Keyword Research
Before a customer ever lands on your website, they have a conversation with Google. They type in a problem, a question, or a need. Keyword research is how you listen to those conversations at scale, and then build content that shows up as the answer.
Think of it this way: you sell project management software, but your future customers might be searching for "how to stop missing deadlines," "free team task tracker," or "Trello alternative for small teams." They are not searching for you by name. They are searching for their problem.
Keyword research bridges that gap by mapping their language to your content.
Quick Summary
- Long-tail keywords (specific 3+ word phrases) drive 70% of all search traffic and are far easier to rank for than broad terms.
- 90.63% of all web pages get zero organic traffic from Google, keyword research is what separates the 9.4% that do get traffic.
- The goal is not to find popular words. The goal is to find words your customers use that you can realistically rank for.
- Search intent (what the person actually wants) matters more than search volume (how many people search it).
- Free tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator, and Google's "People Also Ask" boxes are enough to start.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
Zapier's own integration-directory pages, one for every pair of apps it connects Zapier could not out-rank Google, Microsoft, and the app vendors themselves for a broad term like workflow automation, so it targeted the exact narrow phrase each visitor was already typing Zapier auto-generated over 500,000 long-tail integration pages, such as Gmail integrations and Google Sheets integrations, each built around one specific search instead of one broad head term
Result: Those long-tail pages drive an estimated 2.6 million monthly organic visits combined, with the Gmail integrations page alone pulling around 60,000 monthly visits (traffic measured as of October 2025).
SourceHere is a sobering number: 90.63% of all pages on the internet receive zero organic traffic from Google (Ahrefs, analysis of 1 billion+ pages, 2023). That means almost every page that exists is invisible to search engines.
The pages that do get traffic share one thing: they were built around words that real people actually type. Not words the company thought sounded good. Not industry jargon. The actual phrases people enter into the search bar.
The long-tail opportunity is massive. According to Ahrefs data, 94.74% of all keywords get 10 or fewer monthly searches. This sounds like bad news, but it is actually the opposite. Low-volume, specific keywords (called 'long-tail keywords') are far easier to rank for, attract visitors who are closer to buying, and add up to enormous traffic when you target dozens of them. A 2025 Backlinko analysis puts the scale even higher: 91.8% of all search queries are long-tail (three or more words), and three-word phrases alone drive the largest single share of organic traffic of any keyword length, more than single-word or two-word searches combined.
The Keyword Research Process
The process has four stages, and each one builds on the last.
Stage 1, Build Your Seed List
A seed keyword is a short, obvious term that describes what you do. If you run a coffee subscription service, your seeds might be:
- "coffee subscription"
- "coffee delivery"
- "best coffee beans"
These are not keywords you will target directly, they are starting points. Write down 5 to 10 seeds. Do not overthink it. The tool does the heavy lifting in stage 2.
Stage 2, Expand with a Tool
Feed your seeds into a keyword research tool. The tool returns hundreds of related phrases, each with a monthly search volume and a difficulty score (how hard it is to rank on page 1).
Free options that work well:
- Google Keyword Planner: free inside Google Ads, shows search volume ranges
- Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator: no sign-in needed, returns up to 100 ideas per search
- Google autocomplete + "People Also Ask": type your seed into Google, note the suggestions, then check the "People Also Ask" box on the results page
Paid tools (worth it if you do this regularly): Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz all offer more data and larger databases.
Stage 3, Filter by Intent
Not every keyword that matches your topic is worth targeting. The most important filter is search intent, what does the person actually want when they type this?
There are four types:
- Informational: "how does keyword research work" (they want to learn)
- Navigational: "Ahrefs login" (they want to find a specific site)
- Commercial: "best keyword research tools" (they are comparing options before buying)
- Transactional: "buy Ahrefs subscription" (they are ready to purchase)
According to SparkToro's analysis of 332 million queries collected over 21 months, 52.65% of searches are informational and only 0.69% are transactional. That dataset is still the most-cited intent breakdown in the industry heading into 2026, later research has kept confirming the same pattern. Most of your content should serve informational and commercial intent first, that is where the audience is largest.
Stage 4, Evaluate and Prioritize
For each keyword on your shortlist, score it across three dimensions:
| Dimension | What to Check | Sweet Spot for New Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | Monthly searches | 100 to 2,000 per month |
| Difficulty (KD) | 0-100 score (0 = easy) | Under 30 |
| Relevance | Does this lead to your solution? | High, person should want what you offer |
A fourth check before you commit: will this keyword even send you a click? By 2026, roughly 68% of Google searches end without a click to any website, up from about 65% a couple of years earlier, because AI Overviews, featured snippets, and knowledge panels answer many queries directly on the results page (SparkToro/Datos data). A keyword can have solid volume and low difficulty and still be a weak target if the top of the results page already fully answers it. Before committing a content brief, search the keyword yourself and check whether an AI Overview or featured snippet already gives the full answer, if it does, expect fewer visitors than the raw volume number promises.
Worked example: coffee subscription business
Broad target: "best coffee maker", 33,100 monthly searches, KD 62. Realistic? No. Established brands dominate this.
Better target: "best mini coffee maker", 1,300 monthly searches, KD 17. Realistic? Yes. Much lower competition, still a specific buyer intent.
Even better: "best coffee maker for one person apartment", 90 monthly searches, KD 8. Realistic? Definitely. Tiny volume but the person is describing an exact situation your product solves. Conversion rate on this kind of keyword is far higher than on the broad term.
This is the long-tail strategy in practice. Target 50 keywords like the last one and you have 4,500 potential monthly visitors who are highly qualified leads.
Real Company Examples
Airbnb's location keyword strategy (2013-2016)
Airbnb could not compete head-on for "hotels in New York", Booking.com and Expedia owned those rankings with massive domain authority. Instead, Airbnb's keyword research revealed thousands of underserved long-tail searches:
- "apartment rental Paris Marais"
- "private room San Francisco Mission District"
- "room for rent near Times Square"
By targeting these hyper-specific location phrases that established travel sites ignored, Airbnb grew to rank on page one for over 100,000 location-specific keywords. Their organic traffic grew by approximately 400% between 2013 and 2016 without proportional increases in paid ad spend.
Backlinko's content targeting (ongoing)
Brian Dean at Backlinko built the site around a disciplined keyword research process: target specific, high-intent keywords with clear search volume but moderate difficulty.
The result: Backlinko ranks in Google's top 10 for over 20,000 keywords with an estimated organic traffic value of $756,000 per month in equivalent ad spend. The site publishes far fewer articles than competitors but each one is built around a carefully researched keyword with clear intent alignment.
Common Mistakes
Mistake 1: Chasing high-volume keywords before you have authority.
New sites often target terms like "project management software" (110,000 searches/month, KD 85+) and wonder why they never appear on page one. Search engines trust established domains more for competitive terms. Start with specific, lower-volume keywords where the bar is lower, win those first, then climb toward harder targets as your domain earns links and authority over time.
Mistake 2: Treating search volume as the only metric that matters.
A keyword with 50 monthly searches that describes a buyer ready to purchase is worth far more than one with 5,000 searches attracting people who will never convert. Always ask: "If someone searches this and lands on my page, what do they do next?" Volume without intent alignment is vanity traffic.
Mistake 3: Ignoring keywords you already rank for.
Before hunting new keywords, open Google Search Console and look at what you already rank for on page 2 or 3. Google already considers you relevant for these terms. A single optimization pass, adding the keyword to your H1, meta description, or a subheading, can move a ranking from position 15 to position 5 in weeks. This is the fastest keyword win available to any site.
The Search Intent Layer
TopSpot's SEO engagement for Blaylock Gasket and Packaging, a B2B industrial parts distributor Blaylock's existing pages described its products in purely informational terms, while many of the people searching those exact phrases were already close to a buying decision, a classic intent mismatch TopSpot repurposed the historically informational pages into high-intent, transactional content built for a buyer who was ready to act, not just learn
Result: Average monthly organic users on those pages grew from 187 to 1,587, a 749% increase (over one year).
SourceOne nuance that separates good keyword research from great keyword research: the same word can mean completely different things depending on context.
Someone searching "keyword research" might want:
- A definition (informational)
- A tool comparison (commercial)
- A step-by-step tutorial (informational)
- A free template (informational/transactional)
Before you write a page targeting any keyword, search for it yourself. Look at the top 5 results. Are they blog posts? Product pages? Video tutorials? That is Google telling you what intent it thinks the keyword has.
Your content must match that format or you are fighting the algorithm instead of working with it.
A Zero-Cost Starting Point
You do not need a paid tool to start. Here is a five-minute process using only Google:
- Type your seed keyword into Google
- Note the autocomplete suggestions (these are real searches people are making)
- Press Enter, then scroll to "People Also Ask", open several of the nested questions
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and check "Related searches"
- Note the format of the top results (articles, videos, product pages, match this in your content)
You will have 15 to 20 specific keyword ideas in under five minutes, all confirmed to have enough search demand for Google to surface them, at zero cost.
The "also rank for" multiplier. According to Ahrefs data, the average top-ranking page ranks for approximately 1,000 keyword variations it was never explicitly optimized for. When you write thorough content about a topic, you naturally rank for dozens of related phrases. This means your keyword research does not need to be exhaustive, just pick the primary keyword carefully, write the most complete answer to the topic, and let semantic relevance do the rest.
The One-Line Takeaway
The best keywords are not the most popular ones, they are the specific phrases your ideal customer types when they are one step away from needing you.
Related Concepts
- Search Intent, Keywords only work when the content you build around them matches what the searcher actually wants. Intent is the layer beneath every keyword.
- On-Page SEO, Once you have your keywords, on-page SEO is how you weave them into your pages in a way search engines recognize and reward.
- Content Clusters, Grouping related keywords into pillar pages and supporting articles is how keyword research scales into a full site architecture.
