Keyword research is essential for a strong content strategy, but it can sometimes be overwhelming when presented with hundreds and thousands of keywords. This guide covers a complete checklist of everything needed for keyword research that maximizes SEO performance while minimizing the total time commitment — including real-world examples and the best tools to streamline the process.
Keyword research is finding search terms that people commonly enter into search engines. By understanding what your audience is searching for, you can create content that drives targeted organic traffic. Keyword research allows us to:
Determine the popularity of specific search terms and understand how many people are searching for a particular topic each month.
Assess a keyword's difficulty ranking — how hard it is for a newer or more established website to rank on the first page for that keyword.
Discover new keywords and content angles to help inspire writing and expand your topical coverage.
Understand what format users want information in — whether they need a list, a how-to guide, product reviews, or a direct answer.
With keyword research, we can answer critical SEO questions: What are people searching for? How many people are searching? How hard will it be to rank? And what does Google consider the best answer for this query?
Follow these steps in order to execute a thorough keyword research process. Each step builds on the last to ensure you end up with a focused, actionable list of keywords for your content strategy.
Use Optiwing's Keyword Discovery Tool to find hundreds of related keywords in seconds. 100 free credits on signup — no credit card required.
Here is a practical example of following this keyword research checklist for an e-commerce website.
Keyword Research Tools Needed: Ahrefs / SEMrush & Optiwing
The scenario: We're running an e-commerce website in the snow sports industry. We want to write content about the best snowboards, the top snowboard boots/bindings, and snowboard reviews, to start ranking for keywords related to the industry.
First we need to select some starter keywords. These will be broad search terms that cover the industry or niche as a whole.
I simply chose "snowboard" to catch as many related keywords and accessories as possible. Note: It is often wise to include both the singular and plural form of your keyword. For this example, you could also include "snowboards" in your keyword research, but for simplicity we will stick with just "Snowboard".
Next, we'll use SEMrush's keyword magic tool. Here's how to do it:
Once your keyword report is ready, click on "Broad Match" (or "Terms Match" on Ahrefs) to see all results with your seed keyword. SEMrush found 298,975 keywords with "Snowboard" in them.
We need to curate our list for the best result. Since we're running an E-commerce platform, we'll target more commercial or transactional keywords.
The easiest way to do this is create a list of includes — words that should appear in the search terms along with our seed keywords: "best", "top", "review", "reviews", and "beginner". Remember to choose "Any Word" when you create this filter.
This narrowed our results down to 25,812 keywords — much better, but we can narrow this down even more.
We can further refine by adding exclude keywords. Since we're focusing on commercial intent, we don't want terms like "best places to snowboard" or "snowboard shop near me".
Our exclude list: "place", "places", "near me", and "shop". Add your list to the Exclude filter and click Apply.
Our list has shrunk to 24,818 keywords. We could group these now, but this would include a lot of very low volume keywords, so we'll narrow it down further.
Click on the Volume filter and add a minimum. In this case, anything under 20 volume wasn't worth targeting. You can also verify keyword volumes using Optiwing's Search Volume Checker.
This narrowed our list down to 4,711 keywords — a much more reasonable number that we can work with.
Now hit the Export button. Remember to export all the rows as CSV or UTF-16 (Microsoft Excel CSV). You'll end up with a file that looks something like this:
Once you've got your exported list, head over to the Optiwing Dashboard.
Choose your geography and device. For this example, we're leaving it as United States and Desktop. Click Launch Job.
What does Optiwing actually do? Optiwing takes your keyword list and searches every single keyword on Google. It groups any keywords that share at least 3 of the same top 10 ranking results. If a set of keywords share 3 or more ranking pages, you only need one article to target that entire set.
You'll see a list of keyword groups sorted by total volume. Each group shows the primary keyword, aggregate volume, and Keyword Difficulty score (0–100). Click any group to see its keywords:
Now browse through the groups and find the highest volume and lowest difficulty keywords to target in your articles.
Optiwing groups thousands of keywords in minutes using live Google SERP data. 100 free credits on signup, no credit card required.
Keyword Research Tools Needed: Google Search Console, Google Ads Keyword Planner & Optiwing
The scenario: We're trying to get more traffic to our blog by creating more content related to the search queries that are already performing well for our website.
Head over to Google Search Console and look under the performance tab to see which search queries your website is generating the most clicks from.
Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner and enter the top 10 queries from your website into the keyword discovery tool.
Select all keywords and click "Download keyword ideas" to download the entire list of related keywords.
Download the results as a .csv file.
In order to group your keywords, make sure the file is properly formatted. Remove any extra lines added at the top of the .csv file by Google Keyword Planner. The first row should be labels and the following rows should be keywords and stats.
Your file will look something like this when done. You can manually remove rows to get rid of keywords you don't want, or sort by volume and remove low volume keywords.
Open Optiwing and start a new job with your edited csv file.
Now you have groupings of keywords you can target with a single article each. Use these topical clusters to target high volume, low difficulty keywords relevant to your niche, and double down on what's already working and generating clicks.
For this example, Google uses a different keyword difficulty ranking — target groups of keywords as close to 0 difficulty as possible, ideally under 10.
How do we best use our list of grouped keywords? Here are some expert tips:
Prioritize keywords with significant search volume. These articles will bring more organic traffic than low-volume ones.
Don't waste time challenging industry titans. A low keyword difficulty paired with high volume searches is often easier pickings.
Your chosen keywords must be relevant to your industry. Relevance improves the user intent match for your content.
Understand how each article aligns with your business goals. Is it at the bottom of the marketing funnel or the top?
Ideally, you'd want to create articles for every keyword group. However, this can be expensive and time-consuming. So, prioritize keywords. If a keyword is high in volume, low in difficulty, relevant to your niche, and aligns with your business goals, it should be your initial target.
When writing an article, keep the primary keyword in the title, meta description, H1 header, and first paragraph. Use keyword variations as H2's and organically sprinkle them throughout your content in a way that doesn't detract from readability but is consistent with natural speech.
Using internal linking to boost the content you want to rank is a powerful way to improve ranking. Create internal links on secondary keywords (keyword variations) to boost your overall SEO performance. For external links, use keyword variations as your anchor text when guest posting or link building.
Optiwing offers a full suite of SEO tools designed to streamline each step of your keyword research checklist:
Find hundreds of related keywords from a single seed term. Uncover long-tail opportunities you'd never find manually.
Verify monthly search volumes for any keyword list. Filter out low-volume terms and focus on what drives traffic.
Automatically cluster keywords by search intent using live SERP data. Target multiple keywords per article.
Analyze real-time Google search results for any keyword. See who ranks and understand what content Google rewards.
Compare SERP overlap between keywords to determine if they should target the same page or separate pages.
Generate data-driven content briefs from your keyword clusters. Get outlines, headings, and topic suggestions.
That's the complete step-by-step guide to finding rankable keywords. Here's the checklist one more time for easy reference:
Following these steps consistently will help you become a topical authority in your niche. The more articles you create to cover a topic entirely, the higher you will rank, and you'll likely earn backlinks over time if you are creating valuable content. Remember, SEO is a marathon not a sprint, and providing useful and valuable content is foremost important.
Keyword research doesn't have to be overwhelming. With the right process and the right tools, you can turn a mountain of keywords into a focused content strategy that drives real organic traffic.
Use this checklist every time you start a new content campaign. Combine keyword research tools with Optiwing's Keyword Grouper to save hours of manual work and ensure you're targeting the right keyword clusters for every article.
You can try Optiwing for free by creating an account, no credit card required. Get 100 free credits on signup to group, discover, and analyze keywords right away.
The first step is selecting a reliable keyword research tool and identifying your seed keywords. Seed keywords are broad terms related to your niche that serve as starting points. From there, you expand your list using tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, or Optiwing's Keyword Discovery Tool.
Rather than targeting a fixed number, focus on keyword clusters — groups of keywords that share the same search intent. A single article can effectively target an entire cluster of related keywords. Using a keyword grouping tool helps you identify which keywords naturally belong together and can be targeted with one piece of content.
Keyword research should be an ongoing process. Run a thorough keyword research session at least quarterly, and supplement it with monthly checks on trending topics and competitor movements. Use SERP Checker to regularly monitor how search results change for your target keywords.
Keyword difficulty (KD) is a metric that estimates how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a given keyword, typically scored on a scale of 0 to 100. Newer or smaller websites should target keywords with low difficulty (under 30) and reasonable search volume. As your site builds authority, you can gradually target more competitive terms.
Google Keyword Planner is a solid free option for finding keyword ideas and volume estimates. For a more complete free workflow, combine it with Optiwing's Keyword Discovery Tool (100 free credits on signup) and Google Search Console for existing site performance data. Together, these tools cover keyword discovery, volume analysis, and performance tracking.
Keyword grouping is essential because it tells you which keywords can be targeted with a single article versus which need separate pages. Without grouping, you risk keyword cannibalization (multiple pages competing for the same term) or missing opportunities to rank for related terms. Optiwing's Keyword Grouper automates this process using live SERP data, saving hours of manual analysis.