How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Small Business Workflow

To do keyword research for SEO, start with the words your customers already use. Add the phrases you already appear for in Google Search Console, then expand the list with free tools such as Google autocomplete, People Also Ask and Keyword Planner. Before you choose which page should target each phrase, search it yourself and see what Google shows. You are not after a huge list of high volume terms. You want a short, prioritised list of searches made by people who might buy from you, with each one matched to a single page on your site.

For most small businesses the first round takes a few focused hours, and a lighter review every quarter keeps it current. You don't need expensive software to start. Below is the step by step workflow, a worked example, the special cases that catch people out (local businesses, online shops, brand new websites) and the mistakes worth avoiding.

What keyword research is actually for

Many owners treat keyword research as a hunt for the biggest numbers. That is the wrong way round. Keyword research answers three practical questions:

• What do potential customers type when they need what you sell? This is often different from the words you use inside your business.
• What are they trying to do when they type it? Learn something, compare options, or hire someone today.
• Which page on your website should answer that search? An existing page, an improved page, or a new one.

Answer those three well and you have a content plan, a list of page improvements and a sensible order to work in. Skip them and you get pages that rank for searches that never turn into enquiries, or no rankings at all because Google can't tell what each page is meant to be about.

It also stops wasted effort. A small business has limited time and budget for SEO, so knowing which handful of searches matter most is worth more than any amount of generic "content". If you are wondering how much ongoing work SEO needs once the research is done, our guide on how much time per month SEO takes sets realistic expectations.

The tools you need (mostly free)

You can do a thorough first round of keyword research without paying for anything. Paid tools are helpful but they are not the starting point.

A simple spreadsheet ties it all together. Make columns for the keyword, rough volume, search intent, what currently ranks, the page you will target and priority. That spreadsheet becomes your plan.

The keyword research workflow, step by step

Step 1: Write down how your customers talk

Start away from the tools. Open a blank sheet and list:

• Every product or service you offer, in plain words.
• The problems customers have before they contact you ("boiler making a banging noise", "accountant for sole trader").
• The towns, cities or areas you serve, if location matters.
• The words customers use in enquiries, which are often more casual than your own. You might say "residential conveyancing" while they type "solicitor for buying a house".
• The questions you answer again and again on the phone.

This gives you your seed list. It anchors the rest of the research in what people actually want, so the tools expand your thinking rather than replace it.

Step 2: See what you already rank for

If your site has been live for a while and Search Console is set up, open the Performance report, set the date range to the last few months and look at the Queries tab. Switch on impressions, clicks, click through rate and average position.

Look for three things:

1. Searches with plenty of impressions but few clicks. You are being shown but not chosen, which usually means a weak page title or meta description, or a page that only partly matches the search.
2. Searches where your average position sits roughly between 8 and 20. These are close to page one. Improving the matching page is often quicker than starting a new topic from scratch.
3. Searches you didn't expect. Sometimes you appear for a service you offer but have never written about properly. That is a clear sign a dedicated page is worth building.

Click into any query and then the Pages tab to see which URL Google is showing. If two or more of your pages swap places for the same search, note it. We come back to that in Step 7.

Step 3: Expand the list with free tools

Take each seed term and run it through Google itself:

• Autocomplete: type the phrase slowly and note the suggestions. Add letters after it ("emergency electrician a", "emergency electrician b") to bring up more variations.
• People Also Ask: note the questions. Clicking one usually reveals more. These make excellent subheadings and FAQ entries.
• Related searches: scroll to the bottom of the results page for more phrasing ideas.

Then put your seed list into Keyword Planner under "Discover new keywords". It will suggest related terms with rough monthly volumes. Set the location to the UK, or narrower if you only serve one area, otherwise the figures will be misleading.

If you run Google Ads, your search terms report is another goldmine. It lists the exact searches that triggered your ads, and the ones that turned into enquiries are proven commercial keywords worth targeting organically too.

By the end of this step you might have anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred phrases. That's fine. The next steps cut it down.

Step 4: Sort every keyword by search intent

Search intent is the reason behind a search. It matters more than volume, because a page that doesn't match the intent won't rank well and won't convert even if it does. Add an intent column to your spreadsheet and label each phrase.

Intent	What the searcher wants	Example phrases	Best page type
Informational	To learn or solve a problem themselves	"how to bleed a radiator", "what is a VAT return"	Blog post or guide
Commercial	To compare options before buying	"best accountant for small business", "combi vs system boiler"	Comparison guide or detailed service page
Transactional	To buy or hire now	"book boiler service", "dog groomer prices"	Service page or product page
Local	A provider near them	"plumber in Derby", "hairdresser near me"	Service page with strong location signals, plus Google Business Profile
Navigational	A specific business or website	Your brand name, a competitor's name	Homepage (for your brand only)

For most small businesses the transactional and local phrases are the money keywords. Informational searches are still worth targeting with helpful content, because they build trust and can lead to enquiries later. They just shouldn't come first.

Step 5: Look at the search results yourself

This is the step most people skip, and it's the one that saves the most wasted effort. For every keyword you are seriously considering, search it in Google (ideally in a private browser window, from the location you serve) and look at what comes up.

Ask yourself:

• What kind of pages rank? If the top results are all blog guides, a sales page will struggle. If they are all service pages, a blog post will struggle.
• Who ranks? Small local businesses like you, or national brands, directories and comparison sites? If page one is full of big directories, you may do better with a more specific phrase.
• Is there a map pack? If the local map results appear, your Google Business Profile matters as much as your website for that search.
• What else is on the page? Ads, videos, shopping results and People Also Ask boxes all push the normal results down and affect how many clicks are available.
• Does Google seem to understand the phrase the way you do? Sometimes a term means something else entirely to most searchers. "Wraps", for example, could be food, vehicle graphics or hair.

Five minutes on the results page tells you more about whether a keyword is winnable, and what kind of page you need, than any difficulty score.

Step 6: Be sensible about volume and difficulty

Search volume figures from any tool are estimates. Use them to compare phrases against each other, not as promises of traffic.

Some practical rules:

• Low volume is not low value. A phrase that a tool says gets very few searches a month can still be worth targeting if one enquiry from it is worth hundreds or thousands of pounds to you. Specialist and B2B services often live here.
• Zero volume doesn't always mean zero searches. Tools miss a lot of longer, specific phrases. If customers ask you about it, someone is probably searching for it.
• Very high volume terms are usually too broad. "Insurance" or "shoes" attracts a mix of intents and huge competitors. "Public liability insurance for window cleaners" is far more likely to bring a buyer.
• Difficulty scores are rough guides. Your own judgement from Step 5 (who ranks and how strong their pages are) is just as useful.

Step 7: Group keywords into topics and map them to pages

Google no longer needs a separate page for every slight variation of a phrase. "Boiler repair Leicester", "boiler repairs in Leicester" and "Leicester boiler engineer" are effectively the same search, and one strong page should cover all of them.

So group your list into clusters. Each cluster shares the same intent and could be satisfied by the same page. Then assign each cluster to one URL:

• An existing page that already fits (improve it).
• An existing page that partly fits (rework it).
• A new page that needs creating.

This mapping prevents a common problem called keyword cannibalisation, where two of your own pages compete for the same search and neither ranks as well as one focused page would. If Search Console showed two URLs swapping for one query back in Step 2, decide which should own that topic and either merge the pages or make their focus clearly different.

Step 8: Prioritise

You will now have more opportunities than time. Score each cluster on three things, using a simple high, medium or low:

1. Business value: how likely is someone searching this to become a paying customer, and how much are they worth?
2. Realistic chance of ranking: based on what you saw on the results page.
3. Effort: is this a tweak to an existing page or a brand new piece of work?

Work through them in roughly this order: high value searches where you are already close to page one, then high value searches needing a new or rebuilt service page, then supporting informational content that answers customer questions and links through to those service pages.

Step 9: Put the keywords to work on the page

Research is only useful once it changes your pages. For each mapped page:

• Use the main phrase, or a natural version of it, in the page title and the main heading.
• Say plainly in the opening lines what you do, who it's for and where you work.
• Use the related phrases and People Also Ask questions as subheadings where they genuinely fit.
• Write the meta description to match the intent, so people choose your result when they see it.
• Link to the page from other relevant pages on your site using descriptive anchor text.

Write for the reader first. Repeating a keyword over and over (keyword stuffing) makes pages worse to read and doesn't help rankings. If the page answers the search better than the alternatives, the wording will usually take care of itself.

A worked example: a bathroom fitter

Here is how the workflow might look for an illustrative business, a bathroom fitter covering Nottingham and nearby towns. This is a hypothetical example to show the process, not a real client.

Step 1, seed list: bathroom fitting, bathroom renovation, wet rooms, walk in showers, disabled bathrooms, tiling, Nottingham, Beeston, West Bridgford. Enquiry emails mention "bathroom refit" and "how much does a new bathroom cost" a lot.

Step 2, Search Console: the site already gets impressions for "wet room installation Nottingham" but sits on page two, and the matching page is a short paragraph on the services page.

Step 3, expansion: autocomplete adds "bathroom fitters near me", "small bathroom ideas" and "bathroom fitting cost uk". People Also Ask adds "how long does it take to fit a bathroom?" and "do bathroom fitters do tiling?".

Steps 4 to 7, intent, results check and mapping:

Keyword cluster	Intent	What ranks now	Target page
bathroom fitters Nottingham, bathroom fitting Nottingham	Local / transactional	Map pack, local fitters, directories	Homepage or main bathroom fitting page, plus Google Business Profile
wet room installation Nottingham, wet room fitters	Local / transactional	Local service pages	New dedicated wet room page (currently a short paragraph)
bathroom fitting cost uk, how much does a new bathroom cost	Commercial	Detailed cost guides	New blog guide explaining cost factors, linking to the service pages
how long does it take to fit a bathroom	Informational	Guides and People Also Ask answers	Section within the cost guide, plus an FAQ on the service page
small bathroom ideas	Informational	Big home and lifestyle publishers	Low priority, hard to rank and far from a purchase

Step 8, priorities: first, build out the wet room page, because the site already has impressions there and the value per job is high. Second, strengthen the main fitting page and the Google Business Profile for the local searches. Third, write the cost guide. "Small bathroom ideas" gets parked. It may have plenty of searches, but the results are dominated by large publishers and the people searching are mostly browsing for inspiration.

Notice what happened. The biggest sounding keyword ended up at the bottom, and a modest phrase the business was already close on went to the top. That is what good keyword research usually looks like.

Special cases that change the approach

Local businesses with several service areas

If you cover several towns, it is tempting to create a near identical page for each one with only the town name swapped. Google tends to treat those as thin, low value pages. Build location pages only where you can say something genuinely specific about that area: jobs you do there, how quickly you can attend, local regulations or common property types. For many businesses, one strong service page plus a well run Google Business Profile does more than a dozen copied pages. Our guide to local SEO for small businesses covers the map pack side in more depth.

Online shops

For e-commerce, keyword research works at two levels. Category pages target broader commercial phrases ("women's leather ankle boots"), while product pages target specific models, sizes and attributes. Use your site search data too, because it shows the exact words shoppers type once they're on your site. The structure of your categories is shaped by this research, so it's worth getting right early. Our e-commerce SEO best practices checklist walks through how keywords feed into categories, filters and product pages.

Brand new websites

With no Search Console history, skip Step 2 and lean harder on customer language and the results page check. Start with your most specific, high value phrases rather than broad ones, because a new site has no track record with Google yet. Set up Search Console on day one so you have real data to work with by your first review.

Niche and B2B services

If you sell something specialist, tools may show little or no volume for most of your keywords. Don't let that put you off. Rely on the phrases your customers and prospects use, the questions they ask in sales calls and the terminology in your industry. A handful of the right visitors can be worth far more than a flood of the wrong ones.

Keyword research and AI search

More people now ask questions in tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, as well as Google. The good news is that the same research helps. The question style phrases you gathered from People Also Ask and from your customers are exactly the kind of thing these tools answer, and pages that answer them clearly and directly are easier for both search engines and AI tools to understand and quote.

In practice, that means opening key pages with a plain statement of what you do, who for and where, and answering common questions in short, direct paragraphs. Every DPOM SEO package includes AI Search Optimisation (GEO) at no extra cost: every monthly blog opens with a clear, direct answer and ends with a short FAQ, key page openings say plainly what the business does, who for and where, and we check ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot can read the site and get it fixed if they are blocked. Nobody can guarantee a place in an AI answer, but there is no sense making it harder for these tools to understand your business.

Common keyword research mistakes

How often should you redo keyword research?

Do a full round when you launch or rebuild a website, add a new service or product range, or move into a new area. Otherwise, a quarterly check is enough for most small businesses:

• Review Search Console for new queries, rising impressions and pages slipping in position.
• Check Google Trends for any seasonal patterns you need to plan content around.
• Look at the results pages for your top few keywords to see whether new competitors or features have appeared.
• Update your spreadsheet and adjust priorities.

This keeps your plan grounded in what is actually happening, rather than what was true a year ago.

Doing it yourself versus getting help

Everything above can be done by a business owner with a few spare hours and some patience. Where people usually get stuck is not the research itself but what comes after: rewriting pages, fixing technical issues, writing content consistently and checking whether any of it is working.

If you would rather hand that over, working with an SEO agency means the research, page changes and monthly content are done for you, with the reasoning explained in plain English. Our SEO packages for small business start from £185 a month for Local SEO, with National SEO from £335 a month and E-Commerce SEO from £585 a month, all plus a one-off £195 setup. Pricing is fixed and transparent, so you know exactly what you are paying each month.

Frequently asked questions

Can I do keyword research for free?

Yes. Google Search Console, Google search suggestions, People Also Ask, Google Trends and Keyword Planner are all free, and together they are enough for a solid first round. Paid tools add convenience and competitor data, but they are optional.

How many keywords should a small business target?

There's no fixed number. Think in topics rather than individual keywords. Most small businesses do best focusing on a small set of core service topics first, each with one strong page, then adding supporting content around them.

Should every page target a keyword?

Every page that you want to bring in visitors from search should have a clear main topic. Pages such as privacy policies or thank you pages don't need one.

How long before keyword research shows results?

Research itself shows nothing until it changes your pages. After that, timescales depend on competition, your site's history and how much work goes in. Anyone who promises a specific ranking or timeframe is guessing.

Is keyword research different for local businesses?

The process is the same, but location phrases and "near me" searches matter more, and you need to check whether a map pack appears. If it does, your Google Business Profile becomes as important as your website.