DocsTutorials
How to do keyword research for SEO
How to do keyword research: find keywords from a seed term, filter by volume and difficulty, save the ones worth targeting and keep them fresh.
By the end of this tutorial you will have a tagged list of keywords worth targeting, with volume, difficulty, intent and a 12-month trend for each. It costs a few cents. You need a project and a YepAPI key; see Getting started if you have neither.
Find keyword ideas from a seed keyword
Open Keyword research
In your project, choose Keyword research in the sidebar.
Enter a seed and a market
Type a term your customers would search for, such as
plumbing software. Next to it, the country and language default to your project's; change them to research another market. Pick a city or state as well to get local volume for the top 100 ideas.Press Enter
Press Enter: matching terms, related terms, questions and Google's suggestions all load together into one list. The same search within 7 days is free.
Narrow it down for free
Switch between All ideas, Matching terms, Related terms, Questions and Search suggestions, and filter by words, intent, Min volume, Max KD and Min words (three or more finds long-tail keywords). These work on what is loaded and cost nothing. The search, the market, the view and the filters are all in the page address, so you can bookmark or share the exact view.
Read search volume, difficulty and intent
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Volume | Average monthly searches in the market. |
| CPC | What advertisers pay per click in Google Ads: a sign of commercial value. |
| KD | Keyword difficulty, 0 (easy) to 100 (hard). Green under 30, amber under 60, red above. |
| Intent | Informational, commercial, transactional or navigational. Transactional and commercial are the buying intents. |
| Competition | Advertiser competition in Google Ads, 0 to 1. |
| 12-mo trend | Monthly volume over the last year, to spot seasonality. |
Sort by any column, and use the text and intent filters above the table to narrow what you see. These filters are free; they work on the results you already have.
Click a keyword to open its Keyword overview: difficulty, volume by country, traffic potential, more ideas and the live top 10 with each result's authority, all for the same market.
Save target keywords to a project
Select rows
Tick the keywords you want. The header checkbox selects every row shown.
Save them
Click Save N selected. Saving is free: the figures on screen are stored with each keyword. Saving a keyword again updates its figures and keeps its tags.
Organise with tags
Open Saved keywords. Select keywords and use Add tag to group them by topic, page or priority, then click a tag above the table to filter by it. Search, sort and paging all work on the whole list.
Keep keyword data fresh
Saved keywords keep the figures they were saved with. To refresh them, click Update metrics on the Saved keywords page. It shows how many keywords it will update and the most it will cost ($0.03 plus $0.03 per 100 keywords, per batch of 700) before you confirm.
The update covers keywords saved in the project's market and language. Keywords you saved while researching another market are left as they are, and the panel says how many.
You can also paste keywords you already have with Add keywords. They are added for free without figures; run Update metrics to fill them in. Export CSV downloads the whole list, or the part matching your search and tag.