Keyword research

Keyword research is the process of discovering the actual queries your audience searches and deciding which ones are worth targeting. It combines demand signals (search volume, trends), competitive signals (difficulty, who ranks now), and intent to produce a prioritized list of topics that map to pages. Done well, it aligns what you publish with what people already ask, rather than guessing.

How it works

The workflow starts with seed terms and expands them using tools, autocomplete, “people also ask” boxes, related searches, and your own Search Console query data. Each candidate is evaluated on volume, difficulty, intent, and business value, then grouped into clusters so that one page targets one primary query plus its close variants. Modern research increasingly weighs how a term surfaces in AI answers and featured snippets, not just classic rankings. The output is a keyword map: query, intent, target URL, and priority.

Where it applies

Keyword research decides where finite content effort goes.

• Ecommerce — reveals which category and attribute terms carry buying demand versus pure browsing.
• B2B and SaaS — surfaces problem-aware and solution-aware queries that feed a content funnel.
• Publishing — identifies durable, high-volume topics worth deep coverage over disposable news.
• Local — uncovers service-plus-geography combinations that drive qualified nearby traffic.
• Marketplaces — exposes the long tail of specific item and category queries at scale.

What matters from each seat

• In-house — tie every keyword to a business outcome, not just volume, so the roadmap earns its place against other priorities.
• Agency and consulting — a clean keyword-to-URL map prevents the cannibalization and content sprawl that quietly cap a client’s growth.
• Editorial — research sets the brief, but the writer still owns matching intent and depth to what the SERP rewards.
• Merchandising — attribute and category demand data should inform navigation and page structure, not just blog topics.