready to buy a product.

Read more: A Complete Guide To Keyword Search Volume For SEO

User Intent

User intent refers to what type of result they want to see when they search for a query – the intention of their search.

You will hear user intent talked about a lot in keyword research, as it is one of the most important factors in the process.

User intent is important in two ways, firstly because your primary aim in creating content and pages on a website are to provide a user with information that they want to know.

There’s no point in creating a page about what you care about – your user only cares about their problems and needs.

You can have the best page in the world about the history of cupcakes, but if a user searching for [cupcake] wants a recipe for cupcakes, then they will not click on your link.

Secondly, Google considers relevance when serving results pages (as we said above, they want to deliver the best result for a query). So, the better your page fits user intent, the better it might rank.

Read more: How People Search: Understanding User Intent

When Google considers which pages it will show in search results, the algorithm will look at other pages that users are clicking on for that query.

If we have a query such as [cupcake], Google has to consider if a user wants to know what a cupcake is, how to make a cupcake, or wants to buy a cupcake.

By looking at a search result page, you can get a good idea of user intent from the other results.

Reviewing the search results page of a query should be part of your research process for every keyword you want to consider.

Keyword relevance and user intent are much the same things. It’s about knowing what the user really means when they search. This is more ambiguous for head keywords and less so for long-tail queries.

Long-Tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are called long-tail because they fall to the right of the search demand curve – where the graph looks like a long tail stretching to the right.

The search demand curve is a graph that shows keywords with high volume to the left and lower search volumes to the right.

Longer queries that are more focused fall to the right. Head terms with broad meaning and high volume fall to the left.

The value of long-tail keywords is that they are usually highly focused terms that convert well, as users are actively looking for something very specific.

For example, [iPhone 13] is a head term with high volume (2.7 million MSV), and [Best affordable iPhone 13 cases] (210 MSV) is a long-tail keyword with far fewer searches but would have a high conversion rate.

Long-tail keywords are useful to include in a keyword strategy because they are usually much easier to rank for and achievable for a new website, and the cumulative volume of many long-tail keywords adds up to considerable targeted traffic.

This is a much more stable strategy than focusing on one high-volume ambiguous keyword.

Read more: Long-Tail Keyword Strategy: Why & How To Target Intent For SEO

Types Of Search Query

There are four types of keywords that are useful to understand as they categorize the different user intents and can help when planning a keyword strategy.

• Informational – users looking for information or an answer to a question (top of the funnel).
• Navigational – users wanting to find a specific brand, site, or page (brand searches).
• Commercial – users researching brands, products, or services (middle of the funnel).
• Transactional – users ready to complete a purchase or action (bottom of the funnel).

Local keywords can also be considered another category.

How To Do Keyword Research

Now that you have a better understanding of the basics of keyword research, we can look at where you would start with your research and keyword strategy.

1. How To Find Keyword Ideas

The first stage of keyword research is to brainstorm ideas for seed keywords, and there are several ways to do this.

Your Target Audience

Everything starts with your audience and what they want. Think about their needs, wants, and especially their pain points and problems.

Start to compile your wide list of words, ideas, and topics that surround your niche or business.

Think About Questions

Question-based keyword queries are valuable as they can help you to capture featured snippets and can be a way to jump rank on highly competitive keywords.

Ask your sales team and review CRM data to find the questions that your audience is asking.

Also, think of question modifiers that will start to build out your list:

• What [is a road bike].
• How to [ride a road bike].
• When is [the best time to service a road bike].
• What is [the best road bike].
• Where is [road bike shop].

Current Site Queries

If your site already has some online history, then Google Search Console can tell you what Google thinks your website is relevant for. This is insightful to tell you if your site is conveying the right message and to find opportunities.

If Google is showing a lot of queries that have nothing to do with your product or brand, then you need to apply more keyword focus to your pages.

Look for queries that are position 10 or greater, have reasonable impressions, and you think are relevant to your business.

These are potential quick-win opportunities that you can capture by making improvements and optimizing pages for the query.

Read more: A Complete Google Search Console Guide For SEO Pros

Competitors’ Keywords

Your competitors are a gold mine of information because they might already have invested in extensive research.

A business should be constantly monitoring its competitors anyway, so keep an eye on what content they are producing and the terms they target.

A keyword gap analysis will help you find opportunities your competitors are targeting that you might not have considered.

Read more: Competitor Keyword Analysis: 5 Ways To Fill The Gaps In Your Organic Strategy & Get More Traffic

Seed Keywords

Start with high-level ‘seed’ keywords that you can use as a starting point to then open up variants and related queries.

Seed keywords are ‘big’ head terms such as [iPhone], [trainers], [road bike], or [cupcake].

For each seed keyword, start to think of topics that are related:

• Road bike maintenance.
• Road bike training.
• Road bike clothing.
• Road bike lights.

Also, use question modifiers and buying modifiers such as:

• Best [road bike].
• Buy [road bike].
• Price [for women’s road bike].
• [road bikes for hire] near me.
• Reviews [of road bikes under $1,000].

When you have finished this process, you should have a raw list of potential keywords grouped in topics – such as maintenance, clothing, training, etc.

2. How To Analyze Keywords

Once you have your raw list, it’s time to start to analyze and sort by value and opportunity.

Search Volume

Search volume will tell you if anyone is actively searching for this term.

For a first-stage strategy, you should aim for keywords with a mid-range and long-tail volume for quick wins and then build up to approach more competitive terms with higher volumes.

Head keywords with super high volumes (like ‘iPhone’) are not the best keywords to focus on as they can be too ambiguous and rarely have a specific intent.

Also, the amount of work that is needed to rank can be too high a barrier for entry unless you have an established domain of significant authority.

If a tool shows a keyword with zero search volume, this doesn’t always mean you should discard the term.

If the keyword is shown in the tool, then there can be value to consider targeting it in your strategy. However, make sure you know your audience and what is relevant to them before you invest resources in a zero-volume keyword.

Read more: Why You Should Target Zero Search Volume Keywords

Search Intent

After you have sorted your raw lists by search volumes, it’s then time to review the intent for each keyword that you would like to target.

The SERP will tell you everything that you need to know, and you should always review SERPs for clues on how to construct content and rank.

Look at the other listing that rank highly:

• Are they ‘how-to’ guides that indicate it’s informational?
• Do the titles say ‘buy,’ ‘best,’ or include product names?
• Is there a shopping carousel that indicates a buying keyword?
• Is there a location map that indicates it’s a local search?

Tag each keyword type and then consider which are the strongest keywords from each group.

You can also use a research tool that will tell you the type of keyword.

Topic Clusters

Grouping keywords into topic clusters is an advanced keyword strategy that can help to strengthen the topic authority of a site.

To do this, you would start with a high-volume head keyword and then research a series of keywords that supports that head term.

After creating pages of content that target each keyword, you use internal linking to connect pages with the same topic.

Read more: Keyword Clusters: How To Level Up Your SEO Content Strategy

3. How To Choose Organic Keywords

After sorting the volumes, intent, and topics, you will need to decide if you have a chance of ranking on a term by looking at how much competition there is for each keyword.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is one of the most important keyword metrics when doing your research.

If a keyword is so competitive that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars to rank, then you need to get strategic.

The easiest way to calculate keyword difficulty is to use a research tool that gives a score for each keyword.

Or, you can refer to Google Keyword Planner Tool and look at the CPC and level of difficulty. The higher the CPC bid, the higher the competition.

If you are starting out, first approach the lower competition keywords that are achievable and then build your way up to more competitive terms.

Read more: Why Keyword Research Is Useful For SEO & How To Rank

Connecting To Your Objectives And Goals

Unless a keyword can actually deliver a result for you – do you want to target it?

As we said above, targeting head terms is not the best strategy as they will, at best, deliver browsing or drive-by visitors. Unless you are a big brand with a big budget that is aiming for brand awareness, this is not the best application of your resources and budget.

Choosing your keyword priority should start with what can give you the best return in the shortest time frame.

Good keyword research is not just about trying to target a high-volume popular keyword. A good keyword strategy is about finding the right keywords for your needs and outcome. Always keep that front and center.

Read more: How To Calculate ROI For SEO When Targeting A Set Of Keywords

Watch John Mueller talk about ranking for head keywords in this video from the 38:55 minute mark.

Using Keyword Research Tools

Doing your research without a tool is limited; for the most in-depth keyword research, you need help to find keyword opportunities you had not thought of.

The following keyword research tools are all free versions that you can start out with.

Google Keyword Planner

The original keyword tool has evolved over the years, but it still remains one of the best free keyword tools and a good starting point to find seed keywords and keyword ideas.

The Google tool is aligned with Google Ads, so the data is skewed towards paid ads but is still valuable for research.

You need a Google Ads account to access the tool. Google will try to force you to set up an active campaign, but you can access the account by setting up an account without a campaign.

Without a campaign running, you will only get limited search volumes displayed in ranges, but the tool is still useful for its suggestions of keyword ideas. If you have an active campaign, Google will show you the monthly search volume.

You can add up to 10 seed keywords and get a list of suggested keywords, and run competitor URLs in the tool to find keywords they are targeting. Doing this is a great place to start building out raw lists of keywords to work from.

Read more: How To Use Google Keyword Planner

Read more: 9 Creative Ways To Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool

Google Trends

Google Trends offers data based on actual search query data. It doesn’t provide search volumes, but the data in Google trends can be compared with actual search volumes from other tools so you can get a comparative feel of what the actual volumes are.

Where Trends excels is to identify trending topics and subtopics in a niche and to find geographic search trends in a local area. Trends will recommend related keywords that are currently growing in popularity.

As part of a keyword strategy, this can show you where to focus resources and when to stop investing in terms.

Read more: How To Use Google Trends For SEO

Google Autocomplete

Previously known as Suggest, Autocomplete is integrated into the Google search box to help users complete their search with what Google calls ‘predictions.’

Google takes its predictions from common searches and trending searches.

As the suggestions are all variations around the topic you are typing, the results shown give you an insight into other related terms that users could be looking for.

Checking the predictions that Google provides in Autocomplete can help you find more variations and keywords to consider.

Read more: Google Autocomplete: A Complete SEO Guide

Answer The Public

Answer The Public is a powerful tool that scrapes data from Google Autocomplete and connects a seed keyword with a variety of modifiers to produce a list of variants.

Answer The Public will quickly provide a list of suggestions, especially based on questions that you can use as a raw list to then review.

Read more: More Free Keyword Research Tools

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Free keyword tools are great to get you started and to create raw lists of keywords that you can then drill into.

However, for the best results, you might want to invest in a paid competitive analysis tool that can help you get monthly search volume and keyword difficulty data.

Some tools will also help with assigning topics and clustering for more advanced keyword strategies.

Anyone who does keyword research in-depth or to an advanced level will have their own process. They will also use a variety of tools and a combination of paid and free resources to get the best results.

Read more: Best Keyword Research Tools

Advanced Keyword Strategies

Now that you have an understanding of how to get started with keyword research, experiment with a few different websites and niches. Doing the work yourself is the best way to learn.

Once you have a better understanding in practice, move into more advanced methods and strategies to take your keyword research to the next level.

Advanced Keyword Research

• B2B Keyword Research Done Right With Practical Examples
• Keyword Clusters: How To Level Up Your SEO Content Strategy
• Building A Keyword Strategy For Comparison Content

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Shelley Walsh is the SEO Content Strategist at SEJ & produces the Pioneers, a series about the history of SEO ...

How To Do Keyword Research: A Complete Guide and Free Template

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Discover your competitors' strengths and leverage them to achieve your own success

Keyword research is the backbone of your SEO strategy. Getting it right will help you create content that not only attracts users to your site but also keeps them coming back.

In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to do keyword research and share some SEO keyword research secrets that I use daily.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases your target audience uses when searching online. This information helps you optimize your web content to improve its ranking in search engines for queries relevant to your business, making it more discoverable to your target audience.

A keyword is much more than just a word or a phrase. Keywords represent the questions that potential buyers are typing into their browsers, hoping that Google will bring them answers. This means researching keywords is not just a process of finding keywords with high search volumes ; it also impacts the content that you create. Because if a keyword is a question for information, your content is the answer. This means understanding the intent behind the keywords you target is crucial .

By understanding high-value keywords and user search intent – whether informational (e.g., ‘pizza delivery options’) or transactional (e.g., ‘buy products’) – you can refine your SEO strategy to answer more user queries, gain more organic traffic, and generate more revenue.

Why is keyword research (still) important?

Keyword research is crucial to your SEO efforts because it helps you get your content in front of your audience at just the right time—when they are searching for it. Keyword research involves:

• Finding the actual phrases users use to find content
• Researching the content types that will satisfy users for each keyword

In order for search engines to suggest your content as the right answer for any given user query, they have to understand what your content is about. One of the ways they do this is by reading your site’s navigation and URL structure. The key to having a machine-readable site structure is understanding the topic your site covers as a whole. And the best way to do that is through SEO keyword research. I’ll cover this process in detail when I discuss seed keywords.

Getting this right will give your site solid foundations on which to build your long-term SEO strategy, potentially bringing customers and leads to your business while you sleep.

When should you do keyword research?

Firstly, you should do keyword research right at the beginning of any SEO project. This will help you:

• Plan your content structure
• Plan your site architecture
• Prioritize your content creation

Next, you should do keyword research before you create any content. The reason is keyword research can help you build out content briefs and find subtopics that are related to your content, which could either appear as a section in your content or become a piece of supporting content.

What’s more, there’s more to ranking on search engines than just adding your keyword to your title tag. Search engines are designed to understand the intent behind a user query and rank content that best answers that user intent. This means before you create any content, you must first understand the intent behind the search query.

How to do keyword research in 7 easy steps

If you’ve been in SEO for a while, you’ll know that Google breaks the internet into topics and subtopics. It then ranks sites based on topical authority : how authoritative they are within their chosen topic.

This means that the process of ranking websites broadly consists of building a structured network of content that answers a large volume of niche-related questions. The more user queries you answer in a niche, the more authoritative you become.

Keyword research will help you find and answer all of those user queries. It will also help you structure your web content so that search engines and users can find it easily.

Here is how you do that.

1. Start by analyzing the main navigation

When you start to work on a site, your first job is to figure out what the site owners want to showcase. This means that the main navigation acts as a hint regarding the business objectives of the website you are trying to optimize, so starting your research there makes sure you cover a lot of the business’s top priority topics.

In general, each site should focus on one general topic, and the menu should represent a list of subtopics. For instance, parents.com is focused on the parenting niche. The top-level menu lists the subtopics that the site is broken down into, including:

• Starting a family
• Raising kids

Although these are subtopics, to keep the language simple, for the rest of this post, I’ll refer to them as topics.

Your keyword research process starts here.

Build out a separate keyword list for each topic by using a seed keyword. Seed keywords are broad keywords that represent an entire subject. They are typically made up of one or two words and include no modifiers. In the case of parents.com, good seed keywords could be:

Once you’ve identified a seed keyword, drop it into your favorite keyword research tool . This will bring you a vast amount of keywords all within the topic. For instance, below, I’ve dropped the seed keyword ‘pregnancy’ into the Similarweb Keyword Generator .

The result is a large unfiltered list of keywords. Export this list into an a Google sheet and do the same for all of the other topics you see on the site. In the case of parenting.com, once I’ve exported the parenting keywords, I’ll still have to find keywords for:

Since each category is a separate topic within the parenting niche, you should keep each category in a separate tab in your spreadsheet.

2. See what you already rank for with Google Search Console

One of the quickest ways to find keywords to target is to look at keywords you are already ranking for but have no dedicated content yet. It’s common for Google to rank your content on keywords that are only tangentially related to your target keyword.

If these ranking keywords represent content that can’t be added to any of your pages, it might make sense to create a new page targeting these keywords and linking back to the original content.

You can easily find these keywords using the Search Results report in Google Search Console . Dig through these keywords and add keyword opportunities to each of your keyword lists.

To explore:

• Go to the Queries tab in the Search results report
• Review the list of ranking keywords
• Identify keywords with high impressions but low clicks

These keywords present opportunities to:

• Improve existing content
• Create new, targeted pages that link back to original content

This method helps you find better keywords to focus on and discover new areas for content expansion.

3. Use competitor analysis tools

The next step is using a competitor analysis tool . The reason is simple: SEO is competitive by its very nature. To rank above your competitors, all you have to do is be slightly better than them.

This is especially true for keyword research. Search engines favor sites that cover topics more comprehensively than their competitors, seeing them as more authoritative. This means for each topic you want to rank for, you must compare your site to the top market leaders. Look for keywords that top sites in your niche are ranking on where your site has no topical coverage.

So, when performing SEO competitive analysis , make sure to:

• Compare your keywords to your competitors
• Plan to cover your topic more thoroughly than your competitors

To demonstrate, I’ve dropped parenting.com into the Similarweb Website Explorer and compared the site to its top four competitors. Now, before comparing keywords, it’s important to remember that you are generating separate keyword lists for the different keyword categories that exist on the site you are working on. This means you should filter the keyword lists by topic. And since I’m already focusing on pregnancy keywords, I’ve filtered the keywords, focusing only on keywords that include the word ‘pregnancy’.

By looking at the Competitive Traffic Share column , you can easily identify keywords where your competitors are ranking and driving traffic, but your site is not. This provides a clear breakdown of how your site’s traffic and growth potential compares to your competitors.

Export these keywords and add them to your keyword lists. Be sure to do that for all of your topics.

4. Segment your topic keyword list into subcategories and clusters

After completing the previous steps, you’ll have a substantial list of keywords for each topic. The next step is to create order out of each keyword set.

1. Divide the keywords into main categories. For example, if you have a keyword list for digital marketing, your categories might include:

• Affiliate marketing
• Content marketing

You should silo these categories on your site. This will ensure that each category is easy to find and navigate. One of the best ways to do this is to create a folder for each category.

For example:

examplesite.com/digital-marketing/ seo

examplesite.com/digital-marketing/ content-marketing

Another important step is to include your structure in breadcrumbs on your pages. This could look like this:

• Blog > Digital marketing > SEO
• Blog > Digital marketing > Content marketing

2.  Break down each category into topic clusters . Using the SEO category as an example, your clusters could be:

• Keyword research
• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO

Each cluster should consist of numerous keywords with many different search intents and should exist within its dedicated folder. In other words, the SEO folder will include SEO tools, keyword research, and backlinks clusters.

3.  Group keywords with similar search intent. If you’re unsure which keywords share the same intent, simply Google them. Google’s algorithms are designed to interpret search intent and display results that best address that intent.

For instance, looking at backlink-related keywords, you might see different intents:

It’s best practice to use between one and five target keywords per asset, making sure that they target a similar or the same search intent.

5. Map your keywords onto your website

Based on the previous steps, it’s time to map out your website. To do this, create a spreadsheet that maps your entire site, including all of your URLs, making sure to include your site structure in your map.

This means separating out:

Your keyword map should include target keywords for all of the existing URLs on your site. To do this, gather all the keywords you collected that had a similar search intent. You should then include between one and five target keywords per asset.

Surprise bonus: We have a template for keyword mapping as well! Get a copy of our keyword mapping template here , and you can start matching URLs to keywords in no time.

6. Tag and track your keywords

It’s crucial to track your SEO efforts. Without tracking, you’ll have no way of knowing what’s working and what’s not. Simply go to your keyword map and drop all of your keywords into your favorite rank tracker.

When tracking your keywords, use keyword tags to segment them into different topics. This allows you to analyze each topic separately.

Above is the Similarweb Rank Tracker Tags report, showing keyword tags for hubspot.com, where keywords are grouped into distinct clusters, such as:

• Miscellaneous
• Digital marketing & tools
• Search engines and SEO

By organizing your keyword clusters in your rank tracker, you can evaluate each cluster’s overall performance and track the individual performance of specific keywords within each group.

In this view, we are analyzing the specific keywords in the Search Engines and SEO cluster:

7. Create an SEO roadmap

Once you’ve mapped out your current content, it’s time to create a roadmap that includes any new content you need to create. Your SEO roadmap will help you reach your goals by:

• Showing you what content you need to target
• Helping you prioritize your content creation

Pro Tip: Correct planning and prioritization play an important role in your success and you need to be as thorough as you can when creating your SEO roadmap. I like to use this template for my SEO roadmap, feel free to create a copy.

I recommend working on one content cluster at a time. One of the best ways to do this is to use the pillar and supporting content model.

Pillar content is a comprehensive, in-depth piece of content that covers a topic and serves as a central hub for related content. Supporting content (or cluster content) consists of more focused articles or blog posts that dive into specific subtopics related to the pillar content. These supporting pieces link back to the pillar content, helping you create more and more relevant signals around that topic to search engines and establish the site’s topical authority, which can substantially boost your rankings.

Pillar content typically targets high-volume, competitive head terms – often single words or short phrases. Due to their competitive nature, these terms are challenging to rank for without the support of additional content.

Supporting content, on the other hand, generally targets long-tail keywords , which are easier to rank for. These long-tail pieces can bring in small amounts of traffic quickly, offering quick wins. But their benefits go beyond immediate traffic. As your site ranks for more of these keywords, it builds authority in the topic, which can, in turn, improve rankings for all related content, including your pillar content.

You can easily find long-tail keywords by choosing a low keyword difficulty with the Keyword Difficulty filter in the Similarweb Keyword Generator . Focus on ranking them first and then work on your pillar content once you have established your site as authoritative in your primary topic.

Free keyword research template

Just in case you missed it before, we have a simple keyword research template you can copy and use. It contains all the steps described in the post above, with separate tabs for each step of the research in order to make it easier to follow the process. Get your own copy of the template here .

Keyword research: The key to getting in front of your (ideal) audience

Keyword research is one of the foundations of SEO that can always be improved. The better you get at it, the better the insights you’ll find. This can affect everything from what content to create to how your site generates revenue.

Before you get started, it’s important to note that the better the data you have, the bigger the advantage you will have!

Find the keywords that matter most

Get granular keyword research data that’s updated daily.

How should I do keyword research?

The best way to do keyword research is to focus on one single topic.

• Find all of the keywords in your topic by entering a seed keyword into your keyword generator
• Filter your keyword list into topics and subtopics
• Find keyword opportunities using Google Search Console
• Compare your keywords to your direct competitors

Can I do keyword research for free?

You can do keyword research for free using Similarweb’s Free Keyword Generator , Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, or Answer the Public. These tools offer basic keyword data and insights without cost but are limited. If you need detailed, granular data, you should look at our premium Keyword Generator.

Which Google tool is used for keyword research?

Google Keyword Planner is the (free) tool used for keyword research.

by Limor Barenholtz

Director of SEO at Similarweb

Limor brings 20 years of SEO expertise, focusing on Technical SEO, JavaScript rendering, and mobile optimization. She thrives on solving complex problems and creating scalable strategies.

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The #1 keyword research tool.

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• Do keyword research
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• Perform competitor analyses
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• And much more!

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Keyword Research Template

• SEO Templates

Streamline and organize your keyword research with this free template (available in Excel and Google Sheets). Whether you’re starting a new SEO project, want to improve your site’s search traffic, or are looking for target keywords for a new piece of content, this template will help you do keyword research quickly and effectively.

Download the Keyword Research Template

The Digital Marketing Templates Library

Download as Microsoft Excel

Open as Google Sheet

Why Use a Keyword Research Template?

Like pretty much everything in SEO, keyword research is more complicated than ever. Back in the day, everyone used the old Google Keyword Tool. Today? There are a million different tool options. Plus, you’ve more techniques for finding keywords coming out every week.

This template brings together all those different approaches into one place. So instead of bouncing around between a thousand tabs, losing track of where you are in the process…

You can just go through this template. Simple. Step-by-step.

When you’re done, you’ll have a BIG list of keywords. Plus all the metrics to help you pick which to target.

What’s included?

Here’s what’s included in this keyword research template:

• How to evaluate keywords: The 5 metrics to use to determine whether a keyword is worth pursuing.
• Where to find keyword ideas: Out-of-the-box sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Exploding Topics .
• Plus 4 other tried-and-true methods for finding keywords: Some that you’ll probably be familiar with. And others you may have never heard of.

How to use this template

• Brainstorm some “seed” ideas to get started. Specific keyword phrases (“best link building tools”) are fine. But you can also start with broader topics (“link building”. (Tip: Studies show that the late afternoon is the best time for brainstorming)
• Download the Keyword Research Template on this page, make a copy, and fill in the “seed ideas” section
• Go through each of the keyword sources on the template to expand your list of keywords. (Tip: If you aren’t sure how to use a keyword source, see our Definitive Guide to Keyword Research .) You can insert additional keywords if you need more room
• Fill in the metrics section of the template
• Choose your target keyword
• Optimize your page based on your chosen keyword

How to Choose a Target Keyword

In SEO there’s nothing more important than choosing the right keyword. This template makes it easy to create a large list of keywords to choose from. And to add the metrics you’ll need to evaluate them.

But at the end of that process, you’ll still have to pick one. Here’s how to do that:

• Use a tool like Google Keyword Planner , Semrush , or Ahrefs or to find the metrics you’ll need. (They can also help you find additional keyword ideas.) Then, make your decision based on the following factors.
• Search volume . In general, the more searches a keyword gets each month, the better. (Because it means you can get more traffic)
• Keyword difficulty . Most SEO tools (like Semrush and Ahrefs) include keyword difficulty scores: The lower the difficulty, the easier it is to rank for. In addition, with Semrush AI tools, you can calculate KD% specifically for this domain, as well as analyze the thematic relevance between this keyword and your domain.
• CPC (cost per click). This is the best way to know how much commercial intent a keyword has. Advertisers won’t pay more per click than what that traffic is worth to them. So a higher average CPC means the keyword is more valuable.
• Relevance to your business. It’s true that valuable keywords have higher CPCs. But that doesn’t always mean they’re valuable to YOU. There’s no clear number associated with this “metric”. It’s more of a gut-check: Are your potential customers likely to search for this keyword? If so, great. If not, go with a difference keyword (even if all of the other metrics check out).
• Trend in search volume. I love to target keywords that are growing fast. In fact, I’d much rather target a medium-volume keyword that’s getting more searches each month than a huge one that’s declining. Ahrefs and Semrush will both show you this info, but you can also find it in Google Trends .
• Want more free SEO templates? See our full list here .

Here Are The Templates One More Time…