How to Do Keyword Research That Actually Drives Traffic
Written by Anthony Eneje · Head of SEO & AI SearchWritten by Anthony Eneje · Head of SEO & AI Search
Keyword research is the process of finding the exact words and phrases people type into search engines, then shaping your pages around the ones you can realistically win. Done well, it tells you what your customers want, in their own words, before you spend a penny creating content. Done badly, or skipped, it is the single most common reason websites publish for months and get nothing back.
Here is the six-step keyword research process we use at Rank Craft for every client campaign, using free tools wherever possible.
Every ranking you will ever earn starts with a search query. Keyword research matters because it replaces guessing with data on three questions: what people actually search for (search volume), how hard each term is to win (keyword difficulty), and what searchers really want when they type it (search intent). Miss any of the three and you get the classic failures: pages targeting keywords nobody searches, pages chasing terms only national brands can rank for, or pages that rank briefly and never convert because they answer the wrong question.
A seed keyword is a simple phrase describing what you sell, such as "wedding photographer" or "accountancy software". List ten to twenty of them. Your best sources are your own head, your customers' emails and enquiries (steal their phrasing, it is how they search), competitor websites, and Google's own autocomplete and "People also ask" boxes, which are live windows into what people search around your topic.
Feed your seed keywords into a keyword tool and let it multiply them into hundreds of related keyword ideas. Google Keyword Planner is free and gives you Google's own search volume data. Google Trends shows whether interest is rising, falling or seasonal. Paid tools like Semrush or Ahrefs add depth, but a small business can get a long way on the free ones. Export everything into a spreadsheet. A messy keyword list of 300 terms is exactly what you want at this stage.
Search intent is the reason behind the query, and it decides what kind of page can rank. "How to fix a leaking tap" wants a guide. "Emergency plumber near me" wants a service page and a phone number. "Best boiler brands 2026" wants a comparison. Label each keyword informational, commercial or transactional, then match it to the right page type. This single step is what separates keyword research that drives revenue from keyword research that drives vanity traffic, and it is also how you avoid cannibalising your own service pages with blog posts chasing the same term.
For each promising keyword, weigh search volume against keyword difficulty. High search volume almost always brings high competition, and a new or small site will not outrank national brands for head terms in any reasonable timeframe. The smart play is long-tail keywords: longer, more specific search queries like "keyword research for local businesses" rather than "keywords". Each one brings less traffic, but they are far easier to rank for, they convert better because the searcher is specific, and there are thousands of them. Search volume that looks small on paper compounds quickly across fifty long-tail pages.
Before creating anything new, open Google Search Console and look at the queries where you already appear at positions 8 to 25. These are your fastest wins: Google has already decided you are relevant, and a content refresh, better internal linking or an improved title is often enough to push a page from the bottom of page one onto the top half, where the clicks live. We cover more quick wins like this in our guide to common SEO mistakes.
Whichever keyword research tool you use, you will keep meeting the same handful of numbers. Monthly search volume tells you how many times a keyword is searched, but treat it as a comparison tool rather than a promise, because ranking number one never captures every search. Keyword difficulty scores estimate how hard the keyword will be to rank for, based on the strength of the pages already ranking. And click data matters more than either: some keywords with high search volume send few clicks because an AI overview or featured snippet answers the query on the spot.
Two more ideas worth knowing. A keyword gap analysis compares your keyword list against a competitor's rankings to find keyword opportunities they win and you have not touched, and it is the fastest way to build a keyword strategy when you are behind. And every page needs one focus keyword: the single search term the page exists to win, with related keyword phrases woven in naturally around it.
Finish by assigning every target keyword to a specific URL: one primary keyword per page, with related terms supporting it. Service keywords go to service pages, question keywords go to guides and blog posts, and location keywords go to location pages. This keyword map becomes your content calendar for the next six months. Then write for the human first and the keyword second, because pages that genuinely answer the query are the ones that hold their ranking after every algorithm update.
Repeat the whole process every quarter or so. Search behaviour shifts, competitors move, and AI search is changing how queries are phrased. Keyword research is not a one-off task, it is how your SEO strategy stays pointed at reality. And if you would rather have it done for you, with the content written and ranked as well, our SEO services start with exactly this process.
Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console are the strongest free combination. Keyword Planner gives you search volume and keyword ideas, while Search Console shows the queries your site already ranks for. Google Trends adds seasonality. Together they cover most of what a small business needs.
One primary keyword per page, supported by a handful of closely related terms and phrasings. If two keywords mean the same thing, they belong on the same page. If they mean different things, they need different pages.
AI tools are useful for brainstorming seed keywords and grouping terms by topic, but they do not know real search volume or keyword difficulty. Always validate AI suggestions in a keyword research tool with live data before building pages around them.
Anthony leads SEO and AI search at Rank Craft. He plans and runs the ranking campaigns behind our client results, and spends most of his week inside search data, site audits and AI visibility testing. More articles by Anthony.