Keyword research services turn a vague idea of what people might search into a working list of the exact terms your buyers type, how often they type them, how hard each one is to rank for and what kind of page Google wants to show for it. Done properly, keyword research is the plan that every other piece of SEO follows: which pages to build, what to call them, how to link them and what to write on each one.
We offer it as a fixed-price project within our SEO services, for businesses in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and the UAE. Most clients come to us when they are about to commit money to content or a new site and want to be sure it targets searches that can bring customers, rather than topics that only sound good in a meeting.
What Our Keyword Research Services Include
Each project includes the same core stages. Larger plans cover more topics and more pages, and some stages are also available as standalone services.
| Stage | What we do | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword discovery | We expand your seed topics into every relevant search: product and service terms, problems, comparisons, questions and local variations. | A complete picture of how buyers search, including the phrases your team would never think to use. |
| Volume and difficulty scoring | Search volume, keyword difficulty and an opportunity score for each keyword, judged against your site's current authority. See our keyword difficulty analysis for the standalone version. | A realistic view of which keywords you can win soon and which need more time and links. |
| Search intent labels | Every keyword is tagged as informational, commercial, transactional or navigational, based on the live search results. Our search intent analysis covers this in more depth. | The right page type for each keyword: a guide, a category page, a service page or a comparison. |
| Topic clusters | Keywords that Google treats as the same topic are grouped, based on overlap in the ranking URLs. | One strong page per cluster instead of five thin pages competing with each other. |
| Keyword mapping | Each cluster is assigned to an existing URL or a new page, with a primary keyword and supporting terms. The full process is described on our keyword mapping page. | A clear brief for every page and no keyword cannibalization. |
| Competitor gap check | On the largest plan, we compare your keyword coverage with up to five competitors. The standalone version is our keyword gap analysis. | Keywords competitors already rank for that your site does not cover yet. |
| Priority list | The best targets for your site, ranked by business value, opportunity and effort. | A short list your team can start on the day the project ends. |
How We Run SEO Keyword Research Projects
- Brief and business context (day 1 to 2). We start with what you sell, who buys it, which products or services carry the best margin and which markets you serve. Keyword research without business context produces a long list of terms that bring visitors who never buy.
- Seed list and data sources (day 2 to 4). We build seed topics from your site, your sales team's language, customer questions, Search Console data and competitor pages, then expand them with Ahrefs, Semrush and Google Keyword Planner.
- Cleaning and scoring (week 1 to 2). We remove irrelevant, duplicate and branded competitor terms, then score what remains for volume, difficulty, intent and business value. This is where a list of thousands becomes a list of hundreds.
- Clustering and intent checks (week 2). We group keywords by how Google ranks them and check the live results for the most important clusters, because tool intent labels are often wrong for niche or B2B terms.
- Mapping and priorities (week 2 to 3). Each cluster is mapped to a page, gaps become new page recommendations and everything is ranked into a priority list.
- Walkthrough (end of project). We present the findings on a call, explain the top priorities and answer questions, so the spreadsheet is a tool your team understands rather than a file nobody opens.
A starter project for a few topics takes about one week. A full keyword universe for a large catalog or service range takes three to four weeks.
Keyword Research Deliverables: The Spreadsheet and the Plan
You receive a shared spreadsheet and a short written plan. The spreadsheet includes these columns for every keyword:
- Keyword, monthly search volume for your target country and keyword difficulty.
- Search intent label and the page type that ranks today.
- Cluster name and the primary keyword of that cluster.
- Mapped URL, or a proposed URL and title for a new page.
- Your current ranking position, if any, from Search Console.
- Business value rating and priority.
The written plan summarizes the top opportunities, explains the proposed site structure and lists the first pages to create or improve. Success looks like a team that can brief writers and developers straight from the map, with every page owning a distinct set of keywords. We do not promise rankings for any keyword, because rankings depend on what you build with the research and on what competitors do next.
Keyword Research Services Pricing
Keyword research is a fixed-price project, not a retainer. The price depends on how many seed topics we research, how many keywords end up in the final list and how many pages we map them to. A small service business with three core services needs far less than a store with hundreds of categories, and adding competitor gap checks or extra countries widens the scope.
Keyword Starter
$350 one-time
One-time, paid upfront
- Up to 3 seed topics and 150 keywords
- Search volume, difficulty and intent for every keyword
- Priority list of the 25 best targets for your site
- Best for new or small sites (under 20 pages)
- Spreadsheet plus a recorded video walkthrough
- Delivered in 5 business days
Keyword Strategy
$850 one-time
One-time, paid upfront
- Up to 10 seed topics and 500 keywords
- Keywords grouped into topic clusters by intent
- Mapped to up to 50 existing pages
- Gap check against 3 competitors
- 20 new page or article ideas with target keywords
- 45-minute review call
- Delivered in 8 business days
Keyword Universe
$1,800 one-time
One-time, 50% upfront
- 1,000+ keywords across your whole product or service range
- Clusters mapped to up to 200 pages, including ecommerce categories
- Gap check against 5 competitors
- 12-month content roadmap by priority
- 60-minute strategy call with your team
- Delivered in 12 business days
- Add-on
- Quarterly keyword refresh: $250 each
All prices in USD. Need something different? Ask for a custom quote.
For multilingual projects, several countries or very large catalogs, contact us for a custom quote.
What Is Keyword Research, and Why Does It Come First?
Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases people type into search engines when looking for what you offer, then deciding which of those searches your site should target. It comes first because it shapes everything after it. The keyword map decides your category and service page structure, your page titles and headings, your blog topics and your internal links. Getting it wrong is expensive: a site built around the wrong terms can be well designed, fast and well written and still attract almost nobody who buys.
Good SEO keyword research also tells you what not to do. It shows which topics are dominated by sites you cannot realistically beat, which searches want a type of page you do not offer and which keywords are so close together that they belong on one page.
Keyword Research Tools: Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Semrush and Search Console
No single keyword research tool is accurate on its own, so we combine several and know where each one is weak.
| Tool | What it is good for | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| Google Keyword Planner | Keyword ideas straight from Google, plus bid ranges that show commercial value. | Accounts with little or no ad spend see volume ranges instead of exact figures, and close variants are often merged. |
| Ahrefs | Large keyword database, difficulty scores, parent topics and the pages ranking for each term. | Volumes are estimates and can lag for new or seasonal terms. |
| Semrush | Keyword magic tool, intent labels, regional databases and keyword gap reports. | Intent labels are automated and need checking against live results. |
| Google Search Console | The real queries your site already gets impressions and clicks for. | Only shows your own site, and hides some low-volume queries for privacy. |
| Google Trends | Seasonality and whether interest in a topic is rising or fading. | Shows relative interest, not search volume. |
| AlsoAsked and People Also Ask results | The questions people ask around a topic, useful for FAQs and guides. | No volume data, so questions need checking in other tools. |
| Our free tools | Our keyword clustering tool groups keywords into pages, and our search intent tool labels intent. | They speed up the work. Final decisions still need a person reading the results. |
A free keyword research tool can take you a long way on a small site. What tools cannot do is decide which keywords match your margins, your sales process and your ability to produce the page Google wants.
How to Evaluate Keyword Research Services Before You Buy
Thorough keyword research services are easy to describe and hard to check before delivery. These questions help you compare providers:
- Do they map keywords to pages? A list without a map leaves the hardest decision, which page targets what, to you.
- Do they check intent against live results? Automated intent labels are a starting point. Someone should look at what actually ranks.
- Do they ask about your business? If the provider never asks about margins, products or customers, the list will be based on volume alone.
- Can they show a sample? Ask for an anonymized example of the final spreadsheet and plan.
- Do they promise rankings? Research cannot guarantee rankings. A provider who says it can is selling something else.
- Do they use your Search Console data? Your own query data is often the most valuable source in the project.
Keyword Research for Different Types of Business
Keyword research for ecommerce stores
Store keyword research focuses on category and subcategory terms, product attributes such as material, size and color, and the filter combinations people search for. Most new pages turn out to be collections or categories, not blog posts. Our guide to ecommerce keyword research covers the method in detail.
Keyword research for local service businesses
Here we focus on service terms with location modifiers, "near me" variations, problem-based searches and the questions people ask before hiring. The map usually points to one strong page per service and carefully chosen location pages, rather than a page for every town.
B2B and industrial keyword research
Industrial keyword research deals with low search volumes and very specific language: part numbers, specifications, standards and application terms. A keyword with twenty searches a month can be worth more than one with twenty thousand if it comes from an engineer specifying a purchase. We lean heavily on your sales team's language and your Search Console data, because tool databases cover these terms poorly.
Keyword research for SaaS companies
SaaS keyword research covers feature and use-case terms, "alternative to" and comparison searches, integration searches and problem-led informational topics that bring in buyers early in their evaluation.
Multilingual keyword research services
Translating an English keyword list does not work, because people in different countries describe the same thing differently, and even US and UK English differ for many products. For multilingual and multi-country projects we research each market separately in its own keyword database and map the results to the right language or country version of each page.
Keyword Research Mistakes That Waste Content Budgets
- Chasing volume. The biggest keyword in your market is often the hardest and the least likely to convert. Specific, lower-volume terms usually bring buyers sooner.
- Ignoring difficulty. Targeting keywords dominated by national brands with a young site produces content that never reaches page one.
- One page per keyword. Writing separate pages for "keyword research service" and "keyword research services" creates pages that compete with each other.
- Wrong page type. Writing a blog post for a keyword where Google ranks product categories, or a service page where Google ranks guides.
- No map. A list of keywords with no URL assigned to each one leads to duplication within months.
- Research that never gets updated. Search behavior shifts. A keyword map should be reviewed at least once a year and whenever you add products or services.
DIY Keyword Research or a Keyword Research Service?
You can do keyword research yourself for free, and for a small site with a handful of pages that is often the right call. Start with Google Keyword Planner, your Search Console queries, Google's autocomplete and the People Also Ask boxes, then group what you find by topic. A paid keyword research service makes more sense when the site is large, when the market is competitive, when you are about to spend serious money on content or a rebuild, or when nobody on your team has the time to turn thousands of rows into a clear plan. The cost of a research project is usually small next to the cost of writing and building pages that target the wrong searches.
Who Our Keyword Research Services Are For
A good fit
- Businesses about to launch or rebuild a site that want the structure planned around real searches.
- Ecommerce stores restructuring categories or adding product ranges.
- Content teams that need a prioritized plan instead of guessing at topics.
- Companies expanding into new countries or languages.
Probably not a fit
- Sites with a few pages and a narrow offer, where a free tool and an afternoon will do.
- Teams with no plan or budget to create or update pages after the research.
- Anyone expecting the research itself to produce rankings.
Related Keyword and SEO Services
Keyword research feeds directly into our other services. Our competitor analysis services show why rival pages rank for the keywords you choose, our topic clusters service turns the map into a content structure, and our on-page SEO services apply the keywords to existing pages. If you are still choosing a market, start with niche research.