Keyword Research
Last updated September 2026
Keyword research is the process of identifying the terms and phrases people actually search for, along with their volume, difficulty, and intent, to guide what content a site should create and target. It is the foundation strategy step behind nearly every other SEO decision that follows.
Keyword research answers a basic but easy-to-skip question before any content gets written: what are people actually typing into search engines when they need what this business offers, and in what words, a question tools like Google's own Keyword Planner were built to help answer at scale. Skipping this step leads to content built around internal jargon or assumptions about demand rather than evidence of it, which is one of the most common reasons SEO content underperforms despite genuine effort.
01
What a proper keyword research process covers
Solid keyword research goes well beyond generating a list of terms with high search volume. It groups related terms by the search intent behind them, informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional, and weighs volume against keyword difficulty and business relevance. A high-volume term with low commercial intent may generate traffic that never converts; a lower-volume term matched tightly to purchase intent can be worth more to the business despite the smaller number.
- 01
Seed terms
the core topics and services a business needs to be found for
- 02
Search volume
the estimated monthly search demand for each term
- 03
Keyword difficulty
a relative estimate of how hard the term will be to rank for given current competition
- 04
Search intent
whether the searcher wants information, a specific site, a comparison, or to buy
- 05
Related and question-based terms
variations and questions that reveal what content should actually cover, not just what title to give it
02
Where it fits into an SEO plan
Keyword research feeds directly into content strategy, site architecture, and internal linking: it determines what pages should exist, what those pages need to cover to satisfy intent, and how they should be grouped and linked to one another. Doing this work well up front prevents the common failure mode of publishing content that ranks for nothing because it was never built around a term with real, matched-intent demand in the first place.
Takeaway
Doing this work well up front prevents the common failure mode of publishing content that ranks for nothing because it was never built around a term with real, matched-intent demand in the first place.
03
Why agencies treat this as a recurring task, not a one-time report
Search demand shifts as language, competitors, and client offerings change, so keyword research is not a report generated once at the start of an engagement and shelved. Revisiting it as new services launch, as competitors publish new content, or as ranking data comes in keeps the content plan aligned with actual demand rather than a snapshot of demand from months or years earlier.
