How to Do Keyword Research: A Practical Walkthrough From Our SEO Team

If you’ve ever stared at a keyword research tool wondering which numbers actually matter, you’re not alone. Keyword research is one of those skills that sounds straightforward in theory but gets complicated fast when you’re trying to make real decisions about where to invest your content efforts.

We do keyword research every week at Relevance — for clients across B2B SaaS, healthcare, ecommerce, and professional services. After years of refining our process, we’ve distilled it into a practical workflow that anyone can follow, whether you’re a founder doing this for the first time or a marketing team looking to sharpen your approach.

Here’s how to do keyword research the way we actually do it, with the reasoning behind each step.

Start with what you already know (not with a tool)

The biggest mistake in keyword research is opening Ahrefs or SEMrush before you’ve done any thinking. Tools are powerful, but they can’t tell you what matters to your business. That’s your job.

Before we touch a tool for a new client, we answer three questions:

What does this business actually sell, and to whom? This sounds obvious, but the answer shapes everything. A company selling enterprise software to CIOs will target completely different keywords than one selling self-serve tools to freelancers, even if they’re in the same product category.

What topics should this brand be the definitive authority on? Not “what keywords have volume” — what subjects does this company have genuine expertise in? The best keyword strategies are anchored in real knowledge, not opportunistic traffic chasing.

What does a valuable visitor actually do? Sign up for a demo? Book an appointment? Buy a product? Understanding the conversion event helps us prioritize keywords that drive business outcomes, not just pageviews.

We capture this thinking in a simple brief that guides the entire research process. It takes 20 minutes and saves hours of unfocused tool exploration.

Mine your existing data first

If you have a website with any traffic at all, your most valuable keyword data is already sitting in Google Search Console. We start every keyword research engagement here.

What to look for in GSC:

Queries where you’re getting impressions but few clicks (positions 8-20). These are keywords Google already associates with your site but where your content isn’t strong enough to earn the click. They represent your most actionable opportunities because you don’t need to build topical association from scratch — you need to create better content for topics Google already thinks you’re relevant for.

Queries you didn’t intentionally target. GSC often reveals that you’re appearing for keywords you never planned for. These accidental rankings point to content gaps — topics where creating dedicated, optimized content could capture significant traffic.

Your highest-CTR queries. These tell you what your audience actually clicks on, which reveals what messaging and angles resonate. This informs not just keyword selection but how you write title tags and content.

If you’re starting from zero (no existing site traffic), skip to the next step. But for established sites, GSC analysis usually surfaces more actionable opportunities than any third-party tool.

Analyze what competitors own (and what they miss)

Competitor keyword analysis isn’t about copying what others are doing. It’s about understanding the landscape and finding gaps.

We run this analysis for every client using Ahrefs’ competitive analysis features. Here’s the specific process:

Identify your true SEO competitors. These aren’t necessarily your business competitors. Your SEO competitors are the sites that rank for the keywords you want. A B2B software company might find that their SEO competitors include publications like HubSpot’s blog, not just rival software companies. Understanding who you’re actually competing against in the SERPs shapes your realistic targeting.

Find the content gap. Which keywords do multiple competitors rank for that you don’t? The intersection of 2-3 competitors’ keyword profiles reveals the core topics in your space. Any keyword that all your competitors rank for and you don’t is a gap worth evaluating.

Look for underserved intent. Sometimes competitors rank for a keyword but serve the wrong intent. If the top results for a commercial query are all informational blog posts, there’s an opportunity to create a page that better matches what searchers want. We’ve won quick ranking gains for clients by simply matching intent better than incumbent content.

Expand your keyword universe with tools

Now it’s time to use the tools. We primarily use Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, supplemented by Google Ads Keyword Planner for volume estimates and Google’s own autocomplete and PAA (People Also Ask) features for question-based keywords.

For each seed term from your earlier steps, explore:

Phrase match and having same terms: These show you the full range of how people search around your topic. “Marketing automation” as a seed might reveal “marketing automation for small business,” “marketing automation vs CRM,” and “best marketing automation software” — each requiring different content.

Questions: Question keywords (how, what, why, when, can) are gold for content planning. They reveal specific information needs and tend to have clearer intent than broad terms. They’re also increasingly important for AI search visibility, since AI models tend to answer question-format queries by citing content that directly addresses them.

Related terms: Semantically connected keywords that broaden your view of the topic. These help you build comprehensive content that covers a subject from multiple angles rather than narrowly targeting a single phrase.

Dump everything into a spreadsheet. Don’t filter yet — you want the full picture before making decisions.

Evaluate each keyword against four criteria

This is the step that separates strategic keyword research from mechanical data pulling. For every keyword worth considering, we evaluate:

Intent alignment: Does the search intent match content we can (and should) create? A keyword with 10,000 monthly searches is worthless if the SERP shows results we can’t compete with (e.g., news articles when we’re a software company). We manually check the SERP for our top keyword candidates to understand what Google thinks the intent is.

Business relevance: Does ranking for this keyword move a business metric? We score every keyword on a simple scale — core (directly describes what the client offers), adjacent (related to the client’s expertise), or peripheral (tangentially connected). Core keywords get priority regardless of difficulty.

Competitive feasibility: Can we realistically rank for this within 6-12 months? We compare keyword difficulty against the client’s current domain authority, existing topical authority on the subject, and the quality of what’s currently ranking. If the SERP is dominated by sites with 10x our authority and excellent content, it’s a long-term target, not an immediate priority.

Content opportunity: Can we create something meaningfully better than what currently ranks? If the top results are comprehensive, well-written, and from authoritative domains, the effort required may not justify the potential return. But if the top results are thin, outdated, or generic, there’s a clear opening.

The keywords that score well across all four criteria become your priority targets.

Group keywords into clusters and map to content

Individual keywords don’t become strategy until they’re organized into clusters and mapped to specific content assets.

A keyword cluster groups a primary target keyword with its related terms, long-tail variations, and associated questions. One cluster = one piece of content. Trying to target unrelated keywords on a single page dilutes your focus and confuses Google about what the page is about.

We organize clusters around our clients’ SEO strategy pillars:

Pillar pages target the broadest, highest-volume keyword in a cluster. These are comprehensive guides (2,000-4,000 words) that cover a topic thoroughly. Our content marketing strategy guide is an example — it targets a competitive head term and serves as the hub for related content.

Supporting articles target specific subtopics, long-tail variations, and questions within the cluster. Each one links back to the pillar page, building a topical authority structure that Google rewards.

Conversion pages target keywords with transactional or commercial intent. These are service pages, product pages, or comparison pages where the searcher is closer to a decision.

This cluster structure ensures every piece of content you create strengthens your authority on the topic, rather than creating isolated articles that don’t connect to anything.

Set priorities based on where you’ll win first

With clusters defined, the final step is sequencing — deciding what to create first.

Our priority framework:

Optimize existing content first. If you already have pages ranking in positions 5-20, updating and optimizing them is almost always faster than creating something new. Refresh outdated information, improve the title tag, add internal links, strengthen the intro, and make sure the content fully addresses the search intent. We’ve seen clients gain 30-50% more organic traffic purely from content optimization without publishing anything new.

Fill obvious gaps second. Keywords where competitors rank and you have nothing are missed opportunities. Prioritize gaps where you have genuine expertise and where the competitive landscape is manageable.

Build authority clusters third. Create pillar pages and supporting content around your highest-priority topics. This builds the topical depth that Google increasingly rewards over isolated high-authority pages.

Target competitive terms last. High-volume, high-difficulty keywords are long-term investments. They require established topical authority, strong backlink profiles, and exceptional content to compete. Tackle them after you’ve built momentum with quicker wins.

Keep the research alive

Keyword research isn’t something you do once and file away. We revisit keyword strategies at least quarterly for every client, checking for new opportunities in GSC, monitoring how targeted keywords are performing, identifying shifts in competitive rankings, and flagging keywords that aren’t delivering the expected business value.

The best keyword strategies evolve continuously, informed by real performance data rather than initial assumptions. That feedback loop is what turns keyword research from a planning exercise into a growth engine.

Want to see which tools make this process more efficient? Read our guide to the keyword research tools we use daily. Or if you’re ready for help building a keyword strategy that connects to real business growth, explore how we’ve done it for other companies.