How To Do Keyword Research in 2025: 4 Easy Steps to Success

Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines to find content online. 

There are three different types of keywords that a user might type into search:

1. Informational searches – To find information on a topic (e.g “When did WW2 end”)
2. Transactional searches – To make a purchase (e.g “Best yoga mats”)
3. Navigational searches – To find a certain company or website (e.g “Anthropologie”)

Once the user has searched for a specific keyword or phrase, the search engine will provide them with content it deems relevant to their query.

Keyword research is when you find and analyze these keywords. After you’ve found suitable keywords that reflect your business and what users are looking for, you can then add them to your website’s content. The aim is to for your website’s pages to feature the keywords that your target audience is typing into search.

➡️There’s more to SEO than keywords. Discover other important terms in our comprehensive SEO glossary.

You’re probably eager to begin, so I’m going to show you how to do keyword research in four easy steps, and start increasing your website traffic. 

Before You Start

Don’t dive in just yet – there are a few keyword essentials to familiarize yourself with first.

You’ll come across these different types of keywords during your research:

1. Primary keywords – The core keyword that you want to rank for on Google (e.g. “affiliate marketing tips”)
2. Secondary keywords – Keywords that are related to your primary keyword (e.g. “affiliate marketing tips for beginners”)
3. Short tail keywords – Generic keywords with few words (e.g. “affiliate marketing”)
4. Long tail keywords – Longer keywords with more words than usual (e.g. “Amazon affiliate marketing tips for beginners”)

Primary and short tail keywords typically have a higher search volume, while secondary and long tail keywords have a lower search volume. Because of this, you need to look for a combination of different keyword types during your research. This ensures that you have a better chance to appear on search results pages.

1. Find Your Keywords

Kick off the brainstorming process by thinking about keywords that your customers will be using. To get the ball rolling, here are a few techniques you can use to come up with an initial list of ideas:

• Think about industry-related topics – Write down a list of topics that are related to your business. If you sell vegan products, you may come up with “cruelty free beauty” or “vegan foods.”
• Identify user keywords related to these topics – It’s time to get more specific with your keywords. Under each topic you’ve identified, come up with related phrases that audiences may look up to find what they need. Terms like “vegan foundation” or “vegan soap bars” could come under “cruelty-free beauty,” while “meat-free alternatives” and “dairy-free cheese” come under “vegan foods.”
• Use Google search to your advantage – Type terms related to your topics into Google. You can use the dropdown to find related searches, or scroll down to the “People also ask” snippet to find specific questions users have asked.
• Make the most of keyword tools – There are numerous free and paid tools out there that can help you conduct keyword research effectively. I’ll reveal the tools I recommend later on.

➡️Are you selling products? Go beyond keyword research and make sure you’re following these SEO best practices for ecommerce.

2. Analyze Your Keywords

The next step is to analyze the keywords you’ve found and see which are most suitable for your SEO strategy. Whether you’re using paid or free SEO tools during your research, most can tell you vital metrics about the keywords you’ve identified. These include:

Once you gain a better understanding of these metrics, you can start developing your keyword strategy. For instance, if you find that the search intent of your keywords is generally informational, you might decide to start creating more keyword-rich 101 guides on your website.

3. Narrow Down Your Keywords

Based on your keyword analysis, you can start narrowing down the list of keywords you originally created. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to end up with a list that features a combination of different types of keywords. For instance, a mixture of keywords with high and low search volumes.

If you’re assigning keywords to different pages, I recommend that you target two to three keywords per page (one primary keyword and two secondary). That way, you can keep your website’s content focused and ensure that it does fulfil the user’s search intent.

4. Review Your Keywords Regularly

Once you’ve added keywords to your website’s content and copy, you can’t just stop there. Make sure that you regularly audit your website. Popular keywords change over time, so adapting and targeting new search terms will keep your website on track. Here are my tips for successfully reviewing your keywords: 

• Check your page rankings – With tools like Google Search Console, you can see which search queries your website is ranking for. If some of your pages aren’t ranking as you had hoped, it’s time to reassess the keywords you’re currently using, and how well you’re targeting them.
• See what your competitors are ranking for – Your business’ competitors might be targeting keywords you haven’t yet considered. Use tools like Semrush to see which keywords they’re ranking for and work out whether you could rank ahead of them in search results.
• See if there’s any seasonal changes – Depending on the time of year, some keywords may perform better than others. Use your keyword tools and website analytics to identify any seasonal trends and tweak your website’s content accordingly.

With these new insights, you can optimize your content effectively. This could include pausing the use of low-ranking keywords that aren’t driving much traffic to a page, or creating some more original content based on popular keywords you’ve found.

Once you understand how to conduct keyword research for SEO, you have a lot to gain. The great thing about this practice is that there there are plenty of applications for it, including:  

• For general SEO best practice: If you’ve integrated your keywords with your website’s content, such as meta descriptions and alternative text, you can improve page rankings and increase organic traffic.
• To set up paid campaigns: When you’re ready for paid advertising campaigns like Google Ads or social media ads, keyword research gives you the best words to use. This expands the reach of your ads and ups the return on investment (ROI). 
• To inform your content strategy: Keyword research can tell you about the topics that interest your audience. You can create content around these keywords, attracting even more visitors. Targeted content means relevant information that keeps your audience on your site, and that results in more visibility on your pages and a chance of higher conversion rates. 

For accurate keyword research, I suggest using a mixture of SEO tools when looking for keywords and determining whether they’re suitable for your website’s SEO strategy. Here are a few of the most popular options:

Ahrefs 

• Cost: $108-$374 per month (billed annually)

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO keyword tool with a huge keyword database and accurate search volume data. Its “Keyword Explorer” tool gives you keyword data including keyword difficulty, search volume, and clicks-per-search, while you can brainstorm keywords through its AI feature and group keywords by topic.

Semrush 

• Cost: $117-$416.66 per month (billed annually) – but get ten daily searches for free

Semrush has robust SEO keyword research capabilities, a user-friendly interface, highly-detailed keyword reports, and competitor analysis (to help you analyze your competitors’ keywords and strategies).  

I recommend using its “Keyword Magic Tool”, which will cover all of your basic keyword research needs. It helps you find the right keywords by showing the broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords, along with their search volume, trend data, and difficulty score.   

Google Keyword Planner 

• Cost: Free to use

Google Keyword Planner is not only a free tool, but it’s extremely powerful because its insights come directly from Google, the world’s most popular search engine.  

Though it’s technically meant for paid search campaigns, it finds keywords related to your business or industry and gives search volume and competition-level info for each keyword. 

Moz Keyword Explorer  

• Cost: $39-$239 per month (billed annually)

Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a useful tool for SEO keyword research thanks to its predictive metrics, which can let you know which keywords are worth targeting in the first place. 

It gives you a wide variety of data, including monthly search volume, difficulty, priority, and click-through rate. And it also suggests related keywords and which websites are high-rankers for the target keyword. 

Mangools KWFinder

• Cost: $29.90-$89.90 per month (billed annually)

Are you a small business with limited resources? Mangools’ KWFinder has a user-friendly interface and focuses on finding less competitive keywords. That means you can be a big fish in a smaller pond instead of competing against the big sharks.  

The tool finds those long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty so that you can spot good opportunities. On top of that, it will give you keyword suggestions, search volume data, and information on trends.  

As I’ve explained, knowing how to do keyword research is an essential part of any SEO strategy. You want to drive appropriate visitors to your website – all it takes is knowing the best keywords to target these visitors effectively, and how to use them across your website and content. 

So, SEO keyword research is a goldmine of information that every website should tap into, giving you all the insights you need to target your ideal audience. When you understand your audience’s language and meet them where they are, you can boost your visibility, drive traffic to your site, and ultimately, grow your business online.