How to do keyword research with free tools
You don't need a $99/month SEO tool to find keywords that rank. Here's a complete free keyword research workflow using free tools and smart techniques.
September 12, 2025 · 2 min read
Paid SEO suites are great, but they are not required. A smart free workflow can surface the same low-competition keywords — you just need to know where to look. Here is a step-by-step (and mostly free) keyword research process.
Start with a seed list from free sources
Begin with ten to twenty seed topics you already know your audience searches for. You can get seed ideas from your own search history, your customer service inbox, community forums, and competitor page titles.
Drop each seed into a free long-tail keyword generator like LongTail Kit. You instantly get an intent-grouped list of long-tail variations — questions, comparisons, use cases — that form the raw material for your research.
Use Google's own suggestions (no scraping)
Google gives away keyword ideas in its own interface. Wind down a few official and manual approaches:
These are high-signal terms straight from real searchers, and using them in your content earns natural relevance without any scraping.
- •Type a seed in Google and read the autocomplete phrases
- •Open the People Also Ask box and expand every question
- •Run related searches at the bottom of the results page
- •Check Google Trends for rising and seasonal terms
Look at what ranks and what doesn't
For each candidate keyword, search it and grade the top ten results. If the first page is full of outdated guides, thin listicles, or forum threads, there is room for a better page. If every result is a recent, detailed guide from a big brand, move on.
This manual "SERP inspection" is the part most free researchers skip — and it is exactly the signal paid difficulty scores are trying to approximate.
A free weekly workflow that compounds
Do this every week for two topics and you will build a growing library of long-tail pages that rank in quiet corners of the search results, month after month.
- •Day 1: generate 20-40 long-tail candidates per topic
- •Day 2: expand the winners into questions with autocomplete and People Also Ask
- •Day 3: SERP-inspect the top 10 candidates and pick 3-5
- •Day 4-7: write and publish the best page for each