What keyword research is, explained with something you sell rather than running shoes
Keyword research defined in one paragraph, then a prompt that teaches it back to you using your own business as the worked example instead of a generic one.
- Works in
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini
- You need
- One thing you sell · Nothing else
- Written for
- what is keyword research
Scored by our own engine
This page, run through the audit we sell. Measured 4 August 2026.
Keyword research is working out what people type into a search box when they want what you sell, then deciding which of your pages answers which phrase. That is the whole definition, and the reason it takes any effort is that customers rarely use the words a business uses about itself. The prompt above teaches the rest of it back to you using something you sell, because a lesson built on running shoes is easy to follow and hard to apply.
Two halves, and only one of them is a tool
The first half is language and the second half is demand. Both are needed and they come from completely different places.
Language means the words your customers use, which live in your support inbox, your sales calls and your reviews. Demand means how many people use them, which lives in Google Keyword Planner, in Search Console once you have traffic, or in a paid tool. Beginners usually start at the second half because it looks like the technical part. Starting there produces a list of terms built from your own vocabulary, ranked by numbers, describing nobody.
The idea worth taking away
Two phrases can share almost every word and want completely different pages. That is what the third section of the prompt output is built to show you.
Someone typing a phrase with the word cheap in it and someone typing the same phrase with the word repair in it are not the same customer, and a page that tries to serve both serves neither. This is why keyword research is not a matter of collecting phrases: it is deciding what each page is for, and refusing to let a page be for two things at once. Everything more advanced in this category is a longer version of that one decision.
What to read next
The method, once the definition makes sense. How to do keyword research works from first principles with no tool assumed, and it interviews you before it produces anything.
After that the work splits by stage. Expand one seed into candidates, cluster a list into pages, or decide what one page should target. If you would rather see the whole route before starting, the sequence is laid out here, and what a language model can and cannot answer is worth reading before you trust any of it with a number.
You are teaching me what keyword research is. I am new to this. Teach it
using my business as the worked example throughout, and do not give me a
keyword list at the end. This is a lesson, not a deliverable.
Rules you must follow:
1. Use my business for every example. Not running shoes, not coffee shops,
not a plumber, not a generic ecommerce store. If an idea is hard to
illustrate with my business, say that plainly and explain why rather than
reaching for a familiar example.
2. Do not output search volume, difficulty, competition or any number that
would have to come from a keyword tool. You do not have one. Where a real
process would need a figure, say which tool supplies it and carry on
without it.
3. Do not give me a list of keywords to use. Three example queries, chosen to
teach three different things, and no more. A list would let me skip the
understanding and copy the output, which is what I would regret.
4. Everything you say about my customers must be marked "from your words" or
"my assumption". I have told you very little, so most of it will be your
assumption, and I need to see which parts.
5. If what I sell is too vague to build examples from, ask me one question
and stop. Do not proceed with a generic version.
Write it in this shape, as prose with headed sections and no table:
WHAT IT IS, IN YOUR CASE. One short paragraph defining keyword research,
written so that my business is the subject of the sentence rather than an
example bolted on afterwards.
THREE QUERIES FROM YOUR WORLD. Three phrases somebody might type, each
chosen to demonstrate one thing:
- one where the person has a problem and does not yet know your category
exists;
- one where the person knows the category and is comparing options;
- one where the person is ready to act.
For each, three sentences: who is typing it, what they expect to find, and
what would happen if you sent them to your homepage instead.
THE SAME WORDS, DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Take one of the three and change two words
so that the searcher becomes somebody else entirely. Explain what changed.
This is the idea I am most likely to miss.
WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE GOT WRONG. The one assumption a beginner selling what I
sell reliably makes, stated as the mistake rather than as advice.
WHAT I CANNOT TELL YOU. Two or three sentences on the parts of keyword
research that need real data, naming where that data comes from.
One thing I sell: [ONE PRODUCT OR SERVICE, DESCRIBED AS A CUSTOMER WOULD]
Who buys it: [THE PERSON, NOT THE MARKET]What to change
Everything in square brackets is yours to replace. Nothing else needs editing.
[ONE PRODUCT OR SERVICE, DESCRIBED AS A CUSTOMER WOULD]- One thing, not your whole range, and described the way a customer would say it out loud. "We fix boilers in rented flats" teaches better than "residential heating solutions", because the first sentence already contains a person in a situation and the second contains neither.
[THE PERSON, NOT THE MARKET]- A person you could picture, rather than a segment. "Landlords with two or three flats who do not live nearby" produces three example queries you will recognise. "The property sector" produces three you could read in any article, which defeats the entire purpose of using your own business.
How to run it
- 01Pick one thing you sell, not your whole business
Choose the single product or service you would explain first to a stranger at a party. Keyword research is done one topic at a time and a lesson built on your whole range comes back too general to recognise. You can run this again for anything else you sell.
- 02Describe it the way a customer would say it
Write the description out loud before typing it. If the sentence contains solution, platform, bespoke or leading, it is your marketing copy rather than a description, and the examples that come back will be built from words nobody searches.
- 03Run it and read the three queries as three people
The three example queries are the lesson. Read each one and picture the person typing it, because the point being made is that these three want different pages, and that single idea is most of what keyword research is.
- 04Check what is marked assumption
Rule 4 makes the model separate what you told it from what it filled in, and given how little you supplied, most of the output will be assumption. Read those lines and note which are wrong about your customers. Knowing that is worth more than the examples.
- 05Search all three queries yourself
Type each one into Google and look at what comes back. You will see three different kinds of page winning, which is the same lesson arriving as evidence rather than as explanation. Also read the suggestions that appear as you type, because those come from real searches.
- 06Move on to doing it properly
Once the three queries make sense as three different people, the next step is the full first principles method rather than another explanation. Read how to do keyword research, run the interview there, and come back to this page only if a term stops making sense.
Questions people ask
What is keyword research?
Working out what people type into a search engine when they want what you sell, and deciding which of those phrases each of your pages should answer. It has two halves: understanding how your customers describe their problem, and finding out how many of them describe it that way. The first half comes from your customers and the second from a data source.
Why does keyword research matter?
Because a page can only be found by somebody searching the words it was written for. Without research you write about your product in your own vocabulary, and your customers search in theirs, so the two never meet. It also decides how many pages you need, since two pages written for the same query compete against each other.
What is search intent and why does everyone mention it?
Intent is what somebody wants to happen after they search, and it is the property that decides which kind of page can satisfy a query. Two phrases sharing most of their words can want completely different pages, one an explanation and one a product. Matching intent matters more than matching the words themselves.
Do I need a paid tool to do keyword research?
Not to start. Google autocomplete and the related searches at the bottom of a results page come from real queries and cost nothing, and Google Keyword Planner is free with an ads account. Paid tools give you more data faster and better competitor visibility, which starts to matter once you have more pages than you can watch by hand.
How is keyword research different from SEO?
Keyword research decides what to write about. SEO is everything that follows: writing the page, making it loadable and crawlable, structuring it so a machine can read it, and earning enough trust to rank. Research is the first step and the cheapest place to make an expensive mistake, since a page targeting the wrong query cannot be fixed by improving it.
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