Keyword Research Guide

Keyword research is the part of SEO where you decide what to work on. Everything after it, the writing, the internal links, the technical cleanup, is downstream of picking the right terms, which is why it is worth doing carefully and why it does not take as long as people expect.

Where the numbers come from

Most keyword tools, including this one, are reading the same underlying sources. Knowing which number comes from where stops you treating an estimate as a measurement.

The distinction that trips people most often is paid competition against difficulty. Paid competition describes an advertising auction. A keyword can have almost no advertisers bidding on it and still be impossible to rank for organically, because the first page is held by sites with far more authority than yours.

Reading demand properly

Search volume is an average, so a seasonal keyword looks flat until you look at the twelve month history underneath it. A term averaging 5,000 searches a month is a different proposition if it is growing steadily than if it spiked once last winter and has fallen every month since.

Absent volume is not zero volume. When a provider has no figure for a keyword, usually because it is new or very rare, that is a gap in the data rather than evidence that nobody searches for it. Tools that render both as 0 are quietly telling you something they do not know. More on reading search volume.

Judging intent before you write

Intent is the difference between a keyword you can win and one you will spend three months losing. Matching the page type to what searchers want matters more than length, keyword placement or anything else you can control on the page.

• Informational searches want an explanation. An article can win these.
• Commercial searches are comparing options. A comparison or category page usually wins.
• Transactional searches are ready to act. A product or pricing page wins.
• Navigational searches are looking for a specific site. Usually not worth targeting unless it is yours.

The classification a tool gives you is a useful starting point rather than the final word. The results page is the actual answer, because it shows what Google is currently choosing to rank. How to read a results page.

Deciding what is worth a page

A candidate is worth building for when three things line up: there is enough demand to matter, the intent matches something you can credibly publish, and the current first page is not entirely owned by sites far out of your reach. Volume alone is the weakest of the three, and it is the one most people optimize for.

A keyword with 300 searches a month and a high cost per click, where the first page is thin, is usually worth more than one with 30,000 searches where every result is a major brand. Finding those keywords is a job of its own.