How to do keyword research for a small business website

1. Start from your customers, not from a tool

Write down how customers describe what you sell, the problems they mention before they buy, and the questions they ask on the phone or by email. These phrases are your seed keywords.

• Products or services: “oak dining table”, “boiler service”
• Problems: “back pain from desk chair”, “boiler losing pressure”
• Comparisons and budgets: “best standing desk under £300”
• Local wording, if you serve an area: “emergency plumber Hammersmith”

2. Check demand and difficulty

For each seed, look at two numbers. Monthly searches is an estimate of how often people search for it. Difficulty estimates how hard it is to reach Google's first page, based on the strength of the pages already there.

A newer or smaller website rarely wins the broadest, most competitive searches first. A search with a few hundred monthly searches and low difficulty is often a better first target than one with tens of thousands and high difficulty.

3. Understand what the searcher wants

The same topic can carry different intentions. Someone searching “how to choose an office chair” wants guidance; someone searching “ergonomic office chair under £300” is closer to buying. Match the page to the intent: a guide for learning searches, a comparison for comparing searches, and a clear product or service page for buying searches.

The quickest check is to look at what already ranks. If the top results are guides, a product page is unlikely to compete, and vice versa.

4. Go more specific

Longer, more specific searches usually have less competition and clearer intent. “Ergonomic chair for small spaces” tells you far more about the searcher than “office chair”, and it may fit what you actually sell.

5. Choose one main search per page

Give each important topic its own page and avoid several pages competing for the same search. Use the main search naturally in the page title, the main heading and the opening paragraph, then answer the related questions people ask.

6. Keep a short list and track it

Pick five to ten searches that matter most and check your position for them every week or two. Rankings move slowly; look for direction over several weeks rather than day-to-day changes.

Doing this in Rankpax

Type a seed keyword and Rankpax shows estimated demand, difficulty, intent and trend, suggests a more specific opportunity with lower competition, lists related searches you can filter, and finishes with three next steps. From there you can save ideas, start weekly tracking or create a content brief.