Keyword research: how to find the words your customers actually search

It is the first step in any serious SEO effort, because a brilliant page targeting a phrase nobody searches still gets no traffic.

Start with a few seed keywords

Begin broad and human. Write down the handful of core terms someone would search to find your product, service, or a specific use case. Don't overthink it: if you sell webinar software, "webinar software", "online webinar tool", and "host a webinar" are all fine starting points. A quick shortcut is to look at a competitor who already ranks well and note the phrases they lead with.

Add modifiers to get specific

A modifier is a word people bolt onto a seed to narrow it down. Common ones are location ("in Berlin", "near me"), platform or type ("for Mac", "app"), audience ("for small business"), and intent ("how to", "best", "free", "pricing", "vs"). Combine your seeds with your modifiers and you quickly go from a few broad terms to a long list of specific, realistic phrases people actually type.

Two ways to build your keyword list

Once you have seeds and modifiers, you need to turn them into a real list of phrases with a sense of how many people search each. There are two routes, and most people use a mix.

The paid way: a keyword tool. Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush (roughly $100 per month) let you paste in your seeds and get back hundreds of real related searches, each with an estimated monthly search volume and a difficulty score. They also show you the exact keywords a competitor already ranks for. This is the method we have used for years, and the real numbers make it much easier to decide what is worth writing. The downside is the cost.

The quick and free way: AI and Google itself. If a paid subscription is not worth it yet, you can get most of the value for free. Ask an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude to expand your seeds into dozens of variations grouped by intent. Then mine Google directly: its autocomplete suggestions, the "People also ask" box, and the "Related searches" at the bottom of the results are all real queries. Google Trends shows demand over time for free, and once your site is live, Google Search Console tells you the exact queries people already use to find you. The catch: an AI can invent plausible-looking keywords and cannot tell you real search volume, so treat its list as brainstorming and sanity-check the promising terms.

Want the exact step-by-step process we use, including which buttons to click in a keyword tool? Grab the free guide below.

Which keywords should you actually keep?

However you built the list, weigh each candidate on three things: intent (would the page you plan to write actually answer what this searcher wants?), demand (do enough people search it to be worth the effort?), and difficulty (can a site your size realistically rank for it?). For most smaller sites the sweet spot is specific, lower-competition "long-tail" phrases: fewer searches each, but far easier to rank for and closer to a ready-to-act visitor. Give each page one main keyword plus a few close variations, and you have turned research into a content plan.

(On ShiftPress you can hand a chosen keyword straight to the AI editor and it will write or optimise the page around it.)

Frequently asked questions