On-Page SEO Guide
How to Do Keyword Research: Find Winnable Keywords With Real Intent
Keyword research is how you find the exact phrases your audience types into Google and AI tools, then pick the ones you can realistically rank for. Do it well and every page you publish has a clear target. Skip it and you’re writing for an audience that may not exist.
By Rahul Saini, Author at Search Counsel Co. Last updated [July] 2026.
Featured answer: how do you do keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases people search for, then choosing which ones to target based on search volume, difficulty, and intent. The short version: brainstorm seed topics, expand them with a keyword tool, check the metrics, read the live search results to judge whether you can compete, group the keywords by topic, and map each group to a page. The goal isn’t the biggest keyword. It’s the winnable one that fits what you sell.
The Real Goal
Winnable, not big
Rank for a small keyword beats page five for a huge one.
Three Metrics
Volume, KD, intent
And intent is the one that decides whether you rank at all.
The Long Tail
91.8%
of all searches are three words or longer, where new sites win.
The Budget
$0 to start
Google’s own tools cover most of what a small site needs.
If you searched “how to do keyword research,” you probably want a process you can follow today, not a pitch for a $129-a-month tool. This guide gives you that. It walks through what keyword research is, the three numbers that matter, how to read intent, the step-by-step process, how to do it all for free, and how to judge whether a keyword is actually winnable for a site like yours. It also covers what changed now that people search inside AI tools, not just Google.
Jump to what you need
Article note: Written by Rahul Saini at Search Counsel Co., based on keyword research we run for client sites. Figures are drawn from named studies by Ahrefs, Backlinko, and SparkToro, listed in the “Sources used” section, and were checked at the time of writing. Search volumes and difficulty scores shift and vary between tools, so treat every number as an estimate and verify against your own data before you rely on it.
1) What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the practice of finding the words and phrases people type into search engines and AI tools, then deciding which ones to build content around. Keywords are the bridge between a question in someone’s head and your page. Find the phrases your buyers actually use, and you can write content that meets them where they already are. It’s the foundation of any SEO strategy worth running.
Here’s why it isn’t optional. An Ahrefs study of over a billion pages found that about 96% of pages get zero traffic from Google. A big reason is that people publish content nobody searches for. Keyword research is how you avoid that. You check the demand before you write, not after.
Simple rule: don’t ask “what do I want to say?” Ask “what are people already searching for that I can answer better than the current results?” Keyword research answers the second question.
2) What changed in keyword research in 2026
The old game was simple and wrong: find the highest-volume keyword, stuff it into a page, repeat. That stopped working years ago, and two shifts have pushed it further out of date.
The first is zero-click search. SparkToro’s analysis found that around 58.5% of US searches end without a click, because the answer sits right there in a featured snippet, a People Also Ask box, or an AI Overview. A keyword with 20,000 monthly searches no longer sends 20,000 visits. Much of that demand is answered on the results page itself. So raw volume overstates the traffic you’ll actually get.
The second is AI search. People now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode full-sentence questions, and those tools break each question into several related sub-queries, a step often called query fan-out, then pull answers from the pages that best match. Your content is judged against a web of related questions, not just the exact phrase someone typed.
Both shifts point the same way. Chasing volume matters less. Matching real intent, and being the clearest answer, matters more.
- 91.8% of all searches are long-tail (three words or more), according to Backlinko. Specific beats broad.
- About 95% of keywords get 10 or fewer searches a month, per Ahrefs. The demand is real, it’s just spread across thousands of specific phrasings.
- Roughly a quarter of US queries now trigger an AI Overview, based on 2026 industry data, which changes how many clicks a keyword can actually send.
The long tail
Keywords, ordered by search volume
Search volume
3) The three metrics that matter
Every keyword tool throws dozens of numbers at you. For most decisions, you only need three.
| Metric | What it tells you | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Search volume | Roughly how many times a keyword is searched per month. | A rough demand signal, not a traffic promise. Treat it as a range. |
| Keyword difficulty (KD) | A 0 to 100 estimate of how hard it is to rank, based on the strength of the pages already ranking. | New sites should start under 30. Established sites can push toward 50. |
| Search intent | The reason behind the search: learn, find, compare, or buy. | The deciding factor. Match it or you won’t rank, whatever the other numbers say. |
A quick warning on volume. Different tools calculate it differently, so Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz will each show a slightly different number for the same keyword. None is “correct.” They’re all estimates built from Google Keyword Planner data plus their own models. Use volume to compare keywords, not to forecast exact traffic.
Watch out: a low-volume or “zero-volume” keyword can still be worth targeting. It’s often a specific phrasing of a popular topic, so ranking for it pulls in dozens of similar searches you never see in the tool. Ahrefs calls the broader query a keyword’s “parent topic.” Check whether the page ranking for your term is pulling far more traffic than the term’s own volume suggests.
4) Search intent: the four types
Search intent is the goal behind a query, and matching it is the single biggest factor in whether a technically fine page ranks. Google no longer ranks the page that mentions a keyword most. It ranks the page that best fits the job the searcher is trying to get done. There are four intent types:
- Informational: the person wants to learn. “How to do keyword research,” “what is search intent.” Best served by guides and explainers.
- Navigational: they want a specific site or page. “Ahrefs login,” “Search Console.” You rarely target these unless it’s your own brand.
- Commercial: they’re comparing before buying. “Best keyword research tools,” “Ahrefs vs Semrush.” Best served by comparisons and reviews.
- Transactional: they’re ready to act. “Buy Ahrefs subscription,” “hire an SEO agency.” Best served by product and service pages.
You read intent by doing something free: Google the keyword and look at what already ranks. If the first page is all step-by-step guides, that keyword wants a guide, and your product page won’t rank for it. If it’s all comparison posts, build a comparison. This five-minute check prevents the most expensive mistake in content: building the wrong kind of page well. For a deeper breakdown of each type and how to match it, see our guide on the four types of search intent, and the companion walkthrough on reading intent straight off the SERP.
5) How to do keyword research: the step-by-step process
Here’s the full process, start to finish. It’s the same one professional teams use, minus the jargon.
- Start with seed keywords. List 5 to 10 broad topics tied to what you sell. If you run an SEO agency, your seeds might be “keyword research,” “link building,” “local SEO.” Don’t overthink these. They’re just starting points.
- Expand each seed into a big list. Drop each seed into a keyword tool (free or paid) and pull the related keywords and questions it returns. Add Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask, and Related Searches for phrasings tools miss. Your goal here is quantity, not judgment. Collect everything relevant.
- Mine your competitors. Take two or three sites that rank for your topics and look at what they rank for that you don’t. Paid tools call this a content gap or keyword gap report. Free version: read their top few pages and note every term they target. This is one of the fastest ways to find proven keywords.
- Add the metrics. For each keyword, note volume, difficulty, and intent. This turns a messy list into something you can sort and filter.
- Check intent against the live SERP. For your priority keywords, actually Google them. Confirm the ranking format matches the page you plan to build, and look at how strong those pages are. This is where you decide if you can realistically compete (more on that next).
- Group keywords into topics. Many keywords are the same search in different words. “How to do keyword research” and “keyword research steps” want the same page. Cluster them so each cluster becomes one piece of content targeting a primary term plus a few close variants. Done across a whole site, this clustering is how you build topical authority.
- Map each cluster to a page and prioritize. Assign one cluster per URL so two of your pages never fight over the same keyword, a problem called cannibalization. Then rank the list by winnability and business value, and start at the top.
Steps 6 and 7 are where most guides go quiet, and they’re the difference between a spreadsheet of keywords and an actual content plan. Grouping keeps one strong page from being split into five weak ones, which is the whole logic behind pillar pages and topic clusters. Mapping makes sure the right page targets the right term. Our guide on assigning keywords to the right pages covers this in detail.
6) How to do keyword research for free
You don’t need a paid subscription to start. For a small or new site, Google’s own products plus a couple of free tools cover most of what you need. The trade-off is that free tools hide exact volume and difficulty, so you lean more on reading the SERP and using judgment.
- Google Autocomplete. Open an incognito window so your history doesn’t skew things, start typing a seed, and note the suggestions. Every one reflects real searches. Add a letter or a question word (“how,” “why,” “best”) to pull out more.
- People Also Ask and Related Searches. Search your seed and read the PAA box and the related searches at the bottom. Each question is a potential FAQ entry or its own article, and clicking a PAA question expands more.
- Google Keyword Planner. Free with any Google Ads account, even if you never run an ad. It shows volume ranges and related ideas. It’s built for advertisers, so the ranges are broad, but it’s a solid free baseline.
- Google Search Console. If your site already gets any traffic, this is the best free keyword tool there is. It shows the exact queries you already appear for, including ones you didn’t target. Those are quick wins waiting to be optimized. Our guide to finding keywords in Search Console walks through it, and fixing low-CTR pages is usually the fastest win in there.
- Google Trends. Free, and the fastest way to check seasonality and whether a topic is rising or fading before you commit to it. Useful for comparing two topics against each other.
- AnswerThePublic and free tiers. AnswerThePublic visualizes question-based queries around a seed. Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, and Ubersuggest all offer limited free keyword generators that show a handful of ideas plus rough difficulty.
From experience: the best free keyword source is your own inbox. The questions clients and prospects actually ask you, in their words, are keywords with proven intent and often zero competition. Write them down before you open any tool.
7) How to tell if a keyword is winnable
This is the part that separates a useful keyword list from a wish list. A keyword is only worth targeting if you can realistically rank for it and it’s worth something to your business. Here’s an honest truth most guides skip: a new site cannot rank for “keyword research” or “best SEO tools.” Those results are locked up by Ahrefs, Semrush, and Backlinko, sites with tens of thousands of backlinks. Ahrefs found that only about 1.74% of new pages reach the top 10 for any keyword within a year, and most top-ranking pages are more than three years old. So picking winnable keywords isn’t optional. It’s the whole game for a growing site, and it’s a big part of why SEO takes as long as it does.
Run each priority keyword through four quick checks:
- Difficulty. Is KD under 30 (new site) or under 50 (established)? If not, park it for later.
- The live SERP. Google it. Are the ranking pages beatable, or are they all high-authority giants with deeper content than you can produce? Believe what you see over the difficulty score.
- Intent fit. Does the ranking format match the page you can build, and does answering it make sense for your business? A plumber shouldn’t target “electrician near me,” however easy it looks.
- Business value. Would ranking for this bring traffic that could actually convert or build awareness? A lower-volume keyword that reaches buyers beats a high-volume one that reaches nobody who’ll pay you.
If a keyword clears all four, it goes near the top of your list. If it fails difficulty or the SERP check, it’s a “later” keyword, worth revisiting once your site earns more authority. This filter is why two sites researching the same topic end up with completely different, and correctly different, target lists.
Worked example: two keywords, one topic
Say you run a small SEO site. The head term “keyword research” shows big volume, but the difficulty score is in the 80s and the first page is all Ahrefs, Semrush, and Backlinko. It fails checks 1 and 2, so you skip it, for now. Now test the variant “how to do keyword research for free.” Lower volume, but the difficulty sits in the 20s, the ranking pages are smaller blogs you can out-explain, the intent is a clear how-to that matches a guide, and the searchers are people actively trying to do the thing you help with. That one clears all four checks. It goes to the top of the list, and the head term waits until your domain has earned more authority. Same topic, opposite decisions.
8) Keyword research for AI search
Keyword research now feeds two channels: ranking in Google and getting cited in AI answers. The core process is the same, but a few things shift when you plan for AI tools too.
People phrase prompts as full, conversational sentences, so the specific long-tail and question keywords you find are exactly the phrasings AI tools use during query fan-out. That makes question-based keywords, the ones from People Also Ask and AnswerThePublic, more valuable than ever. Structuring a page to answer them cleanly and up front gives you a shot at both a featured snippet and an AI citation.
The bigger mindset change is moving from volume-first to value-first. A high-volume informational keyword that AI Overviews have hollowed out can be worth less than a lower-volume commercial keyword where a click still leads to a sale. Weigh keywords by the value of the visit, not just the size of the number. For the full method of planning content that AI engines quote, see our guide to getting cited in AI search, and how to track AI visibility once you’re in the answers.
How we do it: at Search Counsel Co. we research keywords for both surfaces at once, so the same content earns Google rankings and AI citations rather than one or the other. If you’d rather hand it off, see our on-page SEO services.
9) Common keyword research mistakes
A few errors show up again and again, and they’re all avoidable.
- Chasing volume over intent. The most common mistake. A high-volume keyword you can’t rank for, or that doesn’t fit your business, is worth nothing.
- Ignoring the live SERP. The difficulty score is a model. The actual results tell you the truth about format and competition. Always look.
- Targeting head terms with a new site. You’ll spend months on a page that never cracks page one. Start long-tail and specific, then move up as your authority grows.
- One keyword per page thinking. Modern pages rank for hundreds of related terms. Cover the topic fully instead of forcing a single exact phrase.
- Keyword stuffing. Repeating a phrase to hit a “density” target reads badly to humans and worse to AI models, which prefer natural language. Write for the reader, place the keyword naturally, and stop.
- Doing it once. Intent drifts and new terms appear. Google reports that roughly 15% of daily searches have never been seen before. Revisit your research quarterly as part of your content refresh cycle.
10) Sources used for this guide
Because search data moves quickly, this guide leans on named studies rather than repeated blog claims.
| Source | What it supports |
|---|---|
| Ahrefs studies (billion-page traffic study; SEO statistics) | About 96% of pages get no Google traffic; ~95% of keywords get 10 or fewer monthly searches; 1.74% of new pages reach the top 10 within a year; parent topic and traffic potential. |
| Backlinko search-behavior data | 91.8% of all searches are long-tail (three or more words). |
| SparkToro zero-click study (2024) | Roughly 58.5% of US searches end without a click. |
| Semrush and Ahrefs (2026 keyword-research guidance) | Query fan-out, conversational and prompt keywords, and the volume-to-value shift. |
| Google Search Central and Google Ads Keyword Planner | How intent, autocomplete, and keyword volume ranges work from the source. |
FAQ: keyword research
How do you do keyword research for free?
Use Google’s own tools. Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask, and Related Searches surface real queries, Google Keyword Planner gives volume ranges with a free Ads account, and Google Search Console shows the exact terms your site already appears for. Add a free tier of Ahrefs, Semrush, or Ubersuggest for rough difficulty scores. For a small site, that’s enough to build a real plan.
What are the four types of search intent?
Informational (wanting to learn), navigational (wanting a specific site), commercial (comparing before buying), and transactional (ready to buy). Match your page format to the intent behind the keyword, which you can read by Googling the term and seeing what already ranks.
What is a good keyword difficulty to target?
For a new site, aim for keywords with a difficulty score under 30. Established sites with more backlinks can target up to around 50. But always confirm against the live results, since the difficulty score is an estimate and the actual ranking pages tell you the real story.
Is keyword research still relevant with AI search?
Yes, arguably more so. AI tools break questions into related sub-queries and pull answers from pages that match, so the specific, question-based keywords you find are exactly what those tools use. The change is that you weigh keywords by the value of the visit rather than raw volume, since AI answers absorb many informational clicks.
How many keywords should one page target?
One primary keyword plus a handful of close variants that mean the same thing. A single strong page naturally ranks for hundreds of related terms, so cover the topic fully rather than making a separate thin page for every phrasing.
How long does keyword research take?
A focused first pass for a small site takes a couple of hours: brainstorm seeds, expand them, add metrics, read a few SERPs, and prioritize. It isn’t a one-time job, though. Revisit it every quarter as search behavior and your own rankings change.
Should you target zero-volume keywords?
Sometimes. A keyword showing zero volume is often a specific phrasing of a popular topic, so ranking for it pulls in many similar searches the tool doesn’t display. Check whether the top-ranking page gets far more traffic than the keyword’s own volume suggests. If it does, the topic is worth targeting.
Conclusion: the winnable keyword beats the big one
Keyword research isn’t about finding the biggest number. It’s about finding the phrases your buyers use, judging honestly which ones you can rank for, and matching each to the right page. Do that and every article starts with a real audience and a real chance. Skip it and you join the 96% of pages that get no traffic at all.
Start small. Pick one seed topic, pull the long-tail questions around it, check which are winnable for a site your size, and write the single best answer to one of them. Then repeat. For the next step, work up to the complete guide to on-page SEO to turn each keyword into a page that ranks, or read how to match content to search intent to sharpen the next stage.
Editorial note: This guide is for general marketing education. Search volumes, difficulty scores, and AI-search behavior change quickly and vary between tools, so verify any figure against its primary source and your own data before relying on it.