Keyword research step by step: find the words that bring customers

Keyword research is mapping out what your potential customers type into Google when they are looking for what you sell, and judging which of those searches you can realistically win. It is the starting point for all SEO work, because it decides what you should write about and in what order.

Without it, you are guessing. And the most common guess is wrong: businesses write about themselves using their own industry terms, while customers search with completely different wording.

Why most keyword research goes wrong#

Two mistakes keep coming back.

The first is chasing volume. A keyword with 5,000 searches a month looks attractive until you realise that the ten pages ranking for it have hundreds of links each, and that you will never get past them. A word with 90 searches that you can actually rank for is worth infinitely more than one with 5,000 that you never reach.

The second is ignoring the intent behind the search. Someone searching "what is SEO" wants to learn something. Someone searching "seo agency stockholm" wants to hire someone. Same topic, completely different people, and they need completely different pages.

Step 1: Gather raw material#

Start broad and without judging. You are looking for phrasings, not decisions.

Ask your customers. How did they describe the problem when they called? Their words are your keywords. This is the most underrated source there is.

Read your own inbox. Which questions do you get over and over? Every recurring question is an article.

Use Google yourself. Type in your service and look at the autocomplete suggestions. Scroll to "Related searches" at the bottom. Open the "People also ask" box, which is Google's own summary of what people wonder about.

Look at your competitors. Which pages do they have? The headings reveal which keywords they are targeting.

Check Search Console. If you already have a site, the "Search results" report shows exactly which searches already give you impressions. Words where you rank in positions 8–20 are often the quickest wins there are, because all they need is a nudge.

Step 2: Get the numbers#

Now every word needs three metrics.

Search volume: how many people search per month. Look at the monthly data, not just the average. A word can show 2,900 on average but have had a one-off spike and sit at 90 today. Seasonal variation is also valuable information: if you know demand peaks in March, the content should be in place in January.

Difficulty: how tough the competition is, usually on a scale of 0–100.

Link competition: how many referring domains the top ten pages have on average. This is the most important and most overlooked metric. A word with difficulty 40 where the top ten have 1–2 linking domains is an open goal for a new site. A word with difficulty 20 where everyone has 500 links is not.

Free tools that go a long way: Google Search Console, Google's Keyword Planner (requires an Ads account) and Google Trends. Paid tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush and DataForSEO give deeper data, especially on link competition, which is hard to get for free.

Step 3: Classify the intent#

Sort each word into one of four groups:

• Informational: "what is", "how to", "guide". Wants to learn. Suits blog posts.
• Comparative: "best", "comparison", "review", "vs". About to choose. Suits comparisons and guides.
• Transactional: "buy", "price", "quote", "agency". Wants to act now. Suits service pages.
• Navigational: looking for a specific brand. Rarely worth chasing unless it's your own.

Then match page type to intent. A common and costly mistake is aiming a sales page at an informational keyword: Google shows a guide, you offer a form, and the page never ranks.

Want to be more visible on Google? Read about SEO →

Step 4: Prioritise#

Weigh four things for each word: reasonable volume, low link competition, intent close to buying, and relevance to what you actually make money on.

A practical way to get started: begin with the words you can win within three months, not the ones you would most like to own in three years. Early rankings build both the site's authority and the patience of whoever is paying for the work.

Let the heaviest words become targets for your most important service pages, and let the long, specific questions become blog posts that link to them.

Step 5: Turn it into a plan#

Keyword research that sits in a spreadsheet hasn't delivered any value. Turn it into a simple plan:

• One page per keyword cluster. Not one page per keyword. "website price", "how much does a website cost" and "price of a website" are the same question and should have the same page.
• Decide the page type based on the intent.
• Set an order and stick to it.
• Write down what already exists, since existing pages often only need improving.

Tools: how to find keywords#

There are more good sources than most people use, and the best ones are free.

Google Search Console

Start with the searches you already appear for. Under Performance you see the queries, how many times the page was shown and its average position. Words where you rank in positions 5 to 20 are the quickest to lift, because Google already considers the page relevant. Here is how to get started, in our guide to Google Search Console.

Google's own suggestions

Type a seed word into the search box and read the suggestions that appear as you type. Also look at the box of questions other people ask and the related searches at the bottom of the page. It shows how real people phrase things, and it costs nothing.

Google's Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is part of Google Ads and gives search volume and related words. You need an Ads account but no active campaign. Without an ad budget, volumes are often shown as ranges instead of exact figures.

Google Trends

Trends shows how interest in a word changes over time and between regions. Use it to see seasonality and whether a word is on the way up or down before you spend time on it.

Competitors' pages

Search for your most important words and read the pages at the top: the headings, the questions they answer and the words that recur. Paid tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush and DataForSEO can list every word a competitor ranks for, which is the quickest way to find gaps.

Common pitfalls#

• Cannibalisation: two pages targeting the same word compete with each other. Merge them.
• Looking only at average volume and missing that the trend is pointing steeply downwards.
• Choosing words that no buyer uses. Traffic that never turns into business is a cost, not income.
• Never revisiting it. Search behaviour changes. Go through the research twice a year.

Summary#

Keyword research is less about finding words and more about ruling them out. The job is to find where three things meet: what people search for, what you can win, and what brings you paying customers.

If you want to see what your industry looks like in search data, get in touch and we will go through it. Also read our guide to technical SEO or how we work as an SEO agency for Swedish businesses.