Keyword Research for Beginners: Find Terms You Can Rank For
Published · 9 min read
Keyword research is finding out what people type or ask before they find a business like yours, then deciding which of those terms a page on your site can realistically win. You do not need a paid tool. You need a clear picture of what you sell, a few free sources for expanding the list, and the discipline to read the results page instead of a difficulty score.
Start with what the business sells and who asks
Most keyword lists go wrong before any tool is opened, because they start from the words the company uses about itself. Customers rarely use those words. So the first step is two short lists. The first is what you sell, in plain terms: the product, the problems it solves, and when someone needs it. The second is who asks: the roles or industries of the people who buy, and the words they used when they first got in touch. Support tickets, sales calls, and contact-form questions are the best source. If a question turns up three times in email, it turns up in search too.
Build a seed list
A seed list is ten to thirty short terms that describe the business from the outside. It does not need to be complete, only broad enough that the expansion step has something to work from.
- The words a stranger would use for your category (for an invoicing product: “invoice software”, “invoicing app”, “billing tool”).
- The problems it solves, as the customer would say them (“send an invoice”, “chase a late payment”).
- The audiences from your second list as modifiers (“for freelancers”, “for contractors”).
- The alternatives people compare you with, including doing nothing (“invoice template”, “invoice in Excel”).
- The questions that come up before purchase (“how to write an invoice”, “what to put on an invoice”).
Expand the list with free sources
The sources below are free, and four come from Google itself, so the phrasing is real rather than modeled.
- Google autocomplete. Type a seed and note the suggestions. Then add a letter at a time (“invoice software a”, “invoice software b”), and prefix a question word (“how”, “can”) to surface question forms.
- People Also Ask. Search the seed and expand the People Also Ask box; each expanded question loads more. These are questions Google has seen asked around the topic, in the words people used.
- Related searches. The block at the bottom of the results page shows sibling queries and the modifiers people attach to the seed.
- Search Console queries you already get impressions for. If the site has been live for a while, open the Performance report and sort queries by impressions. Terms where you sit on page two or three are the easiest wins, because Google already considers the page relevant. Google's documentation is on Search Central.
- Competitor titles. Read the titles of the top ten results for each seed. Titles are where competitors put the term they want to rank for, so they show which phrasing the current winners chose.
Put everything into one spreadsheet, one term per row. Expect a few hundred rows. Near-duplicates are fine for now; they get merged when you group.
Read the intent behind each term
Search intent is what the person wants to happen after they search. The same word carries different intents depending on the modifier, and each intent is satisfied by a different page type. Google's SEO starter guide makes the same point: think about what your readers are searching for and write content that answers it. The four common categories are below.
| Intent | What the person wants | Example query | Page type that fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Informational | To learn or understand something | what to put on an invoice | Guide, explainer, FAQ, how-to article |
| Commercial | To compare options before choosing | best invoicing software for freelancers | Comparison, review, “X vs Y”, alternatives page |
| Transactional | To buy, sign up, or download now | invoice software free trial | Product page, pricing page, signup page |
| Navigational | To reach a specific site or page | quickbooks login | Only the brand's own page; do not target other brands |
When the intent is unclear from the words, look at what ranks. If the first page is all guides, Google has decided the intent is informational, and a product page will not rank there however well it is built. Add an intent column to the sheet.
Judge difficulty from the SERP, not a score
Keyword tools publish a difficulty number. It is a model, usually built from the backlink profiles of the pages that currently rank; Google exposes nothing like it. The results page shows the same information directly. Search each term in a private window and look at four things.
- Who ranks. If the first page is entirely large brands, major publishers, government sites, or universities, a new site is unlikely to displace them soon. Small blogs, forum threads, or directory listings mean there is room.
- What page types rank. Ten long guides mean you need a long guide. A mix of product pages and guides means mixed intent, and either type can fit. A thin page on page one is a sign the query is under-served.
- Brand versus small sites. Count the results from sites with an obvious brand. Three or fewer is encouraging. Eight or more usually is not.
- Freshness. If every result is from this year and updated often, the topic rewards maintenance. If the top results are years old, a current, accurate page has an opening.
Record a three-level judgement for each term: open, contested, or closed. It is subjective, but it rests on what you saw, not on a number whose inputs you cannot inspect.
Group into topics and map one primary term per page
A few hundred rows do not become a few hundred pages. Merge rows that a single page would satisfy: “how to write an invoice”, “how to make an invoice”, and “what to put on an invoice” are one topic and one page. The test is whether the same reader would be happy landing on the same page for each phrasing.
Each group gets one primary term, which sets the title tag and the H1; the other terms appear naturally in the headings and body. Assign the group to an existing page or one you will create, and write the URL in the sheet. No two pages should share a primary term.
This prevents cannibalization: two pages on the same site competing for the same term, so that Google alternates between them or ranks neither consistently. If you already have overlapping pages, merge them into the stronger one and redirect, or use a canonical tag to name the version to index. The canonical tags guide covers that, and the internal linking article covers pointing the site's links at the chosen page so the signal is not split.
Worked example: a small invoicing SaaS
The sheet after grouping, for a small invoicing product with a blog, a product page, and a pricing page. The SERP judgement comes from reading the results page, not from a tool.
| Primary term | Also covers | Intent | SERP judgement | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| how to write an invoice | how to make an invoice, what to put on an invoice | Informational | Contested: banks and accounting brands, but two small blogs on page one | /blog/how-to-write-an-invoice |
| invoice software for freelancers | invoicing app for freelancers, freelance invoicing tool | Commercial | Contested: listicles dominate; a comparison page fits | /compare/freelancers |
| invoice late payment reminder email | late payment reminder template, polite payment reminder | Informational | Open: old template pages, several forum threads | /blog/late-payment-reminder-email |
| [product name] pricing | [product name] free plan, [product name] cost | Transactional / navigational | Own brand: only your page should rank | /pricing |
| best invoicing software | top invoicing tools, invoicing software comparison | Commercial | Closed for now: large review publishers on all ten results | Deferred |
Two things stand out. The most obvious term, “best invoicing software”, is deferred, not deleted; it stays in the sheet for when the site has more authority. And the most winnable term is the narrowest one, which is normal for a small site: long-tail terms are searched less often, but the intent is clear and the competition thin.
How AI answers change this
When a person asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews instead of typing a query, fragments become full questions: not “invoice late payment reminder” but “what should I write to a client who has not paid an invoice?” The intent underneath is the same, and so is the mapping: an informational question still wants a guide, a comparison question still wants a comparison. What changes is that the page has to answer directly enough for a system to extract the answer and cite the source. The People Also Ask questions you collected are a good proxy for the phrasing.
So the keyword sheet gains a column: the question form of each primary term. Use it for the H2 that answers it and for an FAQ block near the end of the page. See AEO vs SEO vs GEO for how the disciplines relate, and SEO rankings vs AI visibility for why ranking and being cited are measured differently.
A note on scope. Aura's free scan does not do keyword research. It reads one page and checks whether the title is 15 to 70 characters, whether there is a single H1 and at least two H2s, and whether the FAQPage markup matches the visible text. Those checks matter after you have chosen a term and written the page, not before. For the on-page side, the title tag and meta description article and the heading structure article pick up where this one stops.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid tool to do keyword research?
No. Google autocomplete, the People Also Ask box, related searches at the bottom of the results page, and the Performance report in Search Console give you real queries for free. Paid tools add estimated volume and a difficulty score, both of which are models rather than measurements. They save time on large sites but are not required to find terms a small site can rank for.
What is a long-tail keyword?
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific query such as 'invoice software for freelancers in the UK' rather than 'invoice software'. Each one is searched less often, but the intent is clearer, the results page is usually less dominated by large brands, and a focused page can satisfy it completely. For a new site, most early rankings come from long-tail terms.
How do I know if a keyword is too competitive?
Search it and read the first page. If every result is a large brand, a government or university site, or a major publisher, and each page is long and recently updated, a new site is unlikely to displace them soon. If the page includes forums, small blogs, thin pages, or results that only partly match the query, there is room. The results page is a better guide than a difficulty score from a tool.
Can one page rank for several keywords?
Yes, and it should. Give each page one primary term that sets its title and H1, and let it cover the close variants and questions people ask about the same thing. What you should avoid is two pages on your site targeting the same primary term, because Google then has to choose between them and often picks neither consistently.