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Keyword research involves examining what words and phrases (keywords) people type into search engines like Google to find information, products, or services.
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Two things unite most website owners: They’d all love to get as many eyes as possible on their sites, and almost none of them have unlimited budgets for paid advertising like Google Ads. This is why so many online businesses invest in search engine optimization (SEO)—because it gives their sites the best chance possible to show up on search engine results pages (SERPs). But what’s the most efficient way to approach SEO, so that you’re boosting your organic traffic quickly and effectively?
One of the foundational tactics of SEO work is keyword research, which will help you decide what search terms you want to try to show up for. Here’s a primer on how to do keyword research, along with some keyword research tools that can help you connect with your target audience.
Keyword research is the practice of examining what words and phrases (keywords) people type into search engines like Google and Bing to find information, products, or services. Through this process, you will learn the terminology your audience uses when they search for things related to your business, and you’ll learn approximately how many people are searching those words and phrases each month (called search volume).
Through keyword research, you’ll also try to understand the searcher’s underlying search intent—or what they want to achieve with their search. Keywords can have one of three types of intent:
Informational. The searcher wants to learn something.
Navigational. The searcher wants to find something.
Transactional. The searcher wants to buy something.
Commercial. The searcher wants to buy something but is trying to learn more before they do so.
What you uncover in your research will inform your on-page SEO work and your SEO content marketing strategy. You need to know what your audience is actually searching for—and the language they use—in order to create website copy that will both feel relevant to them and help your website perform well in search engines.
Think about it: Every time someone does a search, the search engine must decide which handful of results to display from hundreds of thousands of possible pages. It’s up to the search engine algorithms to determine the best and most relevant matches for every single search. Thoughtful keyword usage will help search engines match and display your site in the results for the most relevant searches. The more frequently—and higher up—you appear in search results, the more organic traffic you might get to your website.
When looking at potential SEO keywords to target with your website, you’ll want to consider a range of factors that could impact your ability to rank for them:
Relevance. Do your keyword ideas align with your product, service, or website content? Google prioritizes relevance when matching search intent, so be honest with yourself about how tightly correlated a keyword is to your brand.
Search volume. SEO experts pore over search volume data to find the words and phrases that most people search for. But there is a balance to strike, as the most searched keywords are also the hardest to rank for. Sometimes, the high-volume keywords are not the best ones to target if you have a slim chance of ranking for them.
Keyword difficulty. The keyword difficulty (KD) metric estimates how challenging it will be to rank on the first page of search results for a specific keyword. If a lot of big, established websites are targeting that keyword, it will have a high difficulty rating.
Authority. Google considers a website or author’s authority on a topic when deciding how to rank their pages, which means you should only try to rank for keywords that you or your brand has some degree of authority to speak on.
Trends. Some keywords surge in popularity based on seasonality or news events. Consider what’s trending, but take it with a grain of salt—when trends change, keywords could lose volume. And if the trend doesn’t result in relevant keywords for your business, skip it.
Localization. If your audience is local to a particular city or region, you might want to look into location-specific keywords. Some general keywords can also have localized results.
Keywords are divided into two categories based on search volume:
Seed terms. Also called head terms, these are broad keywords that many people search for. With seed terms, different searchers can have different intents, so the results are often mixed.
Long-tail keywords. These contain three or more words and have lower volume than seed or head terms. Long-tail keywords are important (hence them having their own name) because they catch people further along in the buying cycle and tend to have higher conversion rates.
Keywords are also divided into two categories based on their relationship to your brand:
Branded. These keywords have your brand name in them.
Nonbranded. These keywords don’t have your brand name in them, but they’re related to your business.
Your basic keyword research should include a mix of these categories. From there, you can develop clusters of latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords, which contain phrases related to one of your core keywords.
Keyword research is both a science and an art. Leveraging tried-and-true techniques, creative thinking, and good tools can set you up for success. Here’s how to bring it all together:
To start the process, imagine someone with a need or challenge that could lead them to your business. What might they type into a search engine’s query bar?
Let’s say you own an ecommerce store that sells coffee beans. Think about what someone shopping for coffee online might search for. If they’re just starting their research, they might start with a broad search like “best coffee beans.”
You don’t just have to rely on gut instinct. You can also leverage a free tool like Google Analytics to understand what terms are already driving organic search traffic to your website. Use that information to brainstorm more keywords.
Once you’ve generated a list of keywords to start with, use a keyword research tool to explore related queries. You can enrich your existing website copy with those that are relevant, or you might get inspired to create new content targeting these terms.
There are some free keyword research tools available, but their functionality is limited. More capable tools will entail a subscription fee. Sophisticated tools will also leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technology to group related keywords together, bundling them into topical clusters, so that you can target multiple search terms with a single website page.
Your competitors can also inform your keyword research. Most keyword research tools allow you to see what keywords competitor websites are ranking for. You can usually sort the list by share of traffic, so you can see which keywords drive the highest percentage of traffic to their sites. These might be prime targets for your business.
After you conduct enough research, you’ll have a long list of potential keywords to create content for. If your time and resources for content creation are limited, prioritize the keywords with the highest monthly search volume, lowest keyword difficulty, and strongest relevance to your business.
For instance, a local bakery might prioritize “best sourdough bread Denver” over a generic term like “sourdough bread” because it’s more specific and easier to rank for. Decisions like this form the foundation of your SEO keyword strategy.
Once you’ve generated your list of priority keywords, it’s time to incorporate them throughout your website. These SEO copywriting tasks include optimizing page title tags, meta descriptions, product descriptions, category pages, image alt text, and blog content.
Avoid the temptation to stuff your web pages with a bunch of keywords. This practice, sometimes derisively known as keyword stuffing, will not help you rank higher on SERPs—in fact, it can harm your performance. Focus on creating legitimately useful content. Search engines like Google have published explicit guidelines for creating helpful content.
The internet abounds with keyword research tools that can speed your SEO process and help you generate new organic traffic to your site. Here are five of those tools:
Google Keyword Planner. This is a free tool from Google, but you’ll need a Google Ads account to activate its full functionality. It allows you to discover trending keywords related to your primary keywords, analyze their search volume, and understand competition levels. It also provides keyword suggestions to expand your research.
Google Search Console. Google Search Console shows which keywords are already driving traffic to your site, which makes it a form of website analytics software as well as a keyword research tool. Use it to track your current performance and identify optimization opportunities. Like Google Keyword Planner, this tool is free.
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool. Semrush is a sophisticated paid platform that helps you generate thousands of keyword ideas, along with search volume and competition data. Subscribers can use Semrush to fetch keyword metrics (including monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent) and analyze competitors. Pricing starts at $140 per month with discounts for annual subscriptions.
Ubersuggest by Neil Patel. Ubersuggest offers both free and paid plans. The free tool provides a limited number of keyword searches per day and shows keyword suggestions, content ideas, and some basic keyword metrics like search volume and difficulty. The paid plans, which start at $29 per month, unlock competitor analysis functionality and more extensive keyword suggestions.
Ahrefs. The Ahrefs platform provides detailed keyword metrics, including search volume, keyword difficulty, and click-through rate potential. Plans start at $129 per month, and you can scale up to support dozens of websites and unlimited monthly searches for keyword data.
Keyword research involves identifying the words and phrases your target audience uses when they search online and analyzing the volume and competition of those terms. You then incorporate the most relevant and strategic terms from your findings into your website copy, with the goal of showing up on more search engine results pages (SERPs).
Imagine you run a sportswear ecommerce store and your target audience includes people who do low-impact workouts. In your keyword research, you might find keywords related to this subject, like “Pilates,” “dancing,” and “joint stress.” Addressing these terms in your website and blog copy could make it more useful to readers and more likely to rank on the first page of search engine results.
Website owners have an array of keyword research tools to choose from. Google Keyword Planner is a popular free tool, while Semrush and Ahrefs are popular paid tools.
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