Keyword research

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases people type into search engines, then deciding which of them your site should target. It combines demand (search volume), competition (keyword difficulty), meaning (search intent) and business value to choose the topics and pages most likely to bring useful organic traffic.

Good keyword research has two halves. The first is discovery: building a long list of possible keywords from seed keywords, Google’s own suggestions, competitor rankings and your customers’ language. The second is selection: filtering that list down to keywords you can realistically rank for and that match what you sell or know.

Each keyword comes with a few data points. Search volume estimates how many times a month it is searched. Keyword difficulty estimates how hard it is to reach the top 10. Cost per click shows what advertisers pay for it, which hints at commercial value. Search intent tells you what kind of page Google expects to show. Traffic potential estimates the total traffic a top page gets from all the related queries it ranks for.

Keyword research is not a one-off job. Demand changes with seasons and trends, competitors publish new pages, and Google’s results shift. Most teams do a large round of research when planning a site or a content programme, then revisit it every few months, using real data from Search Console to find new opportunities.

The output is usually a prioritised list grouped by topic: which pages to create, which existing pages to improve, and which keyword each page should target. That list feeds keyword mapping, content briefs and rank tracking.

Why keyword research matters for SEO

Keyword research stops you writing pages nobody searches for. It is the cheapest way to check demand before you spend time and money on content, and it often reveals topics you had not thought of, phrased the way customers actually phrase them.

It also helps you pick fights you can win. A new site targeting the hardest head terms in its niche will wait a long time for traffic. The same site targeting specific, lower-difficulty long-tail keywords can start getting visits within months and build authority from there.

Finally, it shapes your site structure. Grouping keywords into topics shows you which pages you need, how they relate and how to link them, which in turn helps search engines understand what your site is about.

How to do keyword research

1. Write down 5-10 seed keywords: the products, services, problems and topics your audience cares about.
2. Expand each seed into a long list using matching terms, related searches, questions and Google’s autocomplete suggestions.
3. Add the keywords your competitors already rank for, using a keyword gap or competitor report.
4. Pull data for every keyword: search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, intent and trend.
5. Remove keywords that do not fit your business or that you could never credibly answer.
6. Search the most promising keywords yourself and look at the top 10. Note the page types, how strong the ranking sites are and which SERP features appear.
7. Group keywords that share an intent and a top 10 into clusters. Each cluster becomes one page.
8. Prioritise clusters by a mix of business value, traffic potential and how easy they look to rank for.
9. Map each cluster to an existing or new URL, then track the primary keyword for each page.
10. Every few months, check Search Console for queries you already get impressions for but rank low on, and add them to the plan.

Keyword research example

Seed: "standing desk". Expansion finds "standing desk for small spaces", "is a standing desk worth it", "standing desk vs desk converter" and "best standing desk under 300". The first and last are commercial and suit a product or roundup page. The middle two are informational and suit a guide. Difficulty is lower on all four than on the seed, so a newer site might start there.