How To Do Keyword Research: A Step-by-Step Guide to SEO Keywords

Keyword research replaces guesswork about your customers’ language with real search data. Most SEO strategies stall from skipping this step at the outset. Whether you’re building a brand-new site or fine-tuning an existing search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, you need the exact keywords your customers use so your content shows up when they’re searching.

This guide will cover how to do keyword research for your business. You’ll learn how to find keywords for SEO, analyze their potential, and choose the most effective ones to use in your SEO content strategy.

What Is SEO Keyword Research?

Keyword research involves finding and evaluating the words and phrases potential customers use in search. Knowing those words lets you build content that ranks higher for the terms your customers type into search. It’s one of the fundamental practices of SEO, and it has two primary goals:

• Find the search terms your customers are using.
• Prioritize terms you want to optimize for based on search volume, competition, and your business goals.

Why Is SEO Keyword Research Important?

You probably already have some keywords in mind that describe your offerings. SEO keyword research fine-tunes that list and provides a reality check for your assumptions. It’s less about forcing the terms you think are relevant, and more about learning what your target customers search for so you can build content around their language.

Your research might reveal that searchers don’t use the terms you expected. You may also discover keywords you hadn’t considered, which gives you more ways to reach the audience you want.

How Keyword Research Boosts Your SEO Efforts

Keyword research aligns the language on your web pages with what people type, so your pages show up for the queries your customers run. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million more times: if you want to show up for something, use that specific keyword or a close variation of it in your content.

Exact matching matters less than it used to. Google understands related phrasing, and AI Overviews and AI Mode can break a single question into several sub-questions, then pull each answer from whichever page covers that piece best. Your goal is to use your customers’ language clearly enough that a search engine or an AI system can pull the relevant piece out of your page.

When you work those keywords into helpful, original content, people have a reason to stay on your site longer, which builds familiarity and trust. Do that better than anyone else for a given search term, and you’ll likely earn more organic traffic while building authority for your site.

How To Search for Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

Here’s a step-by-step guide to performing SEO keyword research, from generating keyword ideas to determining which ones best suit your business goals.

1. Decide What Matters to Your Business

The most important step in building a keyword-driven SEO strategy is determining your focus.  Researching every page on your site at once gets overwhelming fast, plus a plan that broad is hard to put into practice.

I recommend deciding first which pages on your site stand to gain the most from added organic traffic, then focusing your SEO efforts on those pages.

One caveat: your research may show little or no search demand for the pages you consider most strategically important.

Take your cues from search data rather than shoehorning existing content into your SEO strategy. Search data will tell you where demand exists. Put your resources there and skip the Sisyphean task of trying to rank content prospective customers aren’t looking for. 

2. Brainstorm Topics

Start your keyword list with potential search terms based on your target pages. At this stage, you can cast a wide net. You’ll analyze the value of those keywords later to prioritize which ones to target.

Check What You’re Already Ranking For

If you have an existing site with any traffic, pull your query data from Google Search Console and look for keywords where you’re already ranking in positions four through ten. Those are striking-distance keywords. Search engines already consider those pages relevant, just not relevant enough for the top few spots, so these keywords often turn into faster wins than a brand-new topic built from scratch.

If your business also tracks how it shows up in AI-generated answers, Bing Webmaster Tools added an AI Performance report in February 2026 that shows which of your pages Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries cite, along with the queries that triggered each citation. A brand-new site has nothing to check here yet; add this step once you have live content.

Come Up With Keywords Internally

Get together with your marketing team and brainstorm a list of keywords your target customers might use. You’ll come back to this list throughout the rest of the process.

Begin with at least five or six general topics or content buckets. These seed keywords will “sprout” other keyword ideas. I’m going to use a fictional ecommerce cosmetics and beauty retailer called BeautyTrend to illustrate the keyword research process.

BeautyTrend starts its initial keyword list with the products it sells on its website. The goal is to attract potential customers who search for these terms with the intent to purchase:

• Skincare
• Makeup
• Eyelash extensions
• Nail designs
• Eyebrow shaping

The list also includes related information BeautyTrend’s customers might search for, such as:

• Makeup tutorials
• Beauty news and trends

These broad keywords are difficult to rank for because they’re so general. But once you identify higher-level topics, you can come up with more specific keywords to fill the buckets. The skincare category, for example, could include phrases such as “moisturizer for dry skin” or “hydrating skin mask.” Informational terms might combine basic search terms with words like “how-to,” “guide,” or “step-by-step.”

Check Out the Competition

Your competitors are one of the richest sources of keyword ideas. Identify your key competitors and find the keywords they rank for in search engine results pages (SERPs). Consider companies selling to the same audience as you. If you rely on local customers, pick competing businesses in your area. A company with an international presence has an entirely different set of competitors. (Learn more about local keyword research here.)

To find competing businesses, plug the keywords and phrases you’ve brainstormed into Google and look at the companies at the top of the organic search results. To get a sense of how your competitors perform in search, run their URLs through a keyword research tool such as the Ubersuggest Chrome extension or Similarweb. Note how many organic keywords the sites are ranking for, monthly traffic, backlink profiles, and domain scores. You can analyze the content itself later.

Find Your Competitors’ Keywords

SEO tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer let you examine a domain’s top-ranking pages. You can see your competitors’ most popular pages and the keywords that generate the most organic traffic for them. When you find a search term that also applies to your business, add it to your keyword list.

This type of review can turn up SEO keywords or niche questions you’re missing. Those opportunities become content you can build to compete for the same traffic.

Get To Know Your Customers

Another way to generate keyword ideas is to study your customers. Browse social media, forums, discussion groups, and Q&A sites such as Reddit to see what questions your target audience is asking. Their questions often point to keywords and content needs your tools miss. A BeautyTrend marketer, for example, might notice that online discussions about wrinkles include questions about anti-aging skincare routines and products with natural ingredients, and add those topics to the keyword list.

Your own sales and support conversations are a keyword source no tool can find for you. Pull up recent sales call notes and support tickets and look for the exact phrases customers use to describe their problem before they knew your product existed. These phrases often show zero search volume in keyword tools because they’re specific to how your actual customers talk rather than how the broader market searches. They’re some of the most qualified keywords you’ll find, because a real customer already used them to describe a real need.

Research Keywords for AI Search

Your keyword list also needs to work for AI Overviews, AI Mode, and chat-based assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which don’t just match a query to a page. Google introduced the technique behind this, query fan-out, when it announced AI Mode in March 2025, and expanded on it when AI Mode rolled out to all US users that May. The system breaks one question into several smaller sub-questions, issues them all at once, and builds its answer from whichever pages cover each piece best. A single broad keyword like “skincare” might fan out into sub-questions about ingredients, skin types, and routines, and each sub-question can be answered by a different page, yours or a competitor’s.

Instead of stopping at a single keyword, list the sub-questions a buyer would need answered to act on it, the same way you’d map niche questions for a long-tail list, and check whether your content answers each one directly and early in the page. A keyword can carry strong search volume and still be a weak target if an AI system can answer it fully from a competitor’s page instead of yours.

After losing ground in AI Overviews, UNIONBAY rebuilt five of its highest-value pages around summary-first structure and headings written to match buyer questions directly. The pages earned 84 new AI Overview citations in six weeks.

3. Analyze Specific Keywords

After using SEO tools and competitor research to fill your topic buckets, it’s time to figure out the keywords that will work best for your site.

One caveat before you start: every tool you might use, whether free or subscription-based, has its own way of calculating the metrics I discuss below.

Prioritize your keywords according to your business goals and cross-reference your research findings between different keyword research tools.

Keyword research is as much an art as a science.

Search Volume

Monthly search volume (MSV) is a metric that shows how many people search for a particular keyword each month. It gives you an idea of how many people might see your search snippet when it lands on the first results page. Keywords with low monthly search volume aren’t searched as often, so sites that rank for them pull traffic from a smaller group of searchers.

Low MSV isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A low search volume keyword that converts a large percentage of a small set of searchers might still be strategically valuable for your business. This is what I would call “low hanging fruit,” often the fastest wins on your list, so don’t skip one just because its number looks small.

Pawrade, an online puppy marketplace, is a good example. Targeting breed-specific search intent instead of generic, high-volume terms like “puppies for sale” helped drive a 916% increase in organic revenue, starting from a site that got only 1.24% of its traffic from organic search. The lower-volume, more specific terms converted better because they matched exactly what a ready-to-buy searcher was asking for.

Clicks

Clicks measure how many people click a search result after searching for a specific term. Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer shows the average monthly clicks on the results for a keyword, which you can compare against search volume to estimate the click-through rate (CTR).

Traffic Potential

How much traffic are you likely to get from a keyword? You can estimate traffic potential using monthly search volume and CTR data. A keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer also shows how much traffic top-ranking pages already get.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty (KD) estimates how hard it is to rank in the top 10 organic search results for a keyword. Different keyword research tools will arrive at this value in different ways. Ahrefs calculates KD from the number of unique websites linking to the pages in the top 10 results, scored from 0 to 100.

Moz uses a more complicated formula that factors in its proprietary metrics for the page and domain authority of top-ranking content.

Easy keywords might earn you a spot on page one sooner, but fewer people search for them. Harder keywords take more time and resources to rank for, but reaching page one for one of them can bring in far more organic traffic.

Difficult keywords also indicate that the topic is in demand, and you may be able to land backlinks for your content while you wait to break into the top of SERPs.

Weigh the Business Value of a Keyword

Search volume, clicks, traffic potential, and difficulty all describe how much attention a keyword could bring. However, they don’t tell you whether that attention is worth anything to your business. Two keywords with the same search volume can have very different payoffs: one might come from people ready to buy, and the other from people who are years away from a purchase decision.

Google Keyword Planner‘s top-of-page bid estimates (and the cost per click, CPC, figures most SEO tools show) are a useful proxy here, since advertisers bid more for keywords that convert. A keyword with a high CPC signals that businesses are willing to pay for that click, which usually means the searcher is closer to a purchase decision. Weigh that signal alongside relevance and funnel stage (covered below) before you commit research time to a keyword.

4. Narrow and Group Keywords Within Your List

Once you finish brainstorming, you’ll likely have more keywords than you could possibly use. Now it’s time to narrow down which ones to focus on.

Four types of keyword data help you narrow the list, and they don’t carry equal weight. Relevance and the business value you identified in the previous step come first. Search volume is the one factor to use only as a tiebreaker between two keywords that are otherwise equally strong.

• Relevance and business value: Keywords should matter to your customers, naturally fit into your content, and reflect the priority you gave them when you weighed their business value.
• Authority: Compare the authority of your website to the sites currently ranking for that keyword. Estimate the time and resources it may take for your site to catch up.
• Difficulty: Aim for a mix of low, medium, and high difficulty keywords for each topic category so you can see progress over time. Target the more accessible ones first and the harder ones later.
• Search volume: A high-volume keyword that scores poorly on relevance, business value, or difficulty isn’t automatically worth more than a lower-volume keyword that scores well on all three.

Organize Your New Keywords

Sorting your keywords into manageable batches makes it easier to spot how and where you’ll use them. When you group related keywords, you might see how to combine broad and long-tail keywords into themes that work together on a page to help it show up in search results.

Here’s a quick test for whether two keywords belong on the same page: search both in Google and compare the results. If the top-ranking pages look mostly the same for both terms, group them, since that’s a sign the two keywords share a parent topic. If the results look different, the keywords need separate pages. For a deeper framework, see How to Build Keyword Groups for a More Robust SEO Strategy.

5. Prioritize Keywords

After narrowing down the keywords, prioritize them so you can decide which ones to focus on.

A keyword with strong search volume can still deliver fewer clicks than expected if AI Overviews or AI Mode answer the query fully on the results page. Factor click potential into your ranking alongside search volume.

Identify Search Intent

Search intent describes why someone is searching for a particular word or phrase. Understanding intent provides insight into how customers use keywords and what type of content they’re looking for. If you’re not sure of the search intent for a keyword, google it and look at the type of pages ranking for it.

Search intent generally falls into five categories:.

Informational

Searchers use informational keywords to find the answer to a question. These keywords are precise but not always phrased as a question: “what does serum do for your skin?” or “highest concentration of retinol available.”

Searchers usually want something straightforward here. Serve up the right content to answer their question, and you may land on the first page of search results or in an AI Overview citation. 

Navigational

People use navigational keywords to find a specific page on a website. A user might enter the name of a business into the search bar instead of typing the whole URL. For example, they might search “BeautyTrend” directly.

Searchers may also search for a specific page of a domain to get there in one click, such as “BeautyTrend return policy” or “BeautyTrend blog.”

Transactional

Customers perform transactional searches when they’re ready to purchase something. They’ve usually compared products and are looking for a place to buy what they want. If you can create high-ranking product or category pages around keywords such as “best price on headphones” or “auburn drugstore hair dye,” you can shorten the distance from search to purchase and convert more visitors into customers.

Commercial Investigation

Searchers use commercial keywords when they’re narrowing down their choices before they purchase. They want reviews, advice, or guidance.

BeautyTrend can satisfy these queries by incorporating keywords such as “best moisturizers for dry skin” or “top concealer creams” into articles and linking to product pages.

Local

Local searches are targeted to a specific area and usually include “near me” or a city name. Google uses the searcher’s location to serve relevant results, so searching for “manicures near me” will generate different results in Seattle and New York.

If your business has a local presence, use the name of your city, town, or neighborhood in your content to help you appear in local searches.

Map the Keywords to a Buyer’s Journey

Traditional marketing is based on the customer’s journey, the path a buyer takes from their first introduction to a product or service to the purchase stage. The process is more fluid online, with customers often shifting between stages instead of following a linear path.

When you match keywords and content to the sales funnel, you’re helping visitors find the right content when they need it.

Most marketers split the funnel into three stages:

1. ToFu: Awareness

At the top of the funnel (ToFu), buyers first become aware of your company and offerings. They may not be searching for a specific product yet, so they’re unlikely to use branded keywords. For ToFu customers, opt for SEO keywords that introduce your niche through instructional content and thought leadership pieces. The aim is to grow your authority and trustworthiness and begin building a customer relationship.

BeautyTrend can focus on keywords like “how to apply eyeliner” and “the best anti-acne face wash” to attract buyers at the top of the funnel.

2. MoFu: Consideration

The middle of the funnel (MoFu) is where customers consider taking action. They’re signing up for a mailing list, sharing a social media post, entering a contest, or considering making a purchase. Keywords should focus on products, services, and content that customers want.

BeautyTrend might build content around keywords such as “free shipping beauty products” or “makeup brush set sale” to attract customers close to making a decision.

3. BoFu: Decision

The bottom of the funnel (BoFu) is where prospects make the purchase decision. Customers are now searching for specific products. For example, BeautyTrend should focus the keyword phrase “waterproof retractable eyeliner” on a product page rather than in a long-form eye makeup tutorial.

Keep long-term and short-term business goals in mind as you select your keywords. For example, you might have an immediate goal of increasing sales, so you want to target BoFu keywords. Putting some resources toward ToFu keywords helps you build an audience of future customers.

Learn more about ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu here.

Find Your Fat-Head and Long-Tail Keywords

Keywords fall into two general categories: fat-head and long-tail keywords, which differ in search volume and ranking difficulty.

Fat-Head Keywords

Fat-head keywords are one- or two-word search terms that are very broad and usually have a high MSV. BeautyTrend’s fat-head keywords might include “beauty” and “makeup.” Demand for these terms makes them hard to rank for, especially for a new business yet to establish topical authority in their industry.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are more specific, draw fewer searches, and have a lower keyword difficulty. More importantly, they reach a highly targeted audience. BeautyTrend’s long-tail keywords include “oil-free eye makeup remover” and “talc-free setting powder,” both of which get fewer than 1,000 searches per month. The traffic they bring is more likely to convert.

Each topic bucket you developed during the brainstorming phase should include a mix of fat-head and long-tail keywords.

Where To Use Broad and Long-Tail Keywords

Once you know whether your keywords are broad or long-tail, you can put them to work. Most SEO-friendly websites are built around topic pillars and cluster pages. Pillars cover a broad topic and link to related, more detailed cluster pages.

• Place fat-head keywords on pillar pages that introduce a topic.
• Fit long-tail keywords into cluster pages designed to answer specific questions or go deep on a subject.

Pillar and cluster pages are really a map of one entity’s full topic. The pillar names the broad entity (“beauty,” for example), and its cluster pages cover the specific questions and attributes search engines and AI systems associate with that entity. For more on planning around entities instead of isolated keywords, see What Is Entity SEO? How It Shapes Keyword Strategy.

Using Your SEO Keyword Research Effectively

Once you’ve chosen your target keywords, work them into your content.

Search engine rankings favor quality SEO content that demonstrates expertise. You can’t fill a page with search terms and expect it to rank. Pages with relevant, substantive, and informative content rank higher than thin content that doesn’t provide unique value.

A few pages of stellar content are a good start, and your visibility grows as you build a site full of it. Use the information you gained from your keyword research to populate your website with useful pages that naturally incorporate each target keyword.

The more content pages you have that rank well, the more chances people have to find you.A deeper library also creates more chances to earn backlinks and builds your authority in the industry.

Learn more about experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) signals and how they can impact your search visibility.

Watch for Keyword Crossover

It’s fine to use the same keyword on more than one page as long as you craft each piece of content to fit a unique search intent. If two pages are too similar, they can end up competing with each other for the same search queries.

Learn more about how keyword cannibalization can hurt your overall search rankings.

Useful Tools for Keyword Research

Online tools and plugins save you time when trying to pinpoint the right keywords for your SEO strategy. The tools below are grouped by where you’ll use each one in the workflow above.

Finding Keyword Ideas

Use these tools at the brainstorming stage, before you’ve narrowed anything down.

• Answer the Public: Discover the questions and phrases people search for related to your target keyword. This free keyword tool includes information on search trends and real-time searches.
• Google Keyword Planner: Designed for Google Ads campaigns, Keyword Planner requires you to open a Google ads account and provide billing information to access the tool. You can use it to analyze relevant search terms for your business without buying any ads.
• Keyword Generator: Enter up to 10 words or phrases into this free tool from Ahrefs to see keyword ideas along with difficulty and search volume. You can generate keywords for Google, Bing, YouTube, and Amazon.
• Keyworddit: This keyword generation tool pulls ideas from titles and comments of Reddit threads, serving up words and phrases people are interested in.
• QuestionDB: Enter your broad keyword ideas into this tool to see a list of related questions people search for. It has free and paid versions.

Checking Volume and Difficulty

Run your shortlist through these once you have candidate keywords to analyze.

• Google Trends: Use this free tool to see popular and trending searches. You can also search a specific keyword to compare search patterns by time range and geographic location. Learn more about how to use Google Trends.
• Keyword Difficulty Checker: See how hard it will be to rank in the top 10 search results for a specific keyword. This tool includes an estimate of how many backlinks you’ll need to rank.
• Keywords Explorer: This paid tool from Ahrefs provides keyword suggestions and SEO metrics such as keyword difficulty, search volume, and clicks.
• Keyword Surfer: Add this free Chrome extension to your browser to see search volume right in Google Search. It also offers keyword suggestions, related terms, visibility metrics, and on-page data.

Tracking Rankings and Competitors

These help you check existing visibility and keep an eye on competitors over time.

• Google Search Console: Use Search Console to see your site’s performance, including traffic, the keywords bringing traffic, and where your site ranks for them. The service is free once you verify your site. Check out our Beginner’s Guide to Google Search Console.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Website owners enjoy free limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit when signing up for an account and verifying site ownership. Paid plans offer more functionality.
• Keyword Rank Checker: Use this free tool to see where a site ranks for a specific keyword along with the current top-ranking pages.
• SpyFu: This tool shows your competitors and the keywords they’ve bid on in Google Ads. It includes information on ad variations and organic rankings.

Recommended Reading

• How to Use a Focus Keyphrase to Enhance Your SEO Content Creation
• A Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Difficulty (Plus Tips for Success)
• How to Build Keyword Groups for a More Robust SEO Strategy
• Long-Tail Keywords and Why They Matter
• Keyword Research Tools To Kickstart SEO
• Search Intent: Everything You Need To Know About Search Intent Optimization
• Using High Intent Keywords To Drive Buyers to Your Site
• How To Find Question Keywords that Drive High-Quality Traffic
• How To Find High Converting Keywords (And Create Content That Drives Traffic)

Elevate Your SEO Strategy With Victorious

You now have a complete workflow for finding keywords, weighing their business value, and prioritizing the ones most likely to pay off, for both traditional search and AI platforms. As much as I know about SEO, you know more about your business. Victorious pairs that knowledge with our research and AI search tracking to build a keyword strategy aimed at revenue growth. Learn more about our keyword research services.

Keyword Research for SEO FAQs