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How to do keyword research

How to do keyword research, without a paid tool: expand a seed term using autocomplete and People Also Ask, pull rough demand from Keyword Planner, group the terms by intent, then map each group to one page. New sites should generally hunt difficulty below 30, and the whole loop takes about 2 hours the first time you run it.

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Keyword research by hand: sorting topic index cards into intent columns on a workbench in a home studio

How can I research keywords? The whole process in one line

Keyword research is five moves: seed → expand → check volume and difficulty → group by intent → map to pages. Do them in order and you get a content plan grounded in real demand instead of a hunch.

Keyword research is the process of finding the words people type into search engines, then judging which of them your site can realistically rank for. It answers one question before you write a single page: is anyone searching for this, and can we win it?

Skip that check and you write pages nobody looks for; the method below is the same one behind this site's own content plan, and it starts with free signals sitting inside the search results. If SEO itself is new to you, start with what SEO is and how it works, then come back.

How to do keyword research for beginners: the five steps in order

That is how to do keyword research without paying anything: one seed term, the free demand sources, and a page per intent group.

Every big-name guide teaches some version of these moves, usually as a 5,000-word walkthrough of the vendor's own software. You do not need the software to start. The discipline is in the sequence, not the subscription.

Anyone can just go and work their way through Google Search Console or go through the Google keyword planner and just export a bunch of stuff and slop it into a Google sheet. That is not where the skill is. The skill is how do you take this big keyword set and then figure out what the heck to actually work on.

Nathan Gotch, founder, Gotch SEO; co-founder, Rankability Source: The Complete SEO Keyword Research Masterclass for 2026
Gotch sells Rankability and a paid keyword-research template, and closes the same video by pitching the tool that automates the filtering he calls 'the skill'.
Why this matters

If you finish a research session with a longer list than you started with, you have not done the work yet. The output of keyword research is a short ranked list of pages to build.

  1. 01

    Start with one or two seed keywords

    Write down the plain words a customer would use, not industry jargon. Google's own starter guide points out that one person searches "charcuterie" while another searches "cheese board": same topic, different vocabulary. One or two solid seeds are enough to open the door.

  2. 02

    Expand from the search box, for free

    Type each seed into Google and mine autocomplete, the People Also Ask box, and the related searches at the bottom of the page. These come straight from real queries. Add the queries Google Search Console says you already appear for, and aim for 30 to 50 raw ideas before you filter anything.

  3. 03

    Check volume and difficulty, and trust neither blindly

    Keyword Planner gives free volume ranges; paid tools add a difficulty (KD) score. Treat both as rough filters. A brand-new site should stay roughly under KD 30, or use the top-10 scan below to judge winnability by eye.

  4. 04

    Group the survivors by intent

    Sort keywords by what the searcher wants: to learn, to find a specific site, to compare options, or to buy. Ten keywords that mean the same thing are one page, not ten. A page whose intent mismatches the query will not rank no matter how it is optimized.

  5. 05

    Map each cluster to one page

    Give every intent group a single home page, with the closest supporting terms folded in. A simple spreadsheet with columns for cluster, target page, volume range, difficulty, and intent is your entire content plan.

Why you should not trust the volume number

Search volumes look precise and are not. The figures in every tool are annualized averages, and when we pulled raw month-by-month data for this site's own research, some keywords swung 10x to 100x between their aggregate figure and recent monthly demand. Use volume to separate "real demand" from "nobody searches this," never to forecast traffic to the visit.

Difficulty scores deserve the same skepticism, plus one practical shortcut that rarely makes it into the tool-vendor guides. Search your keyword and scan the actual top 10: if small, ordinary sites are ranking there without big budgets, the keyword is winnable for you too, whatever the KD score says.

If the page is wall-to-wall household brands, move on and let them have it.

You just google your keyword and you look at what's ranking. That's what Google thinks the intent is. Now Google has already done the research for you. The top 10 results are Google telling you exactly what this searcher wants.

Matt Kenyon, independent SEO consultant, founder of Kenyon Digital (~10 years in SEO) Source: The Complete SEO & AI SEO Course for 2026
Surfer-sponsored video, though this method needs no tool at all.
Why this matters

A free thirty-second test to run before writing anything. If the top ten are all product pages and you are planning a guide, you will not rank, however good the guide is.

A worked example: how we picked our own keywords

Theory is cheap, so here are the real calls from this site's research spreadsheet. "Print on demand" showed about 22,200 searches a month but a difficulty score of 76; "how to sell digital products" showed only about 1,900 searches at difficulty 7.

We prioritized the second, because a new site ranking for a small keyword collects more visitors than a new site ranking nowhere for a big one.

Same logic elsewhere in the plan: "best online business to start" (880 searches, difficulty 2) and "how to make money from home" (40,500 searches, difficulty 20) both made the cut ahead of flashier, harder terms. The rule the numbers teach is simple. Winnability beats raw volume, every time, until your site has authority to spend.

From our actual research sheet

  • print on demand: 22,200/mo, KD 76: deferred.
  • how to sell digital products: 1,900/mo, KD 7: prioritized.
  • best online business to start: 880/mo, KD 2: easy win.
  • how to make money from home: 40,500/mo, KD 20: rare case of volume and winnability together.
Keyword ideas on sticky notes clustered around a hand-drawn topic map, grouping search terms by intent

New site or established site? Pick your lane

The right keyword strategy depends on where you stand, so match the row that fits.

  • Brand-new site, no authority: hunt long-tail phrases and question keywords under roughly KD 30. You are collecting small wins that compound.
  • Established site with rankings: open Search Console first. The queries where you sit on page two are your cheapest gains; strengthen those pages before chasing new terms.
  • No budget at all: the free stack below covers the entire process. Paid tools buy speed, not access.
  • Researching at scale: once you are mapping hundreds of keywords across many pages, a paid database with difficulty scores earns its monthly fee in saved hours.

If you find a topic and there's no advertisers, more than likely it's probably an informational type of intent or the advertisers know it doesn't convert really well. I'd be actually more cautious when I see no advertising going on… I would view that as okay, someone wasted their money here more than likely and I'm probably going to waste my money too if I go after this topic.

Nathan Gotch, founder, Gotch SEO; co-founder, Rankability Source: The Complete SEO Keyword Research Masterclass for 2026
A personal heuristic rather than a studied finding, from someone who sells keyword-research tooling.
Why this matters

Inverts the usual 'zero competition means opportunity' read. Absent advertisers often means absent money, check the ads on a SERP before you treat a gap as a find.

Which tools actually help

The search box is your first tool and it costs nothing. Autocomplete, People Also Ask, and related searches surface real queries; Search Console shows what you already rank for; Google Keyword Planner gives volume ranges; Google Trends flags seasonality; AnswerThePublic mines the questions people ask around a topic.

Paid tools earn their place once you need difficulty scores and thousands of ideas at once. That is a speed-and-scale upgrade, not a prerequisite, and we have not lab-tested them ourselves; we compare them on documented features and pricing in our guides to the best keyword research tools and the free SEO tools worth using.

Free-first stack

  • Google search box: autocomplete, PAA, related searches.
  • Google Search Console: the queries you already show up for.
  • Keyword Planner: volume ranges, free with an Ads account.
  • Google Trends: rising vs fading topics, seasonality.
  • Add a paid tool only when scale becomes the bottleneck.

Mistakes that quietly waste months

Four patterns sink more beginner sites than any algorithm update. Chasing head terms a new site cannot win, so six months pass with nothing to show.

Treating volume numbers as precise forecasts instead of rough signals. Writing five separate pages for one intent, so they cannibalize each other and none of them ranks.

And stuffing the exact keyword into every paragraph, which Google explicitly calls out as spam; its language matching understands a page's topic without robotic repetition.

What Google itself says about keywords

Google's own starter guide is blunt on this: write for people first. Its systems "can understand how your page relates to many queries, even if you don't explicitly use the exact terms in them," which means your job is anticipating the words different readers use, not repeating one phrase. Helpful, well-organized, people-first content outweighs every keyword trick in the guide.

Turn the map into pages, then earn trust for them

Research is worthless as a spreadsheet. The payoff is the map: each same-intent cluster becomes one page, those pages link to each other, and search engines see a coherent topic instead of scattered posts.

Once the pages exist, the next job is authority; that is covered in link building for beginners. Recheck your keyword list every 6 to 12 months, and if you are building an income site around all this, it ladders up to making money online the honest way.

don't be afraid of topics that have no search volume, especially on the local level. I am telling you, don't think you have to have search volume to go after a topic. That is a huge mistake.

Nathan Gotch, founder, Gotch SEO; co-founder, Rankability Source: The Complete SEO Keyword Research Masterclass for 2026
Gotch sells a paid keyword-research template and his own tool; his related argument that tool data lags conveniently favors judgement over competitor tools.
Why this matters

Read alongside the advertiser point above, they are not in conflict. Zero reported volume is a data-coverage problem; zero commercial activity is a demand problem. Only the second one should stop you.

Source: Google Search Central SEO Starter Guide
FAQ

Keyword research questions, answered straight

Do two tools ever agree on the same search volume?

Rarely, and that is expected rather than a bug. Every figure except Google's own comes from a third-party model built on sampled clickstream data, so the numbers describe the model as much as the demand.

How do you do keyword research for free?

You can run the whole process with no paid tool. Use Google autocomplete, the People Also Ask box, and related searches for ideas; Google Keyword Planner (free with an Ads account) for volume ranges; and Google Search Console for the queries your site already appears for. That free stack is exactly how this site's own keyword list was started.

Can I use ChatGPT for keyword research?

Only for the thinking parts. ChatGPT is genuinely useful for brainstorming seed keywords and sorting a messy list into intent groups. It has no live search data, so any volume or difficulty number it gives you is invented; pull real numbers from Keyword Planner or a keyword database instead.

What is the 80/20 rule in SEO?

There is no official 80/20 rule in SEO. It is shorthand for the observation that a small share of your pages earns most of your search traffic, so the practical version is this: find the few pages already collecting impressions in Search Console, and improve those before publishing anything new.

What is a good search volume to target?

There is no magic number. A low-volume phrase with clear intent and weak competition usually beats a high-volume head term you cannot rank for. Volumes are annualized averages that swing heavily month to month anyway, so treat them as a rough demand signal, not a promise.

What is keyword difficulty?

A score, roughly 0 to 100 in most tools, estimating how hard it is to reach page one based on how strong the current top-ranking sites are. It is an estimate, not a guarantee. Use it as a filter for where to start; a new site should generally hunt below about 30.

How many keywords should one page target?

One cluster: a primary phrase plus its same-intent variants. If two keywords deserve genuinely different answers, they deserve different pages. Spreading one intent across several pages splits your relevance and is the classic cannibalization mistake.

How often should you redo keyword research?

Every 6 to 12 months, or sooner if rankings stall or a new subtopic appears in your niche. Search Console shows the drift for free: new queries creeping into your reports are new keywords asking for coverage.

Sources

  1. SEO Starter Guide: The BasicsGoogle Search Centralread 2026-09-05

How often this work repeats

Cost ladder: The first full loop about 2 hours, Recheck, early end 6 months, Recheck, later end 12 monthsThe first full loop: about 2 hours (seed term, free demand sources, one page per intent group). Recheck, early end: 6 months (recheck the list every 6 to 12 months). Recheck, later end: 12 months (sooner if rankings stall or a new subtopic appears). Values are hours for the first pass, then months between rechecks.The first full loopabout 2 hoursseed term, free demand sources, one page per intent groupRecheck, early end6 monthsrecheck the list every 6 to 12 monthsRecheck, later end12 monthssooner if rankings stall or a new subtopic appearshours for the first pass, then months between rechecks, lowest 2, highest 12
The cadence this page recommends: about two hours for the first full loop, then a recheck every 6 to 12 months, or sooner if rankings stall.

The only difficulty number that matters early

Comparison of What a new site should hunt, What the tools will happily show youWhat a new site should hunt: 30 difficulty. What the tools will happily show you: 100 difficulty.What a new site should hunt30 difficultydifficulty below 30What the tools will happily show you100 difficultythe top of every difficulty scale
Keyword difficulty runs to 100 in every tool that reports it, and a new site should be hunting below 30.

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