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

Before you write or improve a page, you need to know which words people type into Google when they look for what you offer. Keyword research gives you that list: the phrases that best describe your products, services and topics, and that your customers actually search for. You then use them naturally in headings, page titles, meta descriptions and the text of your pages.

This beginner’s guide explains how to do keyword research for SEO: the main metrics, the tools, how to study your own site and your competitors, and how to turn a long list of phrases into a plan for your pages.

Keyword research is the process of finding the search phrases that suit your website. It is usually the first step of SEO, because it shows what people want and which pages you need. Through this research you find different kinds of keywords:

• High-volume: searched for very often, usually short and general;
• Mid-volume: searched for regularly, a little more specific;
• Low-volume: searched for rarely, often long and specialised;
• High-competition: targeted by many strong websites, usually broad phrases;
• Low-competition: more specific phrases with fewer strong pages competing for them;
• Informational: used by people looking for information, such as “how to choose a boiler”;
• Navigational: used by people looking for a particular brand or website;
• Commercial and transactional: used by people comparing options or ready to buy, such as “boiler installation Oxford”.

SEO keyword research tells you which words to use and which pages to create. Without it, you guess. Search engines may struggle to understand what your pages are about, and your site may appear for searches that bring the wrong visitors, or not appear at all. Without the right phrases it is hard to build steady organic traffic, and you end up relying on paid advertising.

Careful research and a well-organised keyword list help you create useful, well-optimised pages. The right keywords can:

• bring people who are interested in what you offer;
• reduce how much you need to spend on advertising;
• show what your audience wants to know, so you can improve the site;
• make your brand more visible as your rankings grow;
• help you plan content that answers real questions;
• bring more enquiries and sales, because visitors land on the page they need.

When you choose keywords, look at these metrics:

• Search volume: how many times a month people search for the phrase. Higher volume means more potential visitors, but usually more competition;
• Keyword difficulty: an estimate, on a 0-100 scale in tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush, of how hard it is to reach the first page. Each tool calculates it differently, so compare phrases within one tool;
• Competition: in Google Keyword Planner this shows how many advertisers bid on a phrase, which is a sign of its commercial value, not of SEO difficulty;
• Trend: how interest in the phrase changes over time. Google Trends shows seasonal peaks, for example for “garden furniture” in spring;
• Search intent: what the person wants: information, a particular website, a comparison or a purchase. The page you create must match it;
• Current position: where your page already ranks for the phrase, if it ranks at all. Phrases where you are close to the first page are often the quickest wins.

Keyword research has several steps, whatever your SEO strategy: content, links, local SEO or all of them. You can do it yourself or ask an agency that offers SEO services. The steps are: choose your tools, collect phrases, check their metrics, organise them into groups and use them in your content.

Use Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools collect phrases and show their metrics. Many offer a free version or a trial with limited features. Examples:

• Google Keyword Planner: keyword ideas and estimated monthly searches, inside a Google Ads account (Google Ads Help). It is built for Google Ads campaigns, but works for SEO research too;
• Ubersuggest: keyword ideas and basic metrics;
• Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: detailed data, including volume, keyword difficulty and the pages that rank, in the paid plans;
• Serpstat: keyword research and competitor analysis;
• KWFinder: helps find specific, lower-competition phrases.

Find the Keywords Your Website Already Ranks For

Next, look at your own site: which searches already bring visitors, which pages are popular and what your audience is interested in. Useful tools:

• Google Search Console: free. The Performance report shows the queries people used to find your site, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position (Search Console Help);
• Semrush, Ahrefs and Serpstat: estimates of the keywords your site ranks for and its positions.

Find Out Which Keywords Your Competitors Rank For

Then study your competitors. Search Google for your main phrases and note the sites in the top five to seven results. Tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz and Similarweb show which of their keywords and pages bring them traffic, and you can use this to improve your own pages. Look at:

• their most visited pages;
• how interest in their main keywords changes over time;
• the phrases that bring them the most traffic;
• their positions for keywords and related searches;
• keywords they rank for and you do not.

List the Main Topics of Your Business

To build an SEO strategy, start with broad topics and narrow them down. These questions help you find the main topics:

• Which customer problems do you solve?
• Which topics are popular with your main competitors?
• What does your audience want to know?
• Which of your topics are growing in interest?

For a skincare shop, for example, the main topics might be “natural skincare” and “vegan cosmetics brands”. Then add subtopics, such as “natural lip balm”.

Organise Topics into Groups and Add Target Keywords

Once you have topics and subtopics, write them down in a clear structure. You can use:

• XMind or MindMeister for visual mind maps;
• Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel for simple tables.

Then add keywords to each topic and subtopic, mixing high- and low-volume, broad and long-tail, and local phrases. Each group usually becomes one page, so the list also shapes the structure of your site. We explain how this fits into a new site in how to build a website with SEO in mind.

Research Related Search Terms

To widen your list and reach more people, look for the other ways people describe the same thing:

• longer phrases with specific details;
• synonyms;
• questions and reworded phrases.

Google autocomplete, “People also ask”, related searches at the bottom of the results page and YouTube suggestions are good free sources. Keep only the phrases that match your business.

Measure and Track Keyword Performance

Keyword research is not a one-off task. Update your content and keyword list as your audience and the market change. Keep an eye on:

• organic traffic;
• positions for your target keywords;
• click-through rate (CTR) from the results page;
• conversion rate and other goals.

When you choose the final keywords, pick phrases that match what you actually offer and the intent of the searcher, prefer realistic targets over the most popular phrases, and give each page its own main keyword so your pages do not compete with each other. Then use them naturally in the title, H1, subheadings and text as part of your on-page SEO. Avoid stuffing pages with keywords or adding phrases that do not fit.

If you would like specialists to do this for you, see our keyword research service. VOLL Digital Agency has worked on websites and SEO since 2008, and we can also help turn your keyword list into a content plan through our blog SEO service.