Keyword research: finding the words people actually use

Keyword research is the practice of finding out how people describe what they are looking for, so you can build pages that answer them in their own words. Google's SEO Starter Guide makes the point that experts and customers often use different vocabulary. A dermatologist writes "atopic dermatitis"; most people search "itchy dry skin patches". If your pages only speak the expert language, they miss most of the demand.

Where keyword ideas come from

Good research starts with the people you serve, before it touches a tool. Customer emails, support tickets, sales calls, reviews and community forums show the exact phrases people use and the questions they get stuck on. These are often the most valuable keywords you will find, because they come from real situations.

Search itself provides more. Autocomplete suggestions, the "People also ask" box and related searches at the bottom of the results page show how Google sees the topic and what people ask next.

Your own Search Console data is a third source, and it is the one most sites under-use. The Performance report lists the queries your pages already appear for, with impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position. Queries with many impressions and few clicks are often opportunities: you are visible, but your page is either ranking too low or not convincing searchers to click.

Keyword tools come last. They estimate search volume and difficulty from sampled data, which makes them useful for comparing options and spotting patterns. Treat the numbers as estimates. A tool showing "0 searches" for a question your customers ask every week is usually missing data, especially for new or niche topics.

From a list to a map

A raw keyword list is not a plan. Keyword research becomes useful once you group the terms and decide which page answers which group.

Group terms that share the same intent and would be satisfied by the same page. "Email marketing tips", "tips for email marketing" and "email marketing advice" are one topic with one intent, so one strong page should serve all three. "Email marketing tips for beginners" might belong to the same page or to a separate beginner guide, depending on whether the results page shows different content for it. "Email marketing software" is a different intent entirely (commercial investigation) and needs a different page.

The output of this step is a keyword map: each group assigned to one primary URL. A keyword map stops two of your own pages from competing for the same query, and it makes gaps obvious, because groups with no page assigned are content you have not created yet.

Choosing realistic targets

A new site with little authority will struggle to rank for the biggest head term in its industry in its first year. Targets that match your expertise and are more specific give you a realistic start: "accounting software for freelance designers" over "accounting software". These longer, more specific queries (often called long-tail keywords) have lower volume each, but they tend to convert well because the searcher has already said what they need.

When you prioritise, weigh three things together. Value is how much a visitor from that query matters to the business. Fit is how well you can genuinely answer it with expertise others lack. Difficulty is how strong the pages currently ranking are. A low-volume query with high value and strong fit often beats a popular query you cannot realistically win.

Keyword research and writing

Once you know the words people use, write naturally for those people. Use the main terms where they belong (the title, the main heading, the opening and the subheadings that genuinely cover them), and then write the best answer you can. Google's systems understand synonyms and related concepts, so repeating a phrase dozens of times adds nothing. Google also ignores the meta keywords tag entirely, so there is no hidden field to stuff.