How to Do Keyword Research for Your WordPress Site

You’ve got a new post idea and you’re ready to start writing. But how do you know anyone is actually searching for it?

Keyword research answers that with real search data. Instead of guessing, you write about the exact things people are already typing into Google.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the process I use, from your first seed keywords to optimizing the finished post in WordPress. It’s the same approach we rely on at WPBeginner to plan our own content.

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Step 1: List Your Seed Keywords

A seed keyword is a broad term that describes your site or business. It’s not the exact phrase you’ll target, just a starting point for research.

For example, a food blogger’s seed keywords might look like this: meal prep, healthy dinners, chicken recipes, lunch ideas for work, high-protein meals, budget recipes.

A bakery’s seeds might look more like this: birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cookies by mail, cupcakes, custom cakes Austin, gift boxes.

Write down 6 to 10 broad terms like these before moving on. You’ll use them to find more specific keywords in the next step.

Step 2: Find Keyword Ideas With Google Autocomplete and People Also Ask

Your seed keywords are too broad to target on their own. Google itself will show you the exact phrases people type to find a business like yours, and there are three free places to look.

Type a seed keyword into Google’s search bar and read the autocomplete dropdown.

Typing ‘meal prep’ brings up suggestions like ‘meal prep lunch ideas,’ ‘meal prep containers,’ and ‘meal prep breakfast burritos.’

Next, search the keyword and check the ‘People Also Ask’ box on the results page.

Searching ‘cookies by mail’ surfaces questions like ‘What are the best cookies to ship in the mail?’ and ‘How do you keep cookies fresh when shipping?’

Scroll to the bottom of the results page for a ‘Related searches’ section, which surfaces more variations on your original search.

Two tools can help speed this up. The free WPBeginner Keyword Generator takes a seed keyword and returns 300+ related ideas, organized by alphabet, prepositions, and questions.

LowFruits‘ Keyword Finder (premium tool) pulls suggestions straight from Google’s autocomplete data. It can also extract People Also Ask questions in the same search.

Step 3: Check Search Volume and Keyword Difficulty

Once you have a big list of keyword ideas, you need to know two things about each one: how many people search for it, and how hard it will be to rank for.

Search volume is roughly how many people search a phrase every month. Keyword difficulty, often shortened to KD, is a score (usually 0 to 100) for how hard it is to rank on page 1.

Google Keyword Planner is a free option that comes with a Google Ads account, and it’s a reasonable starting point if you’re not ready to pay for a dedicated tool.

To use it, open the Keyword Planner, choose ‘Discover new keywords,’ and enter a seed keyword or your site’s URL. It returns related phrases with a monthly search range and a competition level.

Keep in mind that this competition score is about paid ads, not how hard a keyword is to rank for organically, so treat it as a rough guide.

For more detail, I use Semrush‘s Keyword Magic Tool.

Just enter a single seed keyword and it returns thousands of related phrases, each with an exact monthly search volume, a difficulty score for ranking organically, and a search intent label.

You can filter that list on the spot, for example to show only low-difficulty questions so you spot the winnable keywords quickly. (Ahrefs‘ Keywords Explorer works the same way.)

A high search volume looks tempting, but it’s not the whole story. A keyword with 200 searches a month that you can actually rank number 1 for beats a 20,000-search keyword that leaves you stuck on page 5 with next to no traffic.

Instead, look for the right user intent, a lower difficulty score, and ‘good enough’ volume, rather than chasing the highest number on the screen.

Don’t throw out keywords that show zero or very low volume, either. Keyword research tools consistently undercount long, specific phrases.

For example, ‘How to keep cookies soft when shipping in summer’ might show zero volume in a tool, but it will bring you the exact person who’s about to place an order.

Working through this step, the food blogger ends up with phrases like ‘meal prep ideas for the week,’ ‘high protein meal prep,’ ‘meal prep for beginners,’ ‘cheap meal prep for the week,’ and ‘meal prep containers.’

The bakery collects phrases like ‘birthday cake delivery Austin,’ ‘custom cakes near me,’ ‘how to ship cookies without breaking,’ ‘best cookies to mail,’ and ‘gluten free birthday cake Austin.’

By the end of this step, you should have somewhere between 100 and 300 real phrases to work with.

Step 4: Find Competitor Keywords and Content Gaps

Now, it’s time to find the sites that actually show up when you search for your seed keywords. These aren’t necessarily your direct business rivals, just whichever sites Google is currently ranking.

Pick 3 to 5 of these sites. A tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, or a cheaper option like Ubersuggest or Keywords Everywhere lets you paste in a competitor’s URL and see every keyword that page ranks for.

Look for the content gap: keywords they rank for that you don’t have a post targeting yet. That gap is your to-do list.

For the food blogger, a competitor’s meal-prep post might have sections for ‘how to store meal prep,’ ‘how long does meal prep last,’ and ‘best containers.’ Those can become new sections in an existing post, or posts of their own.

For the bakery, a competitor might rank for ‘corporate gift cookies,’ which is exactly the kind of lucrative angle you’d never think to target on your own.

For more information, see our roundup of the best SEO checker and website analyzer tools.

Step 5: Choose Keywords That Survive Google’s AI Overviews

Google’s AI Overviews can answer plenty of searches directly on the results page, which means the searcher never clicks through to a website.

You can protect your traffic by favoring keywords where a short AI answer isn’t enough:

• Recipes with photos, steps, and ratings. A quick AI answer can’t replace the photos, star ratings, and step-by-step a cook wants open while they’re actually making the dish.
• Comparisons and ‘best’ roundups. Someone searching ‘best cookie delivery service’ wants to weigh real options and read opinions, not settle for one flattened answer.
• Local and transactional keywords. Searches like ‘order cakes,’ ‘wedding cakes in Austin,’ or ‘wedding cake delivery’ end in a sale, and an AI Overview can’t bake and ship a cake for anyone.
• Personal experience and trust-based content. Angles only you can write, like ‘I tested 5 meal-prep containers’ or ‘my grandmother’s recipe,’ are ones that AI has no way to fake.

For more on adapting your content strategy to this shift, see our guide on how to optimize your content for Google AI Overviews.

Step 6: Match Keywords to Search Intent

Two searchers can type nearly the same thing and want completely different results, such as one looking to learn and one ready to buy.

Before you start writing, sort every keyword you’ve collected into one of these 4 intent types:

Intent	What They Want	Example	Good For
Informational	To learn	‘how to meal prep chicken’	Blog posts, email signups
Commercial	To compare before buying	‘best cookie delivery service’	Reviews, roundups
Transactional	To buy or act now	‘order birthday cake Austin’	Product or service pages
Navigational	A specific brand or place	‘[bakery name] hours’	Homepage, contact page

This matters because intent decides what kind of page or blog post you build.

Someone searching ‘order birthday cake Austin’ wants a page where they can place an order, not a 2,000-word post about the history of cake.

Match the page to the intent, or you won’t rank for it.

Step 7: Group Keywords Into Topic Clusters

With your keywords collected and tagged, you can organize them so that each post has a clear target.

Start by assigning one primary keyword to each post you plan to write. If two posts target the same keyword, they’ll compete against each other in the search results instead of both ranking.

From there, group your keyword list around a pillar page. A pillar page is a broad, comprehensive post that covers an entire topic and earns the most internal links on your site.

The narrower posts around it are your cluster content. Each cluster post targets one subtopic and links back to the pillar.

To decide which keyword becomes the pillar, pick the broadest phrase that sums up the whole topic. The more specific, longer-tail phrases around it become your cluster posts.

For the food blogger, that might mean a pillar page on meal prep for beginners, with cluster posts on containers, weekly meal plans, and high-protein meal prep.

For the bakery, the pillar might be wedding cakes in Austin, with cluster posts on pricing, delivery, and flavor options.

Once each post is published, you need to link them together. Every cluster post should link up to the pillar, and the pillar should link back down to each cluster.

This internal linking shows Google and your readers how the pieces fit together, and it points your site’s authority toward the pillar page you most want to rank.

Step 8: Optimize for Your Keywords in WordPress

Once you know which keyword each post is targeting, you can apply that research in WordPress with an SEO plugin.

A plugin lets you set a focus keyword, sometimes called a keyphrase, for a post in the WordPress content editor. It then checks your meta title, meta description, and content against that keyword to make sure your content is optimized.

AIOSEO, Yoast SEO, and Rank Math are the 3 most popular choices, and all of them have a free version.

In AIOSEO, scroll to the plugin’s meta box while editing a post and enter your focus keyphrase. The plugin scans your content and returns an SEO score, along with specific suggestions for improving it.

After you save your changes, watch the score indicator. It updates right away, so you can confirm the optimization actually took effect instead of guessing.

For more details, see our guide on how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.

You don’t need to force your keyword into every sentence. Use it naturally in your title, your first paragraph, and a subheading or two, and let the plugin’s suggestions guide the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions About Keyword Research

How many keywords should I target in one blog post?

Focus on one primary keyword per post, plus a handful of closely related phrases you can work in naturally. Trying to rank one post for several unrelated keywords usually means it ranks well for none of them.

What’s a good search volume for a small or new website?

There’s no universal number to aim for. A new site is better off targeting keywords with 100 to 300 monthly searches and low difficulty than chasing a 10,000-search keyword it has no realistic shot at ranking for yet.

Do I need a paid tool like Semrush, or is free keyword research enough?

Free tools such as Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask, Google Keyword Planner, and the WPBeginner Keyword Generator are enough to get started and find real keyword ideas.

A paid tool like Semrush or Ahrefs adds volume and difficulty data plus competitor keyword gaps, which help you prioritize once you have more content published.

How often should I redo my keyword research?

Revisit it whenever you’re planning new content, and do a broader refresh every few months to catch new autocomplete suggestions and shifts in what your competitors are ranking for.

Can I still rank if my keyword might trigger a Google AI Overview?

Yes, but pick your angle carefully. Keywords with local, transactional, or highly personal intent are much less likely to be fully answered by an AI Overview, which leaves room for your page to earn the click.

Additional Resources for WordPress SEO

I hope this article helped you learn how to do keyword research for your WordPress site.

You may also like to see some other guides about WordPress SEO:

• Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide. A complete walkthrough of WordPress SEO basics, from setup to ranking in AI search.
• How to Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress. A closer look at applying your target keywords to individual pages and posts.
• How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress. Track whether your new keywords are actually bringing in traffic.
• WooCommerce SEO Made Easy. Apply the same keyword research process to product titles, descriptions, and categories.

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