How to Conduct Keyword Research | Proven Strategies & Tips

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Keyword research is all about getting inside your audience's head. You're trying to figure out what words they type into Google when they're looking for solutions, how often they search for them, and what kind of competition you're up against. It’s a process of understanding customer problems first and then turning that insight into a content strategy that brings in the right kind of traffic.

Understanding the Fundamentals of Keyword Research

Before you start plugging terms into a tool, you need to get the basics down. This is the foundation for your whole SEO effort. Get this right, and you're building on solid ground; get it wrong, and the whole thing can come tumbling down.

The real goal here is to move past just chasing keywords with high search numbers and start thinking about the why behind every single search. For a deeper dive, check out our full guide on what what Search Engine Optimization is and how it all fits together.

Good research starts with knowing your audience, and that goes beyond just keywords. Understanding how to conduct market research effectively gives you a massive advantage because it helps you anticipate what people need before they even start typing.

Decoding User Intent and Keyword Types

Let's get one thing straight: not all keywords are created equal. The magic happens when you understand what someone is actually trying to do when they search. We call this search intent, and it usually boils down to a few main types.

Decoding Keyword Types and User Intent

Use this table as a quick reference to align your content with what users are actually looking for when they type in a search query.

Keyword Type	Example	Typical Search Intent	Best Content Format
Informational	"how to start a blog"	Looking for answers or instructions	Blog posts, guides, tutorials, videos
Navigational	"Feather blog login"	Trying to find a specific website or page	Homepage, login page, product page
Commercial	"best blogging platforms 2024"	Researching products before buying	Comparison articles, reviews, lists
Transactional	"feather.so pricing"	Ready to make a purchase or sign up	Pricing pages, sales pages, product pages

One of the most common mistakes I see is people pouring all their effort into high-volume informational keywords when their actual goal is to drive sales. While "how-to" articles are fantastic for building authority and attracting traffic, it's the transactional and commercial keywords that have a direct line to your revenue. A winning strategy uses a smart mix of content to catch people at every stage.

This is especially true for long-tail keywords—those longer, super-specific phrases. They might have lower search volume, but they almost always convert better because the intent is so clear. Think "best lightweight blogging platform for solo founders" versus just "blogging platform."

The entire keyword research tools market is estimated to be worth $1.2 billion, and a huge chunk of that is driven by businesses zeroing in on these high-intent, specific queries.

Key Takeaway: Keyword research is less about finding single words and more about understanding the problems and questions behind them. Your content should provide the solution, not just echo the query.

Finding Your Initial Seed Keywords

This might sound counterintuitive, but the best keyword research starts by completely ignoring SEO tools. Before you even think about search volume or difficulty scores, your first job is to brainstorm a list of seed keywords.

These are the foundational topics and gut-check phrases that describe what you do, straight from the source. Forget the marketing jargon for a minute and think like your customer. What problem are you actually solving for them?

For a company like Feather, some initial seed keywords might be "start a blog," "Notion to blog," or "SEO for bloggers." Simple, right? This list doesn't need to be long or perfect—it's just a starting point to ground your entire strategy in reality.

Tapping Into the Voice of Your Customer

Here’s a secret: your most powerful keyword intelligence isn't hiding in a fancy tool. It’s buried in your everyday customer communications. Your audience is already telling you exactly what they need and the words they use to describe their frustrations. You just have to listen.

This human-first approach is what ensures your content will actually connect with people. It’s built on real user needs, not just abstract data points. These sources are absolute goldmines for understanding how real people talk about their problems and what they hope to achieve.

Here are a few places I always start digging:

Customer Support Tickets: Comb through your emails and chat logs. What are the most common questions and complaints people have?

Sales Call Recordings: Listen to how prospects talk about their pain points before they know your solution. That unfiltered language is pure gold.

Online Communities: Jump into forums like Reddit, Quora, or niche Facebook groups related to your industry. Search for your product category and see what questions pop up over and over again.

For example, a quick search in a subreddit like r/Notion might turn up a post titled, "How can I make my Notion pages look like a real blog?" That tells you people want a professional "blog" aesthetic—a much richer insight than a generic term like "Notion website."

Building Your Foundational List

Once you've gathered all this raw intel, start compiling it into a simple list. Don't get hung up on search volume or keyword difficulty yet. The only goal here is to capture the authentic language of your audience.

Let's say you sell ergonomic office chairs. Your customer-focused research might uncover phrases like:

"desk chair for back pain"

"how to fix posture while working"

"best home office setup for long hours"

These are your seed keywords. They form the foundation for everything that comes next. This initial legwork is what separates a generic, soulless list of terms from a powerful, customer-centric keyword strategy that actually drives results.

Using SEO Tools to Expand Your Keyword List

Alright, you’ve got your foundational seed keywords. Now it’s time to multiply your opportunities and move from human intuition to data-driven expansion. This is where powerful SEO platforms turn a handful of ideas into thousands of potential content topics.

Think of your initial list as the fuel. When you plug a seed keyword like "Notion to blog" into a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, you're not just getting data on that one term. You're unlocking a massive web of related queries that real people are searching for every single day.

This process transforms your limited perspective into a panoramic view of your audience's entire world of questions and needs. You’ll stumble upon angles and specific phrases you would have never thought of on your own.

The screenshot above from Ahrefs shows exactly what I mean. A single seed term gets broken down into categories like "Matching terms" and "Related terms," instantly giving you hundreds of new directions to explore.

Uncovering Hidden Keyword Opportunities

The real magic of these platforms is their ability to slice and dice vast amounts of data. Instead of staring at a raw list of terms, you can zero in on keyword types that align with different content strategies. This is where you find the gold.

Most professional SEO tools let you isolate specific types of queries. Here are a few reports I always check first:

Question-Based Keywords: Find the "Questions" report. This is a goldmine, directly spitting out queries that start with "who," "what," "where," "when," "why," and "how." These are perfect for creating helpful, top-of-funnel blog content that solves a specific user problem.

Related Terms: This report uses algorithms to find keywords that don't even contain your seed term but are semantically related. For "Notion to blog," it might suggest something like "website builder for writers," opening up an entirely new topic cluster you hadn't considered.

Long-Tail Variations: These are longer, more specific phrases that signal high user intent. The same principles used for mastering long-tail keywords on Amazon to capture specific customer searches apply directly to blogging.

By filtering for long-tail keywords with a low keyword difficulty score, you can find quick wins—topics you can rank for relatively easily, even if your site is new. This is how you build initial momentum.

Analyzing Your Competitors' Keywords

One of the most valuable things you can do with SEO tools is spy on your competition. Why guess what works when you can see exactly what’s already driving traffic for your rivals? Just pop a competitor’s domain into the tool, and you can generate a list of all the keywords they rank for.

This isn't about copying their strategy—it's about finding gaps and opportunities. Filter their keyword list to find terms where they rank on page two or three. If you see they're ranking with a mediocre piece of content, that's a prime opportunity for you to create something better and steal that spot.

Of course, for bloggers just starting out, finding the right platform is the first step. To make that process easier, we've compiled a list of the best https://feather.so/blog/seo-tools-for-bloggers to get you started. Using these tools for competitor analysis provides a clear roadmap, showing you which topics are already proven to attract an audience in your niche.

Analyzing Keyword Intent and Competitiveness

Alright, you've got a massive list of potential keywords. That's a great start, but it's really just a pile of raw data. The real magic happens when we start prioritizing—transforming that list into a smart, actionable content strategy. This means digging into what people actually want when they type in a query and getting real about who you're up against.

Metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty from your favorite SEO tool are just the starting point. They give you a high-level view, but they don't tell the whole story. To get the ground truth, you have to manually analyze the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for your top contenders. This is where you see what Google thinks is the best answer for that keyword.

As you can see, there's a constant balancing act between keyword opportunities, the difficulty of ranking, and what it might cost you in time and resources.

Understanding the SERP Landscape

Before you commit to a single keyword, pop open an incognito browser window and search for it. The results page is a goldmine. It tells you exactly what kind of content you need to create to even have a shot at ranking.

Pay close attention to the types of pages you see on page one. Are they mostly:

In-depth blog posts and long-form guides?

Product or service pages from your direct competitors?

YouTube videos or a bunch of images?

News articles or recent press releases?

If the top ten results are all 3,000-word ultimate guides, your slick new product page doesn't stand a chance. Google has already decided what users want for that query, and your job is to create a better version of that. You have to match the dominant content format.

Pro Tip: Don't just glance at the top three results. I've seen it time and time again—the real story is on the full first page. Analyze all ten blue links to get a complete picture of the angles, formats, and level of detail that are winning right now.

Gauging True Keyword Competition

Keyword difficulty scores are handy, but they're just algorithm-based estimates. You can't rely on them alone. True competition analysis means manually looking at the sites that are already ranking. A quick look will tell you if you're up against industry titans like Wikipedia or Amazon, which makes the climb significantly steeper. Diving into why this manual review is so critical is a core part of understanding how search intent impacts keyword strategy.

When you're sizing up the competition, ask yourself these questions about the top-ranking pages:

Domain Authority (DA): Are the top spots held by major industry players with sky-high authority scores? If your site is relatively new, trying to outrank domains with a DA of 80+ is a long, expensive battle.

Backlink Profiles: Use an SEO tool to take a quick peek at the backlink profile of the top pages. Are they propped up by thousands of high-quality links? That's a huge barrier to entry and shows a serious investment.

Content Quality: Now, actually read their content. Is it truly amazing? Or is it a bit thin, outdated, or just plain boring? If you spot weaknesses, you've just found your opening.

This manual SERP analysis gives you the context that raw numbers just can't provide. It helps you dodge months of wasted effort on keywords you can't realistically rank for and instead focus on topics where you can actually compete and win.

To bring all this analysis together, I use a simple framework to score and prioritize my target keywords. It forces you to think beyond just volume and difficulty.

The Keyword Prioritization Framework

Keyword	Monthly Volume	Keyword Difficulty	Business Relevance (1-5)	Intent Match (1-5)	Priority Score
how to choose a crm	1200	45	5	5	10
crm software for small business	2500	62	5	4	9
what is a crm	5000	30	3	3	6
salesforce alternative	800	75	4	2	6

By scoring each potential keyword across these different factors, you get a much clearer, data-informed picture of where your best opportunities lie. This simple table can be the difference between a scattershot approach and a focused, high-impact content strategy.

Turning Your Keywords Into a Content Plan

Alright, you've done the hard work and now you have a prioritized list of keywords. That's a huge win, but it’s still just a list. Now comes the most important part: turning that raw data into an actual, actionable content plan. This is where your research transforms into a roadmap that ties every piece of content you create back to a strategic goal.

If you skip this step, you end up creating random articles that don't connect with each other, fail to build any real authority, and leave your audience wondering what to do next. The secret is to group your keywords into logical themes. This lets you cover a topic from every angle, rather than just firing off one-and-done posts for isolated terms.

This strategic approach does more than just help your audience; it screams to search engines that you are the expert on this subject.

Adopting the Topic Cluster Model

One of the most powerful frameworks for organizing your content strategy is the topic cluster model. It’s a simple but brilliant concept: you create one massive "pillar" page covering a broad, high-volume topic. Then, you support it with a bunch of smaller "cluster" pages that dive deep into more specific, long-tail keywords related to that pillar.

Imagine a wheel. Your pillar page is the hub at the center, and all the cluster pages are the spokes. Each spoke links back to the hub, and the hub links out to the spokes, creating a powerful, interconnected structure.

Pillar Page: This is your comprehensive, ultimate guide. If you're a marketing agency, a pillar page might be "A Complete Guide to Social Media Marketing." It covers all the core aspects but doesn't get lost in the weeds on any single one.

Cluster Content: These are the deep-dive articles. For the "Social Media Marketing" pillar, your cluster content could be posts like "how to create a bulletproof social media calendar" or "the best analytics tools for Instagram stories."

This structure weaves a tight web of internal links that signals your site's authority on the entire topic to Google. It’s how you start ranking for both the big, competitive head terms and dozens of highly specific long-tail queries at the same time.

Mapping Keywords to Your Content Calendar

Once your keywords are neatly grouped into clusters, it's time to get them on a calendar. This doesn't need to be fancy—a simple spreadsheet is all you need to turn your keyword list into a production schedule. For a deeper dive, there are plenty of advanced content planning strategies you can explore to sync this up with your broader marketing efforts.

Start by slotting in your highest-priority keywords first. These are the ones with that perfect mix of search volume, business relevance, and a difficulty level you can actually tackle. For each one, assign a content format (blog post, guide, video, etc.) and give it a firm publication date.

Key Insight: Don’t just map one keyword to one post. For every piece of content, include a handful of secondary, related keywords. This helps you write more naturally and gives your article a fighting chance to rank for a much wider range of searches.

Integrating Keywords into On-Page SEO

The final piece of the puzzle is making sure your keywords are actually in your content in a smart way. This is not about "keyword stuffing." It’s about strategically placing your terms to make the topic crystal clear to both your readers and the search engine bots.

Here’s a quick checklist for where your keywords should live:

Page Title (Title Tag): Get your primary keyword as close to the beginning as you can.

URL: Keep it short, sweet, and include the main keyword.

Main Heading (H1): Your H1 tag absolutely must feature your primary keyword.

Subheadings (H2, H3): Sprinkle variations of your primary and secondary keywords here to add structure and context.

First Paragraph: Naturally mention your keyword within the first 100 words.

Image Alt Text: Describe your images for accessibility, and use relevant keywords where it makes sense.

By following this process, you create a direct line from your initial research to every single article you publish. It ensures your entire content strategy is driven by data and built to win.

Common Questions About Keyword Research

Even with a solid game plan, you're bound to run into some questions once you're elbows-deep in keyword data. It just happens. Let's walk through some of the most common ones I hear—getting these cleared up will make your whole process smoother.

One of the biggest questions is always about timing. Is keyword research a one-and-done task? Absolutely not. Search trends shift, new slang pops up, and your own business goals change. What worked last year might not work today.

To keep your strategy sharp, you should do a full-scale review of all your keywords every 6-12 months. This is your chance to catch bigger market shifts and find new opportunities. On a more frequent basis, you should be doing fresh research any time you're about to launch a new product, service, or a big piece of content. That ensures you're perfectly aligned with what people are searching for right now.

How Do I Know If I Can Actually Rank for a Keyword?

This is the million-dollar question. You see a keyword with a "difficulty" score, but what does that number even mean? Honestly, there's no single "good" score. It’s all relative to your own website's authority.

If you’re working with a brand-new site, you need to be realistic. Stick to keywords with a difficulty score under 20 on most SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. For a more established website with a decent history and some good backlinks, targeting keywords in the 40-60 range is a much more achievable goal. It’s all about playing in your own league and picking battles you can actually win.

Instead, your strategy should be laser-focused on two areas:

Low-competition, long-tail keywords: These are super-specific, multi-word phrases that bigger, slower competitors often completely ignore. Think "best lightweight hiking shoes for wide feet" instead of just "hiking shoes."

Question-based keywords: Answering a user's specific question is one of the best ways to get on Google's good side. Creating a definitive answer gives you a real shot at getting noticed.

By creating the absolute best piece of content for these kinds of targeted searches, you can start winning small battles. Those early wins bring in your first trickles of traffic and, more importantly, start building the authority you need to eventually take on the bigger keywords. It's all about building momentum.

Ready to turn your research into a high-performance blog? Feather transforms your Notion pages into a fully functional, SEO-friendly blog without any coding. Start publishing beautiful, optimized content in minutes. Build your blog with Feather today.