Are you trying to create a content plan for your blog but are unsure what topics to cover or how to find keywords for blog posts? I get it.
When you try to build a successful blogging business, every post is important and every post is considered another building block for your new business.
Doing complete keyword research for a blog can feel overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a process or know what keyword research tool to use.
In this post, I will show you how to do keyword research step-by-step. This is exactly how I do it when researching keywords for my blog, and it’s easy!
I will also cover how to use a keyword research tool and how to build your blog content plan for the next quarter.
Table of Contents
What are keywords used for
Keywords are search terms and short phrases people use to search on Google. These terms are used to describe products, services, or any type of information.
Keywords can be short and include one word (like ‘boots’), 2 words (like ‘chicken recipe’), or a complete sentence like ‘how to sell on Etsy’ or ‘How to paint a wall’.
These sentences are called long-tail keywords and usually have lower competition on Google than more generic keywords (like boots).
What are meta keywords used for?
Meta keywords are keywords that are included in meta tags (title and description) of a post.
When publishing a new post, it is good SEO practice to include your main keyword in the text, title, and description (which show up in search engine results).
Including keywords in your text and meta tags (title and description) will help Google determine which searches are relevant to your content. Based on keywords, Google tries to match a search to the most relevant content on the web and shows these results first.
One of the most important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) factors is to place your main keyword in the meta tags. Google will give more significance to the words in the title and description than the words in the text itself.
What are the best keywords for a blog?
The best keywords for blogging are the ones that have all the elements below.
Use keywords that have –
- Relevance – the keyword needs to be relevant to your blogging niche or one of your sub-niches. You don’t want to try to rank for keywords that look good for affiliate marketing income but have very low relevance to your niche.
- Topical Authority – keywords that can build your topical authority in this niche. Think about what topics you should write about to be seen as an expert in your niche.
- Monthly Search Volume – Does this keyword have a good search volume on Google? You don’t want to write posts about keywords with 0 searches…
- Low competition – does this keyword have low competition on Google so you’ll be able to compete? It you try to target very competitive keywords, you will find yourself investing a lot of time writing posts that no one reads.
You can check my process of ranking posts fast using an AI Optimization tool for SEO.
- Search Intent – when you write a post about a specific keyword, the most important thing is to write content that matches your readers’ intent.
Keyword intent can be one of these 4:Navigational – when the readers are searching for a specific page
Informational – readers searching for information about a topic, an answer to a question, or a complete guide about a subject.
Transactional – looking to buy a product or a service and looking for information before they complete a purchase
Commercial – readers are searching for comparison information, for example, a post comparing 2 brands of hiking boots or a roundup post about the 10 best hiking boots.
How to Find Keywords for Blog Posts – Step by Step
Step 1 – Create a list of terms relevant to your niche
Write down a list of words and short phrases (keywords) that describe your niche.
Let’s say, for example, that you are blogging about how to sell on Etsy. Some of your keywords can be – how to sell on Etsy, selling on Etsy, how to sell on Etsy in 2025, and how to sell on Etsy for beginners.
Then, add to this list keywords that describe your sub-niches. These are the main topics you will cover on your blog.
Start with 5 sub-niches for your blog (these sub-niches will be your seed keywords). This will generate lots of ideas.
Here are a few examples of sub-niches for our blog on how to sell on Etsy –
- How to sell POD (print on demand) on Etsy,
- How to sell digital products on Etsy,
- product photography for Etsy,
- Etsy SEO,
- how to calculate Etsy fees and profit,
- Etsy ads,
- How to open a shop on Etsy step by step.
Step 2 – Write a list of keywords for each of these sub-niches.
If we take the Print on Demand niche, here are a few examples of relevant keywords for this niche:
- How to integrate Printify with Etsy
- Best print-on-demand products for Etsy
- Etsy mockups for print-on-demand
- Trending POD niches on Etsy
The more you know the niche you are writing about, the better your keyword research will be.
In addition, it is good to add questions that you think your readers will have about this sub-niche. For example – Is it worth selling digital products on Etsy?
Step 3 – Get More Ideas from Google Autocomplete
Now that you have an initial list of keyword ideas, you can use Google autocomplete to help you develop more keywords you didn’t think of.
Don’t skip this step, as it has great potential to increase your list of ideas.
The more terms and phrases you have at the beginning, the more chances you have to find keywords with good traffic and low competition.
How do you use Google Autocomplete? Start typing these terms in Google and see what other ideas come up.
Here is an example when searching for the keyword “selling on Etsy”:
Or, the keyword “how to sell on Etsy”:
If you scroll down a bit to the middle of the results page, you can see a section called ‘People Also Ask.’
Here, you can see relevant questions that people are asking about this topic. This is a great source of new keyword and blog post ideas to write about.
The last place to search for keyword ideas when using Google is to scroll down to the bottom of the page results and see what other terms are suggested.
Pick the ones that are most relevant to you and add them to your list –
Step 4 – Use a Keyword Research Tool to Check the Data of These Keywords
To do the complete keyword research, I am using Semrush.
If you want a more affordable keyword tool, I would recommend checking out Keysearch, which is my go-to recommendation for beginner bloggers, and you can start working with it for free.
You would need a keyword tool that doesn’t limit you by the number of searches you make (like most free keyword research tools), so you can do a thorough search to find the best keywords for your site.
Let’s start with the most generic keyword for our blog example, which is “how to sell on Etsy”:
The search volume is how many people search for this keyword on Google US per month (it is good to note that this number is an estimate and not an accurate number).
The SEO difficulty score is a number from 0 – 100.
Any SEO difficulty score above 50 is considered very high and difficult to compete with unless you are a big media site.
At the beginning of your blog, it is recommended to choose keywords that have a keyword difficulty of less than 30.
As you can see, this keyword has very high traffic volume which is great, however, that comes with a high keyword difficulty.
3 most important parameters to look at in Semrush are: monthly volume, keyword difficulty and global volume. Even if you are targeting mostly the US, it is good to select keywords that are also searched globally.
Because of the high competition, let’s search for a more related longtail keyword like ‘How to sell digital downloads on Etsy’.
Competition for this keyword is more achievable; however, I still like to find keywords whose keyword difficulty is less than 30, and even better – less than 10.
This is why our next step is to stay on this page where we found this keyword with the lower competition and scroll down to see the keyword variations – this is where the ‘goldmine’ is waiting for you.:)
These 2 keywords above that have n/a as keyword difficulty are your best opportunity to rank on Google fast. Remember, the real traffic numbers are much higher than what you see here in Semrush, so don’t hesitate to choose keywords with low traffic data.
You can also click on each of these and see which one has global search; this would be the one to go after.
Step 5 – Find Relevant Keyword Ideas
What’s important to understand is that the fact that a generic keyword has high competition doesn’t mean we can’t find other, less competitive keyword ideas that are still relevant to the same topic as the keyword we initially searched.
Our goal is to find relevant keywords with a validated search volume but low competition to make it easier to rank our blog posts on Google.
Create a list of keyword ideas that match this criteria. Continue going through these keyword ideas and add relevant keywords to your list.
Once you’ve finished this list, go back and go through the same process with another generic keyword.
If you are using the Semrush paid plan, you will be able to create these lists of keywords inside Semrush and them download them to your computer.
Step 6 – Download Your List of Organic Keywords
When you finish searching for keywords and creating lists of keywords, it is time to download the list to your computer so you can sort the keywords and select the best ones for you.
Step 7 – Prioritize the List and Create Your Content Calendar
Prioritize your keyword list by the order in which you want to write your content. This will be used as your content calendar.
You can create a content calendar for the next quarter or even 6 months.
It is not recommended to create a content calendar a year in advance as the competition changes, and new keywords that are rising in search results are also topics you would want to start writing about.
Remember that you will write a separate blog post for each of these keywords on your list.
Best Keywords for Blog Traffic
So, how do you prioritize? Which keywords are more important than others?
You have two primary goals for your blog: to bring in as much traffic as possible and to make money from it.
At the beginning of your blogging journey, this will mostly be through affiliate marketing.
With that in mind, it is recommended to start writing posts that target keywords that have high monthly search volume but, at the same time, low competition.
These are usually informational posts that can answer your readers’ questions (like – ‘Can you sell on Etsy under 18?’) or guides that take them step-by-step, showing them how to do something related to your niche. For example, the keyword ‘how to sell Jewelry on Etsy’.
Here is an example of the list prioritized by search volume (as all keywords here have low competition).
Add the dates you plan to publish these posts to create your content calendar.
Information posts can attract a lot of traffic, leading to higher income from ads and affiliate marketing (especially if your readers start clicking on internal links and reading additional posts on your site).
In time, you can add affiliate posts like product reviews or roundup posts. These are designed to make you money from affiliate marketing.
What about keywords with higher competition?
The first step is to start ranking for low competition and longtail keywords. You will achieve that by developing a momentum of publishing consistently in the same niche and gaining topical authority.
In time, Google will start ranking you for more generic and competitive keywords, and you’ll be able to rank your posts faster on Google.
Step 8: Connect your site to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that can give you useful information about your site.
Here are some examples of the data you will get:
- Technical errors on your site that prevent Google from indexing your site
- What pages are most visited on your site and get the most search traffic (Google organic traffic)
- Potential keywords you might want to target (you can see the keyword phrases people used to come to your site) and much more.
Step 9: Use Google Trends to Find Additional Related Keywords
Google Trends is a free tool by Google that can give you keyword ideas for terms that are trending in your niche.
This can be useful for tapping into new low-difficulty keywords highly searched on Google. This is an excellent opportunity to get more traffic for your blog and increase your first-year blogging income.
Is Google Keyword Planner Good for SEO?
Google Keyword Planner is free to use (you only need a Google account to access it).
It is a good tool for generating keyword ideas and expanding your search.
The downside of this tool is that it doesn’t give you accurate monthly search volume for each of these keywords. For example, you can see a range of 10k – 100k as the search volume per month.
A tool like Google Keyword Planner is best used for PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, as it helps advertisers get accurate information about the cost per click for each of these keywords.
How to Find Keywords for Blog Posts – Conclusion
Finding low-competition keywords for your posts is easy when you have the process down and are using a good keyword research tool.
As you dig in, using Google autocomplete to get more ideas and checking all keyword idea categories in your keyword research tool, you will be able to find hidden opportunities to rank on Google!
Good keyword research will help you get quick wins on Google and increase traffic to your blog, even if your blog is brand new!
It takes time to create a great content plan and calendar, but it is well worth it and will help you plan your keyword strategy and establish your blog as an authoritative blog in your niche.
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