How to Do Keyword Research for Beginners

Start from seed topics tied directly to your business

Before opening any tool, list 5-10 broad topics directly connected to what the business actually offers — not adjacent interests, the core offering itself. A project management SaaS company's seeds might be 'project management,' 'task tracking,' 'team collaboration,' and 'Gantt charts.' These seeds aren't keywords to target directly (they're too broad and competitive) — they're starting points a keyword tool expands from.

Expand each seed using a keyword tool

Enter each seed into a keyword research tool and review the related-keywords, questions, and broad-match suggestions it returns. A single seed typically expands into 50-200 related terms. At this stage, the goal is volume of raw candidates, not quality filtering — cast a wide net first, since filtering too early risks missing a genuinely good keyword that just wasn't an obvious first guess.

Add free sources a paid tool might miss

Google's autocomplete (type the seed and see what it suggests), the People Also Ask box, and Google's 'related searches' at the bottom of a results page are all free and reflect real, current search behavior that a keyword database can sometimes lag behind. These sources are especially good at surfacing natural long-tail phrasing real people use, which is often more specific and easier to rank for than the broad head terms a tool suggests first.

Evaluate each candidate on three factors

For every keyword worth considering, check: search volume (is there real demand — even a rough estimate is enough at this stage), keyword difficulty (can a new or growing site realistically compete, given current authority), and intent match (does the content format Google currently ranks for this term match what the business can naturally produce — an article, a tool, a product page). A keyword strong on volume but weak on intent match, or vice versa, is usually not worth prioritizing over one that's solid on all three.

Cluster related keywords instead of listing them flat

Group keywords by shared intent rather than treating each as its own separate article — 'best project management software' and 'top project management tools' likely belong in the same cluster and same target page, since they share almost identical search intent even though they're phrased differently. A quick way to check: if the top 10 ranking results for two keywords substantially overlap, they belong together. This step is what prevents keyword cannibalization before it starts, rather than fixing it after publishing two competing pages.

Prioritize into an actual content calendar

With clusters defined, sort by a combination of estimated traffic potential, difficulty relative to current site authority, and business relevance (how directly a topic connects to what's actually sold) — then commit to a realistic publishing order rather than trying to write everything at once. A beginner-friendly rule of thumb: start with 5-10 lower-difficulty, clearly relevant keywords to build early wins and initial topical authority, before moving into more competitive head terms.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Chasing high-volume keywords first without checking difficulty — a brand-new site competing directly against established authorities on day one rarely wins.
• Treating every keyword as its own article without clustering — this produces redundant, cannibalizing content instead of a few strong, comprehensive pages.
• Skipping the intent check and writing a blog post for a keyword the SERP shows is dominated by product or pricing pages.

Related terms

• Keyword Research
• Keyword Clustering
• Keyword Difficulty (KD)
• Search Volume

Free tool: Want to check this yourself? Use our Free Keyword Difficulty Checker.