Chapter 2: Keyword Research
2.1 Keyword basics and commercial metrics
11 entries- 46 Keyword The words a person types into a search box to describe what they want. It is the target your content is aimed at.
- 47 Seed Keyword The broadest term you start from, used to expand into hundreds of narrower phrases inside a research tool.
- 48 Head Term (Short Tail) One or two words, enormous volume, almost no discernible intent, and every competitor in the category fighting for it.
- 49 Long-Tail Keyword Three or more words, small volume, and an intent specific enough that the person searching is usually ready to act.
- 50 Search Volume The average number of monthly searches for a term in one specific country or region.
- 51 Keyword Difficulty (KD) A tool's estimate, usually on a scale of zero to a hundred, of how hard it is to reach the first page for a term.
- 52 Competition In Google Ads keyword planning, an indicator of how many advertisers are bidding on a term.
- 53 CPC (Cost Per Click) The most an advertiser will pay for one click on a term.
- 54 Keyword Trend The shape of a term's search volume over time, which shows where it sits in its life cycle.
- 55 Seasonal Keyword A term that only produces demand in one season, or in the weeks before a holiday.
- 56 Evergreen Keyword A term whose volume stays flat all year, untouched by season or fashion.
2.2 Intent types and the language behind them
11 entries- 57 Navigational Keyword A search from someone who already knows where they want to go and is using the search box as an address bar.
- 58 Informational Keyword A search from someone trying to understand something, with no intention of buying in this session.
- 59 Commercial Investigation Keyword A search from someone who has decided to buy but not what, and is comparing the options.
- 60 Transactional Keyword A search from someone who has decided, and is looking for the place to complete the action.
- 61 Branded Keyword A search containing your company or product name.
- 62 Non-Branded Keyword A generic industry term containing no company name, where the searcher does not yet know who you are.
- 63 Question Keyword A full question, usually opening with an interrogative, phrased the way a person would actually ask it out loud.
- 64 Localized Keyword A search with an explicit geographic limit, either a place name or a radius implied by near me.
- 65 LSI Keyword Terms that reliably appear alongside a subject because the subject implies them. The vocabulary of the topic rather than its synonyms.
- 66 Synonyms and Variants Different words, or different word order, for the same thing.
- 67 Keyword Modifier An adjective or qualifier attached to a core term to narrow its scope and sharpen the intent.
2.3 Finding, clustering, mapping and scheduling
28 entries- 68 Keyword Research The full process of finding, filtering and analysing what buyers search, then turning it into a publishing plan.
- 69 Brainstorming Listing what customers probably search, from business knowledge and customer profiles, before any tool is opened.
- 70 Google Autocomplete The suggestions that appear under the search box as you type.
- 71 Related Searches The suggestions pinned to the bottom of a results page, shown because people who searched what you searched went on to search these.
- 72 Keyword Magic Tool (Semrush) An expansion engine that turns one seed into thousands of related terms and files them into topic groups automatically.
- 73 Keyword Planner The free research tool inside Google Ads, drawing on Google's own query data rather than a third-party crawl.
- 74 Keywords Explorer (Ahrefs) A keyword panel showing volume, clicks, difficulty, parent topic and the recent history of the results page in one view.
- 75 AnswerThePublic A visualiser that turns autocomplete into a branching map of questions, prepositions and comparisons around a single term.
- 76 Keyword Grouping (Clustering) Sorting queries by shared meaning and shared intent so one page answers a whole set instead of a single phrase.
- 77 Topic Cluster A hub page on a broad subject, surrounded by narrower pages that each answer one part of it, all tied together by internal links.
- 78 Keyword Mapping Assigning every keyword group to exactly one URL, and writing that assignment down where the whole team can see it.
- 79 Content Gap Analysis The set of keywords competitors rank for that you do not cover at all.
- 80 Keyword Cannibalization Two or more pages on the same site competing for one query, which leaves the engine unsure which to show and usually weakens both.
- 81 Intent Matching Making the page the same kind of thing as the results already ranking for the query.
- 82 Rank Tracking Automated daily or weekly monitoring of where a site sits for a defined list of queries.
- 83 SERP Analysis Studying the ten results currently ranking for a query in order to decide whether you can beat them.
- 84 Keyword Prioritization Scoring a large keyword list by value, volume, difficulty and the effort each page needs, so work happens in the right order.
- 85 Long-Tail Strategy A deliberate plan to publish many narrow pages instead of fighting for a few broad ones.
- 86 Question Mining Collecting the specific questions people ask about a subject, to use as FAQ entries and as article structure.
- 87 Competitor Keywords The full set of queries currently bringing traffic to a direct competitor.
- 88 Keyword Gap The comparison between your keyword set and a competitor's, showing where you overlap and where each side is missing.
- 89 Low-Competition Keyword A query where the first page is held by weak domains, forum threads, or pages nobody has touched in years.
- 90 Zero-Volume Keyword A query the tools report as zero to ten monthly searches, which nonetheless carries real commercial weight.
- 91 Keyword ROI The expected return on the content, links and time needed to rank, weighed against what that position is worth.
- 92 Demand Validation Confirming that demand exists and is large enough before committing to a body of content.
- 93 Micro Long-Tail An extremely specific phrase, usually five words or more, that almost nobody searches and almost nobody writes for.
- 94 Keyword Lifecycle The arc a query travels, from first appearance through peak demand to maturity and eventual decline.
- 95 Searcher Language The informal, spoken phrasing buyers actually type, which is usually not the language the industry uses for the same thing.
Chapter SOP and interview questions
Keyword research SOP for a cold-start site
- Harvest seeds from humans, not tools. Sit with product and sales for thirty minutes and write down the ten phrases customers actually use on calls. Tools give you vocabulary; customers give you intent.
- Pull the competitive vocabulary. Put each seed into Ahrefs Keywords Explorer or Semrush Keyword Magic, set the market to your primary country, and export everything. Use the “having same terms” and “questions” filters rather than the default list — the default list is padded with the same phrase in different word order.
- Clean before you grade. In a sheet, delete anything irrelevant to what you sell, then tag every remaining row with one intent: informational, commercial investigation, transactional, or navigational. A keyword you cannot assign to one of those four is not a keyword, it is a category.
- Apply the cold-start filter. Volume above a floor you set deliberately (50 is a common starting point in small markets), difficulty below what your domain can realistically beat. Write the floor and ceiling down in the sheet header so nobody renegotiates them later.
- Check the SERP by hand. For every shortlisted keyword, look at the actual top ten. You are looking for evidence the engine is still undecided: forums, Quora or Reddit threads, thin listicles, or pages from small domains. If the top ten is entirely major brands, the difficulty score is telling the truth no matter how low it looks.
- Cluster by what the SERP shows, not by stem. Two keywords with the same stem can need different pages; two with different stems can share one page. Merge when the top ten overlap heavily, split when they do not.
- Map one keyword cluster to one URL. Every cluster gets exactly one destination. If a keyword has no destination, it is a content brief. If a URL has two clusters, you have built future cannibalisation.
- Sequence by commercial value, not by volume. On a new site, publish commercial-investigation pages before high-volume informational ones: they convert, they face weaker competition, and they tell you within weeks whether the positioning works.
What to keep after the exercise
A research file that nobody opens again is a cost, not an asset. Keep three artefacts: the query map (cluster → URL → owner → status), the intent tags, and a short note per priority cluster explaining why it matters commercially. Everything else can be regenerated in an hour.
Interview questions and answer frameworks
Q1: How would you do keyword research for a brand-new SaaS product?
Framework: Four steps, and be explicit about the sequencing. First, discovery interviews — what the product replaces, who signs the cheque, and what those people currently type into Google when they feel the pain. Second, competitive mining — three closest competitors, their top pages and organic keywords, so you start from evidence rather than imagination. Third, intent sorting — commercial-investigation terms (“best X software”, “X alternatives”, “X vs Y”) convert first; informational terms build the topical base but pay later. Fourth, delivery — a query map with one URL per cluster and a three-month publishing calendar, so the research turns into a schedule instead of a spreadsheet.
Q2: A keyword has huge volume but very high difficulty. Do you abandon it?
Framework: No — you reframe it. Read the SERP before you read the difficulty score. If the top ten is all category-defining brands with dedicated teams, you cannot win head-on today, but you can win the modifiers: “for small teams”, “for agencies”, “pricing”, “alternatives”, and the year-qualified variants where freshness matters. If the top ten contains forums, thin pages or clearly outdated content, the engine is telling you nobody has answered well — that is a legitimate entry point, and it requires a genuinely better page, not a longer one. Either way the answer is a decision about sequencing, not a verdict about the keyword.
Q3: What is keyword cannibalisation, and how do you find and fix it?
Framework: Define it precisely: two or more URLs on the same site competing for the same query, so the engine alternates between them and neither accumulates authority. Find it in Search Console — filter the query, open the Pages tab, and look for several URLs trading impressions with unstable positions. Then decide by intent, not by traffic: if the pages serve the same intent, keep the stronger one, merge the useful parts, and 301 the rest. If they genuinely serve different intents, differentiate them properly — separate titles, separate headings, distinct angle — and link from the supporting page to the primary one with descriptive anchor text. The mistake to name out loud is fixing cannibalisation by adding more pages.
Q4: How do you decide the order in which to publish?
Framework: Three inputs: commercial value per visit, realistic time to rank, and production cost. Commercial-investigation pages usually win on the first two and lose on the third, which is why they should not be the only thing you publish. High-volume informational pages compound — they earn links and establish the topical base that makes commercial pages rank — but they take longer to pay. The honest answer is a portfolio: a few high-intent pages early to prove the model, a steady stream of informational clusters to build authority, and a review point at ninety days where the data, not the plan, sets the next quarter.