Keyword Research Guide: How to Find the Right Keywords

Keyword research isn’t about collecting the biggest search volumes you can find. It’s about understanding what your potential customers search for, then spotting the searches your website can genuinely answer.

A business can win a popular phrase and still get no enquiries, because the people searching it never wanted what it sells. This guide helps you avoid that. It follows the same steps as our keyword research service.

Quick answer: Keyword research is the process of discovering and evaluating the searches relevant to your audience and goals. You then decide which ones are worth targeting and match each one to the right page.

What Is Keyword Research?

Good keyword research feeds into almost every part of your website:

• Service pages
• Product pages
• Blog topics
• Landing pages
• Content updates
• Local SEO pages
• Website navigation

If you’re new to all this, our SEO basics guide shows where it fits.

Understand the Main Types of Keywords

Short-tail and long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords aren’t automatically easy or low in competition, even though many guides suggest they are.

Informational, commercial and transactional searches

Here’s how they look for a plumber:

• Informational: "why is my boiler losing pressure"
• Commercial: "best boiler brands for small homes"
• Transactional: "boiler repair Dublin"

Branded and non-branded searches

• Branded searches include your business name, such as "SEO Company Dublin pricing".
• Non-branded searches describe a service, such as "SEO company in Dublin".

Local and location-based searches

• Explicit: "plumber in Rathmines" names the place.
• Implicit: "plumber near me" implies it.

Our local SEO guide covers these in depth.

Question keywords

Searches that start with who, what, why, how or how much reveal exactly what people worry about. "How much does a new boiler cost" tells you far more than "boiler". These often make excellent guides and FAQ answers, so collect them as you go.

What You Need Before You Start

• A list of your services and the places you cover
• Access to Google Search Console, if your site is live
• A spreadsheet for your keyword list
• A note of what a good customer is worth to you
• 20 or so recent customer questions

A spreadsheet layout that works

The entries are illustrative. Note your source and date beside volume figures, since tools disagree and estimates change.

Step 1: Define Business Goals

Do this before you open any tool. Write down:

• Services or products to promote
• Your most profitable offerings
• Target customers
• Geographic coverage
• Seasonal demand
• Conversion actions, such as calls or forms
• Areas of genuine expertise

High traffic is no use if it doesn’t reach the right people.

Step 2: Generate Keyword Ideas

• Google Search autocomplete
• Related search suggestions
• People Also Ask results, where available
• Google Search Console
• Keyword research tools
• Competitor service pages
• Customer enquiries
• Sales conversations
• Support tickets
• Industry forums and communities
• Internal site-search data

These sources give you ideas, not proof of volume or difficulty.

Pro tip: Read your last 20 customer emails. People describe their problems in their own words there, and those words often make better keywords than any tool suggests.

Step 3: Use Keyword Research Tools

Fact: Third-party search volumes and difficulty scores are estimates, not measurements of Google’s ranking systems. Google Trends shows relative interest, on a scale of 0 to 100, rather than exact search numbers.

Google’s Keyword Planner help page explains how its forecasts work. It’s built for advertisers, so treat the figures as a rough guide.

Researching keywords for the Irish market

Ireland is a smaller market than the US or UK, so a few adjustments help:

• Set your location: choose Ireland, or a specific county, in your tool.
• Expect lower figures: a small number can still be valuable, and some tools show nothing at all for local phrases.
• Use local language: people may search "Co. Kildare", "Kildare" or "County Kildare", and "D6" as well as "Dublin 6".
• Watch spelling: "optimise" and "optimize" both appear, so check which the results favour.
• Think about trades: Irish searchers may use "plumber", "heating engineer" or "gas installer" for related needs.
• Don’t trust zero: a "zero volume" estimate doesn’t prove that nobody searches for it.

Pro tip: Keyword Planner shows ranges to many accounts rather than exact figures, so use it to compare ideas. Treat every figure as a guide, not a fact.

Step 4: Evaluate Keyword Value

Assess each keyword for:

• Relevance to the business
• Search intent
• Search demand
• Competition
• Geographic relevance
• Commercial potential
• Your current authority and content
• Existing rankings
• Your ability to produce a genuinely useful page

A simple scoring table

This gives each keyword a score out of 25. It’s an internal framework, not an industry standard. A keyword with high commercial value but an unrealistic ranking chance may need a different plan, such as targeting a more specific version first.

A worked scoring example

Here is how the framework might look for a Dublin plumber. These scores are illustrative judgements, not data.

Notice the pattern. "Plumber" sounds like the big prize, yet its intent is vague and the competition is heavy. The specific local search scores highest, so it should get attention first.

Step 5: Understand Search Intent

Check the actual results for your keyword:

• Are they mostly guides, service pages, products or comparisons?
• Do local results dominate?
• Do people expect a quick answer or a full explanation?
• Is the search branded?
• Is the intent mixed?

Example: "SEO audit tool" probably needs an actual tool page. A general article on audits is unlikely to satisfy that search, however well you write it.

Step 6: Analyse the Competition

• What types of pages rank?
• How deep and useful is their content?
• How well do they match the intent?
• How strong is their internal linking?
• Do they have relevant backlinks?
• Is brand recognition helping them?
• Do local signals matter here?
• Does freshness matter?
• What are their strengths and gaps?

A competitor’s ranking doesn’t prove a keyword is easy or impossible. It just shows what’s currently working.

Step 7: Build a Keyword Map

A keyword map assigns one main topic to each page.

Create a separate page only when it serves a distinct intent or need. Then use the on-page SEO guide to apply each keyword properly.

New page or existing page?

As a rule, Google showing the same results for two phrases suggests one page can serve both. If the results differ a lot, you may need separate pages.

Step 8: Avoid Keyword Cannibalisation

Keyword cannibalisation describes several pages competing for similar searches or having overlapping purposes. To deal with it:

• Review which pages appear for which searches.
• Compare each page’s intent.
• Consolidate overlapping content where appropriate.
• Give each page a clearer purpose.
• Improve internal linking.
• Update your keyword map.

Two pages ranking for one search isn’t automatically a problem. It only matters when they’re getting in each other’s way.

Step 9: Find Content Gaps and Opportunities

• Relevant searches with impressions but few clicks
• Pages ranking just below the strongest results
• Questions your pages don’t answer
• Important services with no dedicated page
• Search terms attracting irrelevant traffic
• Topics where competitors explain things poorly
• Local searches you can genuinely serve

Pro tip: In Search Console, filter for pages with average positions of 8 to 20. These are often close enough that a better page or a few internal links can make a visible difference.

Turn these gaps into a plan using our SEO content guide.

Plan for seasonal demand

Some searches rise and fall through the year. In Ireland, for instance, interest in heating repairs tends to grow as the weather turns colder, while garden services often peak in spring. Check your own topics in Google Trends, because assumptions can be wrong. Then publish or refresh the page several weeks before the busy period, so search engines have time to find it.

Step 10: Track and Refine Keyword Targets

Use the Search Console Performance report to review impressions, clicks, CTR and average position. A practical process looks like this:

1. Compare performance across suitable periods.
2. Review search and page data.
3. Identify relevant opportunities.
4. Inspect the landing page.
5. Improve content or internal links where justified.
6. Measure the result.

Google’s documentation on how Search works is useful background for reading these numbers, especially why results vary by location. Our guide on how search engines work explains this in plain English. Also keep Google’s people-first content advice in mind, so you don’t write pages purely to chase a keyword.

Common Keyword Research Mistakes

• Choosing keywords only by volume
• Ignoring search intent
• Treating keyword difficulty scores as exact
• Creating a page for every keyword variation
• Overlooking business relevance
• Ignoring your existing search data
• Targeting the same intent across too many pages
• Assuming all long-tail keywords are easy
• Using outdated volume estimates without context

Related Guides and Services

• Turn keywords into pages with the SEO content guide.
• Check your targets with the SEO checklist.
• See where rankings come from in how search engines work.

FAQs

Your Next Step

Build your keyword map before you publish more pages, then use the on-page SEO guide to optimise each target page. If you’d like this done for you, see our pricing or talk to us.