Keyword research is the foundation of a successful content strategy. Because every piece of content you create, every page you optimize, and every strategic decision you make starts with understanding what your audience is searching for and why they’re searching for it.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to find keywords and how to assess them to help you build a strategy that:
- Works across both traditional search and AI search
- Drives real value for your business
Let’s start with the fundamentals.
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of discovering and analyzing the search terms people use in traditional search engines and AI systems when looking for information, products, or services related to your business.
Keyword research tells you:
- What questions your audience is asking
- What language they use to describe their problems
- Which solutions they’re comparing
- Where they are in the buying journey
Knowing which keywords to target ensures you create content that actually meets demand instead of just guessing what might be helpful for your website.
Why Is Keyword Research Important for SEO and AI Search?
Keyword research is important for your SEO and AI visibility because it reveals what your target audience is actually looking for and can lead to tangible benefits for your business.
When you target the right keywords, you can build brand awareness. Your content can appear when people search for topics related to what you offer, making them aware you exist.
And by matching search intent and addressing what people actually need, you can guide visitors toward meaningful actions like purchases, sign-ups, or demo requests. This can generate revenue for your business.
How to Find Keywords
Use the six methods below to identify search terms that are relevant to your business that you want to target.
You can save the terms you uncover to prioritize later.
Check Your Existing Search Rankings
If your site already appears in traditional and AI search results, check your existing positions to find keywords you’re not yet optimizing for but easily could.
(If your site is new or you don’t have any existing rankings yet, skip to the next section.)
Using Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) shows you the actual queries your site shows for in Google, including in AI-generated responses.
To find unoptimized opportunities in Google Search Console, go to “Performance” > “Search results” and select the “Queries” tab. Click the “Clicks” column and look for queries with zero or few clicks but lots of impressions.
While some of the queries you see in the GSC table will be keywords you are trying to rank for, most of them are probably terms you’re not directly targeting. Because Google thinks your content is relevant enough to include in the search results, the keywords you see here with at least some impressions are worth considering.
Go through your own GSC keywords and add relevant ones to a list in the Keyword Strategy Builder. Set one up by clicking “create a regular list.”
Then, click “Add keywords” at the top right of the next screen, enter your keywords, and click the green “Add keywords” button.
Using Semrush’s Organic Rankings Tool
Semrush’s Organic Rankings tool also lets you identify keywords you’re ranking for but not necessarily targeting.
Unlike Google Search Console, Organic Rankings lets you filter for metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty. This can make it easier to spot the most relevant keywords for your business.
Head to the Organic Rankings tool and enter your domain. Then go to the “Positions” tab and enter these filters:
- Position 11+: This shows you keywords that you’re currently ranking for on page two and beyond
- Volume of 100 or more: This helps filter for keywords with some proven demand
- Keyword difficulty of 0%-49%: Adjust this based on your site’s authority, but 0%-49% covers keywords that are easier to rank for
You can adjust all of these filters based on your own website and goals. You might also need to expand the filter ranges if you don’t see many keywords. Or you may need to use tighter filtering if you end up with too many keywords to manage.
Your focus when reviewing terms in Organic Rankings should be on keywords that are relevant to your business.
For each keyword you want to target, click the “+” button to add it to your list. You’ll export this list later to prioritize your keywords.
Study First-Party Data
First-party data reveals the questions, problems, and language patterns your company hears directly from customers and prospects.
Even if your first-party data uncovers search terms that tools miss or show as having zero volume, real people are still actively interested in content that addresses them.
Good sources of first-party data include sales calls, support tickets, and onboarding questions. Add the keywords and phrases you find from these methods to your Keyword Strategy Builder list.
Sales Calls
The common questions and objections your sales team hears can make great keyword opportunities because they represent real decision points in the buying journey.
Schedule a meeting with your sales team and ask:
- What questions do prospects ask most often during demos or discovery calls?
- What objections come up that slow down deals?
- What do people ask about our competitors?
- What features or use cases do people care about most?
For each answer, note the exact language prospects use—not marketing language.
Support Tickets or Onboarding Questions
Support tickets and onboarding conversations show you where your product documentation and content fall short.
If customers keep asking the same questions after they purchase or first engage with your services, you need content that addresses those questions before they buy. To find these opportunities, review documented conversations with prospects and customers to look for:
- Questions people ask multiple times per week
- Issues that slow down onboarding
- Confusion about features or setup
- Integration questions
For example, if you see 20 support tickets asking about how to export data to Excel, you could create a guide targeting the term “how to export [your tool] data to Excel.” This content helps both prospects (who want to know if it’s possible before they buy) and customers (who need instructions to do it right now).
If your business is a law firm and new clients regularly ask about what happens during an initial consultation, you could create content around the topic of “what to expect in your initial legal consultation.” This content helps prospects who want to know the process before booking. And it helps clients who need to prepare for their upcoming appointment.
Mine Social Platforms and Forums
Conversations relevant to your brand on social media platforms and forums reveal questions your audience asks and the exact language they use.
Platforms worth checking include Reddit and Quora. It’s also a good idea to study comments on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. You can analyze comments on your own videos or on videos that cover topics relevant to your business.
People are often asking these questions on other platforms because they’re not finding a suitable answer when they Google them. In other words: there are potential keyword opportunities.
You can quickly scan social media platforms for keyword ideas using AI by copying entire discussions or comment sections related to your topic. We’ll use the comment section from a YouTube video comparing project management tools for our example.
Then paste the content into a tool like ChatGPT or Claude and use this prompt:
“I have attached a raw copy of [comment or discussion type] from a [content type] about [your topic]. Analyze the raw input and generate a plain text list of keywords (no bullet points) based on the raw input. Ignore language that only praises or criticizes and focus on language that suggests unanswered questions, pain points, or other keyword opportunities.”
Here’s the output I got from ChatGPT:
Many of these terms will be flagged in keyword tools as having zero search volume. But we know these terms are based on real user needs, so they’re still worth considering.
They won’t all be worth targeting, but you can add the most relevant keywords from this output to your list in the Keyword Strategy Builder.
Search a Keyword Database
Keyword databases, like the one that powers Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, help you quickly find lots of keyword ideas and easily filter them to spot the best opportunities.
To use the Keyword Magic Tool, just enter a broad keyword related to your business to see a list of related keywords, along with metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent.
To find relevant keywords, use the groups and subgroups on the left-hand side. Clicking on the arrow next to the group name will show you related subgroups.
Clicking into a group or subgroup will show you all the keywords related to that specific topic.
Use the “Questions” filter to identify long-tail keywords. These are more specific phrases users search for. They often have relatively lower search volumes but also lower levels of competition.
Long-tail keywords also match the kinds of queries AI tools might use as part of their “query fan-out” process. This involves the tools taking your input prompt and running a web search for that and several other related queries to form a more comprehensive answer to your initial question.
For more on how this works, check out our guide to query fan-out.
Conduct a Keyword Gap Analysis
A keyword gap analysis shows you what your competitors rank for that you don’t, which can reveal even more keyword opportunities.
Here’s how to conduct a keyword gap analysis for both traditional and AI search:
Traditional Keyword Gap Analysis
Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool lets you compare your domain against up to four competitors to find missing opportunities.
Keyword Gap returns terms grouped by overlap among each of the entered brands. Focus on these two tabs:
- Missing: Keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t
- Weak: Keywords where competitors rank higher than you
As with the Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Gap lets you filter by metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent to narrow down your list. This makes the list of keywords more manageable, particularly if you’re faced with thousands of keywords your rivals rank for that you don’t.
There will likely be many keywords in the list that your rivals rank for that are not relevant to your business. So, add the most relevant keywords to your list with the “+” button.
Competitor Prompt Analysis
A competitor prompt analysis shows you prompts for which your rivals appear in AI platforms but you don’t.
With Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit, you can do what you just did with Keyword Gap but for AI prompts.
Go to the Competitor Research report and enter your domain along with up to four competitors.
To see exact prompts you’re not appearing for but your rivals are, select the “Missing” tab and click the “Prompts” option. To see the prompts that your rivals appear for more often than you, select the “Missing” tab and click the “Prompts” option.
Find any prompts that are relevant to your business, and copy and paste them into your list in the Keyword Strategy Builder.
Analyze Search Suggestions and SERP Features
The search engine results page (SERP) shows you related questions and searches that may represent valuable keyword ideas.
Analyzing the SERP also helps you better understand intent and decide what type of content to create.
Below are a few of the most useful parts of the SERP to pay attention to. Look at each of these and add relevant keywords to your Keyword Strategy Builder list.
People Also Ask
The People Also Ask (PAA) box shows questions related to your search query that represent potential keyword opportunities.
Click on a question in the PAA section to expand it, and Google loads more related questions.
PAA questions also tend to look similar to the conversational queries people use in AI tools, making them valuable for optimizing for AI search visibility.
Just note that the more PAA questions you click, the less relevant the questions can become. So, it’s best to focus on the first few that seem most relevant to your business.
Related Searches
Google’s related searches appear under “People also search for” at the bottom of search results and reveal what people commonly search for around your entered topic.
In this example with the term “what are ai agents” entered, useful keywords might include:
- AI agents examples
- What can AI agents do
- How AI agents work
- How to build AI agents
AI Overviews
Look at the topics the AI Overview covers (if one appears) for an idea of what to cover to gain visibility in AI Overviews (and other AI tools) for keywords related to your business.
When an AI Overview appears for a keyword, click “Show more” to see the full response and sources.
How to Prioritize Your Keywords
Prioritizing keywords involves considering search volume, click potential, conversion potential, real-world demand, trend, and keyword difficulty—something you can easily do by exporting your list from the Keyword Strategy Builder and following the instructions in our Keyword Research Prioritization Sheet.
Determine Conversion Potential
Prioritize keywords that are likely to drive conversions for your business.
A keyword has direct conversion potential if the searcher can be best served by content that drives a business action—like signing up for something, purchasing, or requesting a demo.
Some relevant keywords don’t have direct conversion potential but are still valuable for building authority or providing helpful information.
For example, if you offer website design services, “what is responsive design” makes sense to target to build awareness and trust with your audience—while also potentially driving relevant traffic and AI citations.
A keyword like “how to make a mobile-responsive website” directly maps to your web design service and has high conversion potential.
Assess Search Volume
Use search volume as an indicator of demand for each keyword and prioritize keywords with higher search volumes in general, all else being equal.
Search volume tells you how many times searchers enter a keyword into Google per month (on average). Higher volume means more potential traffic if you rank well.
However, tools sometimes show zero volume for keywords real people search. These zero-volume keywords still matter if first-party signals confirm there’s real demand (e.g., leads consistently ask the same question to your sales team).
Consider Click Potential
How likely a keyword is to drive traffic to your site should play some role in deciding what terms to prioritize, especially when you consider that many queries can be answered directly on the SERP through AI Overviews.
Terms with high click potential are generally:
- Comparisons (e.g., “[Tool X[ vs. [Tool Y]”)
- Best/top lists (e.g., “best project management tools”)
- How-to guides for complex or technical processes
- Templates and downloads
Terms with low click potential are generally:
- Definitions (e.g., “what does SEO stand for”)
- Simple facts (e.g., “is email marketing legal”)
- Quick how-tos (e.g., “how to screenshot on an iphone 17”)
The Semrush Keyword Strategy Builder automatically gives you estimated click potential for the keywords in your list.
Look for Real-World Demand Signals
A term has good potential (even if keyword tools show it has no search volume) if you’ve heard or seen a user include it in a:
- Sales call
- Reddit thread
- Support ticket
- YouTube comment
Terms or phrases you frequently see in forums or that your sales team constantly receives questions about is likely a strong candidate for creating content around.
Analyze Keyword Trends
Prioritize keywords with stable or growing trends.
Declining keywords may be risky unless you have strong real-world signals showing demand, or you know the trend is seasonal and likely to tick up again.
Semrush gives you trend data directly within the tools we’ve discussed above. But you can also use Google Trends to see how search interest has changed for your keywords over time—and you can even compare multiple keywords at once.
Evaluate Attainability
Finally, use keyword difficulty to assess whether you can feasibly show for a given keyword.
Keyword difficulty estimates how hard it would be to rank in Google’s top 10 traditional results based on the content and websites that currently rank for that term.
If your website is new or you have low authority, you’ll likely want to focus on terms with fairly low keyword difficulty. In Semrush tools, these would be difficulty scores of 0%-49%.
As your website authority grows, you can start targeting more competitive terms.
Start Finding Valuable Keywords Today
Keyword research is an ongoing process—not a one-time project. Search behavior changes. New competitors enter your space. AI platforms shift how people find information.
That’s why you need tools that help you both find the right keywords and track how they perform across traditional search and AI platforms. This way, you can continuously refine your strategy based on what’s actually working.
To start finding and tracking keywords that can drive real value for your business, try Semrush One for free today.
