Keyword research
How to do keyword research that actually earns money
Most keyword research stops at search volume. Here is the full process I use — seeds, intent, scoring, clustering — and the terms I deliberately throw away.
Most keyword research I see is a spreadsheet of terms sorted by search volume, with the top twenty highlighted. That is not research. That is a list, sorted by the one column that tells you least about whether writing the page will make you any money.
Start with what you already rank for
Before touching a keyword tool, open Google Search Console and look at the queries you already appear for. Almost every site is showing up on page two or three for things nobody ever wrote a page about — Google inferred it from a paragraph buried on a service page.
Those terms are the cheapest wins available. You have already proved the site can surface for them; it just has not been given a page that deserves to win.
Then build the long list from seeds
Seed keywords are the plain terms that describe what you do. Not clever, not optimised — just the words a customer would use. A plumber in Ipswich starts with plumber, boiler repair, emergency plumber. Ten to twenty seeds is plenty.
Each seed is an entry point, not an answer. Put it into a keyword tool and it branches into dozens of specific variations, and those variations are the things people actually type.
Typical of the topic audits I run. Counts vary by market — a niche B2B product produces fewer, a consumer category many more.
Intent decides the format before anything else
Two people can search almost the same words and want completely different things. Google reads that difference well, and it will not rank a blog post for a buying query no matter how good the blog post is.
They wantTo understand something. They are not buying today and may never buy from you at all.
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So you buildA guide, an explainer, a genuinely useful answer.
These are the authority pages. They rarely convert directly, and they are what makes your commercial pages rank.
They wantTo compare options before committing. Close to buying, not ready yet.
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So you buildComparisons, reviews, honest pros and cons.
The most underrated intent. The reader is minutes from a decision and actively looking for someone to make it easier.
They wantTo buy, book or hire — now.
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- emergency plumber near me
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So you buildA service page or product page, priced and specific.
The smallest volume and the most valuable. If a blog post is ranking for one of these, replace it with a proper page.
The practical test costs thirty seconds: search the term yourself and look at what Google is already ranking. If page one is all comparison articles, Google has decided that query is commercial, and your product page will not displace them. Build what the results say Google wants.
Judge every term on three things, not one
Volume tells you how many people search. It does not tell you whether you can win, or whether the people searching will ever buy. Score each term on all three and the list reorders itself completely.
In short: Volume is a tiebreaker between terms you can win, not a way to pick them.
Short-tail and long-tail
Short-tail terms are one or two words — SEO, running shoes. Enormous volume, enormous competition, and vague intent that is almost impossible to satisfy on one page. Long-tail terms are longer and specific — running shoes for flat feet — with less volume each and far clearer intent.
Ahrefs’ study of billions of keywords found the overwhelming majority get only a handful of searches a month, which is where the “most search is long-tail” line comes from. The number gets quoted loosely, so treat the direction as true and the decimal place as marketing.
The practical version: a new site targeting SEO is entering a marathon untrained. Win the specific terms first, and the broad ones become reachable later because of the authority the specific ones built.
Keep the pages that will never sell anything
This is the part that gets argued about. A plumber does not make money from someone searching how to fix a dripping tap — that person is going to fix it themselves.
Write it anyway.
That page earns links, gets shared, and answers a question thoroughly enough that Google starts treating your site as a source on plumbing rather than a listing for one. When the same person hits a job they cannot do, you are the name they already have. And mechanically: the authority those pages accumulate is what lifts the pages that do sell.
Google Search Console, one client engagement. Brand and Google Business Profile traffic excluded. A single engagement, not an average.
The distinction worth holding on to is between a page that sells and a page that is worthless. Those are not the same thing. Plumber jobs is worthless — the people searching it want a job, not a plumber, and no amount of volume changes that. How to fix a dripping tap sells nothing and is still one of the best pages on the site.
Steal the list your competitors already built
Your competitors have done keyword research for you. They just cannot stop you reading the results.
Put three to five rivals into Ahrefs or Semrush and export everything they rank for. The gold is not their top rankings — it is the terms where they sit between positions five and twenty. That is Google saying the query is winnable by a site like theirs, with a page nobody has bothered to make excellent yet.
The whole process, start to finish
From blank page to roadmap
Mine Search Console first
Export every query the site already appears for. Sort by impressions with low clicks — those are terms Google already associates with you and nobody has written a page for.
Skip this only if the site is brand new.
List your seeds
Ten to twenty plain terms describing what you do, in the words a customer would use rather than the words the industry uses.
Expand with a tool
Run every seed through a keyword tool and export the lot. Expect hundreds of rows. Do not filter yet — filtering while collecting throws away the surprising ones.
Pull the competitor gap
Three to five rivals, export their rankings, isolate positions five to twenty where you appear nowhere.
Score, do not sort
Rate each surviving term on volume, winnability and buying intent. Cut anything worthless outright — and keep the low-intent terms that build authority, clearly labelled as such.
Cluster into pages
Group terms that a single page could answer. One primary term per page plus its variations. If a cluster wants two different formats, it is two pages.
Sequence it
Order by how fast each page can realistically win, not by how much you want it. Something has to move while the bigger pieces are still being built.
The tools worth having
You do not need all of these. You do need at least one that shows volume, and Search Console, which is free and which most businesses never open.
Set these up
0/ 5
That is the whole list. Anything still unticked is your next job.
What this looks like in practice
For one topic, expect five to ten pages. For a full site programme, several hundred, worked through one area at a time so the whole thing never becomes an undifferentiated pile of posts.
The research is not the deliverable. The sequenced, argued-for list of pages is — and the difference between the two is most of the value.
Common questions
How many keywords should one page target?
One, plus the variations that mean the same thing. If a page is trying to win two genuinely different searches, it is two pages, and splitting it usually makes both rank better than the combined version did.
Is search volume reliable?
Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a number. Tool volumes are modelled estimates and routinely wrong by a factor of two or three. They are fine for deciding whether a term deserves a page and useless for forecasting traffic.
Do I need a paid keyword tool?
Not to start. Google Search Console shows what you already rank for, including terms you never targeted, and that is the cheapest opportunity list most sites have. Paid tools mainly help you see what you are missing rather than what you already have.
How do I start if the site is brand new?
You have no Search Console history to mine, so start with competitors instead. Put three or four rivals into a keyword tool, export what they rank for, and look for terms where they sit between positions five and twenty — those are winnable by a better page.
What is search intent and why does it decide everything?
Intent is what the searcher actually wants: to learn, to find a specific site, to compare options, or to buy. Google is very good at reading it. Publish a blog post for a buying query, or a product page for a question, and you will not rank however good the page is.
How often should keyword research be redone?
Review quarterly for most businesses, monthly if the market moves fast or you are launching things. What changes is rarely the core terms — it is which ones you can now realistically win as the site gains authority.
Should I target keywords with no buying intent?
Often yes. A page that answers a question you will never charge for earns links and trust, and that is what lifts the pages that do sell. The distinction that matters is between a page that does not sell and a page that is worthless — those are not the same thing.