Keyword research for small sites: how to do it, for free

Keyword research is finding out which words people type into Google when they need what you sell, and deciding which of those words each page of your site should answer. Large sites do it with expensive tools and thousands of terms. A small site needs much less: a list of the questions its customers ask, a free way to see how often each one is searched, a quick look at what Google already shows for it, and the discipline to give each question one page. This guide walks through that method with real numbers from Google’s Keyword Planner, read in October 2026 for English, German and Romanian.

What keyword research is for

The point of keyword research is not a list of popular words. It is a match between what people ask and what your pages say. A plumber who calls the service “sanitary installations” on the website while customers search for “boiler repair” has written a good page for nobody. The research tells you the customer’s words, how many people use them, and what kind of page they expect to find, so that every page you write has a real question behind it.

The table above shows why this has to be done per market, not translated. The English “how to improve seo” is searched about 2,400 times a month worldwide, while the German “seo optimierung” is searched 14,800 times in Germany alone. The same idea, phrased differently, carries completely different demand. If your site runs in more than one language, each language gets its own research.

Start from what you sell, not from a tool

Before opening any tool, write down the seed terms only you can know: every product and service you sell, the problems customers describe when they first get in touch, the words they use in emails and on the phone, and the names of the alternatives they compare you with. A customer’s own phrasing is worth more than any suggestion a tool will give you, because it comes from people who actually bought.

If the site is already live, the best source is free and already yours. The Performance report in Google Search Console lists the searches your pages appeared for, with impressions, clicks and average position, going back up to 16 months. Queries where you appear on page two or three are the cheapest wins on the list: Google already thinks you are relevant, and the page usually needs a clearer answer, not a new one. Our guide to free SEO tools covers Search Console alongside the other free tools worth having.

Get search volumes for free with Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner, inside a Google Ads account, is the free source of search volumes that comes directly from Google. You need an Ads account with billing details entered, but you do not have to run an ad. Paste in your seed terms, choose the country and language, and it returns the average monthly searches for each term and its close variants, plus hundreds of related suggestions.

Two limits are worth knowing. Accounts that spend little or nothing on ads can be shown ranges, such as 100 to 1,000, instead of exact averages, which is enough to compare terms but not to rank them precisely. And the tool groups close variants and normalises spelling, so “erp-system” comes back as “erp system”. Treat every figure as an order of magnitude, not a count.

Read intent before volume

Search volume tells you how many people ask; only the results page tells you what they want to find. Before choosing a term, search it yourself, in a private window, and look at what ranks. If the first page is full of guides, Google has learned that people want an explanation. If it shows product pages, they want to buy. If it shows a map, they want a business nearby. If it shows free online tools, they want to use one, and no article will rank there however good it is.

This is also how you avoid writing a page that can never win. A term with 5,000 searches where every result is a tool, a marketplace or a national brand is worth less to a small site than a term with 200 searches where the results are thin blog posts from five years ago.

Pick the terms a small site can win

Short, broad terms are searched the most and won by the largest sites. The longer, more specific version of the same question is searched less, but by people who know exactly what they want. “Website brief” is searched about 1,900 times a month; “how to write a website brief” about 40. Neither is wrong to target, but the specific one tells you precisely what the page must answer, and the small numbers add up across dozens of pages.

The Competition column in Keyword Planner measures advertisers, not how hard a term is to rank for organically. Google defines it as the number of advertisers who showed ads on the keyword relative to all keywords. A term marked “high” can be easy to rank for, and one marked “low” can be dominated by sites you will never outrank. Judge organic difficulty from the results page, as in the section above.

One page per intent, and never two

Once you have your terms, group them by the question they ask. “SEO cost”, “SEO pricing” and “how much does SEO cost” are one question, so they belong on one page. “SEO cost” and “what is SEO” are two questions, so they need two pages. The result is a simple keyword map: each page on the site, the main term it answers, and the close variants it covers along the way.

Give each query exactly one page. When two of your own pages target the same search, Google usually ranks only one of them, often not the one you would have chosen, and the two split the links and attention that one page would have had. Before writing anything new, check whether a page you already have answers the question; if it does, improve that page instead.

Where the keyword goes on the page

Use the main term where a reader would expect it: in the page title, in the main heading, in the address of the page and early in the first paragraph, worded naturally. Use the variants in the subheadings and the body where they fit. That is all placement needs to be. Google has said since 2009 that it ignores the keywords meta tag in web ranking, and repeating a phrase more often does not make a page more relevant; answering the question better does.

Pages that answer a question clearly are also the ones AI assistants quote. If you want to understand how search engines and AI answers differ, our guides on whether to spend on SEO or GEO and how long until AI cites you cover that side.

What to expect after you publish

Keyword research decides what to write; it does not make a page rank on its own. A new page on a small site usually takes months to settle into its position, and the SEO timeline after launch sets out what to expect month by month. Check the Search Console report again after six to eight weeks: the queries the page actually appears for are the most honest feedback on whether the research was right, and they often point to the next page worth writing.

If you would rather have the map built for you, our SEO Starter package optimises the titles, descriptions and headings of up to 15 pages and sets up Search Console, so the pages you already have answer the terms they should.

Sources

Search volumes are from Google Ads Keyword Planner, read on 28 October 2026. Tool behaviour is from Google’s own help pages.

• Google Ads Help — Use Keyword Planner ↗

  What Keyword Planner does, and that an account needs billing details entered before it can be used.

• Google Ads Help — Keyword Planner statistics ↗

  Average monthly searches cover a keyword and its close variants over 12 months; Competition is the number of advertisers relative to all keywords.

• Search Engine Land — Google throttles Keyword Planner data for low-spending accounts ↗

  Why accounts without ad spend can see ranges instead of exact averages.

• Google Search Console Help — Performance report ↗

  Queries, clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position for your own site.

• Google Search Central — Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking ↗

  Published September 2009.

• Google Search Central — SEO Starter Guide ↗

  Google’s advice to think about the words a user would search for and to write for people.