Keyword research template: from a seed list to a keyword map

Keywords are the queries people type into Google when they look for what you sell or for an answer to their problem. They are rarely single words. Most are phrases of several words, such as “accountant leeds” or “how much does an accountant cost for a small business”.

Keyword research does not end with a list. A list of a hundred queries tells the people who write content and fix the site very little. What you need is a map: which keywords each page covers, what the intent is and what has to be done. That map is what feeds your SEO strategy and your content calendar.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide suggests thinking about the words a user might search for, and remembering that people who know a topic well use different words from newcomers. An accountant might search for “accrual accounting for small business”, while a new business owner types “how to do my own bookkeeping”. A good keyword map covers both ways of describing the same need.

A long-tail keyword has fewer searches, but usually a clearer intent and weaker competition. For a small service business, these are often the keywords that bring in the first enquiries, long before the site can compete on broad terms.

Before you score anything, build a seed list. Use all four sources at once, because each one sees a different slice of demand.

1. Google Search Console. In the Performance report, open the Queries tab and sort by impressions. Look for queries with impressions but no clicks, and keywords where you rank in positions 4–20: Google already associates your site with them, and you are not far off. The table shows at most 1,000 rows and rare queries are anonymized, so on a larger site export the data or narrow it down with a regular-expression filter.
2. Customer questions. Write down what customers ask your sales and support teams, and what they write in your contact form. It is the clearest signal of intent, in the words customers actually use.
3. Google autocomplete. Type your service into Google and record the suggestions and the People also ask questions. Add words like “cost”, “how”, “vs”, “for” or a city name, and see how Google extends the query. That is how you find long-tail keywords no ready-made list contains.
4. Competitors and a keyword tool. Check which keywords 3–5 competitors are visible for, and expand the list in a tool. Google Ads Keyword Planner is free; paid tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs add data on competitors’ keywords and difficulty.

“No data” in a tool does not mean “nobody searches for it”. Keyword Planner hides very low-volume keywords, and in B2B niches and local services those are often the ones that bring leads. If a keyword keeps coming up in customer questions and in autocomplete, keep it on the list and mark it “no data”. To compare yourself with competitors step by step, use our competitor analysis template; to find topics your site is missing, read our content gap analysis guide.

Keyword analysis answers one question: which keywords should you go after first? Search volume alone is not enough. A high-volume keyword may have an intent your site cannot serve, while one with a few dozen searches a month may bring in a customer every week. In the template, you score every keyword against six criteria.

Setting the order: the ICE method

In the template, each cluster gets three scores from 1 to 10: Impact (how many leads it could bring, not how much traffic), Confidence (how many data sources back your estimate) and Ease (how much work it takes, and whether you need a developer). Multiply them, and the result sets the order. Lower Confidence when you rely on a single source. To put a money value on a keyword, try our SEO loss calculator: from search volume, conversion rate and customer value, it estimates how much profit goes to competitors while you are not in the top 3.

Judge difficulty against your own site. A site that already has several strong pages on a topic can rank for keywords a tool labels as hard. A new site with no links should start with long-tail and local keywords and leave the broad terms for later.

Read intent from the results, not from the wording. Search for the keyword and look at the top 10: service pages, guides, comparisons, shops, the map pack, videos or an AI Overview. If “accountant leeds” shows the map pack and firms’ websites, while “how much does an accountant cost” shows guides with price ranges, those are two different intents and two different pages.

Put keywords in the same cluster when Google shows similar results for them. The test is simple: compare the top 10 for two keywords and count the shared URLs. Check in a private window, or in a tool with a fixed location. Results change from day to day, so in borderline cases repeat the test on another day.

An example (illustrative result): “accountant leeds” and “accounting firm leeds” share 7 URLs, so they go on one service page. “Accountant leeds” and “cash vs accrual accounting” share none, so the guide gets its own page and links to the service.

Grouping keywords by eye, based on similar wording, leads to one of two mistakes. Either you end up with several near-identical pages competing for the same queries, or you cram keywords with different intents onto one page and none of them wins.

Keyword mapping turns clusters into a table where each row is one cluster: the primary keyword, secondary keywords, intent, the target URL, an action and a priority. The action is one of four decisions: create a new page, expand an existing one, merge several pages, or leave it as it is. The map section of the PDF works as a keyword mapping template you can copy into a spreadsheet.

How to use the map on the page

Put the cluster’s primary keyword in the title, the H1 and the first paragraph, in its exact wording if it reads naturally. Use secondary keywords in H2 headings and in the body where they fit the meaning. Do not force them in: Google treats keyword stuffing as spam, and gives blocks of text listing the cities and regions a page is trying to rank for as an example. You can skip the meta keywords tag, because Google Search does not use it.

Every row of the map feeds the next document. New content and updates go into your content calendar, and the top-priority clusters go into your strategy. Service pages sit at the centre of their clusters: guides link to them, and they link back to the guides.

Customer questions and AI answers

Keep question-style keywords in a separate list. On the page, answer each one directly in the first paragraph under a heading that asks the question. An answer like that is easy to quote, including in Google’s AI Overviews and in ChatGPT. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond SEO best practices, so the same map does the job. How we track whether AI assistants mention a business is described on our AI search optimization page.

Keyword cannibalization happens when two or more pages on the same site target the same query and keep swapping places in the results. Neither page collects all the signals, so both rank lower than one strong page would. It usually builds up when a blog publishes similar articles over the years, or when a service page and a blog post chase the same keyword.

How to check for cannibalization in Search Console

1. Open the Performance report. Its default view covers the last three months, which is enough.
2. Add a query filter with a keyword from your map, for example “accountant leeds”.
3. Switch to the Pages tab. If two or more URLs get impressions for the same query, enter them in the template with their clicks and impressions.
4. Repeat the check every month for your highest-priority keywords.

Another signal is the same title tag on several pages. Our free SEO audit flags duplicate titles across up to 25 pages.

Google describes redirects and the canonical tag as strong signals when it picks a canonical URL, and sitemap inclusion as a weak one. Duplicate content on its own does not violate Google’s spam policies, but it confuses users and wastes crawling resources. Checking for cannibalization and topic cluster coverage is part of our SEO audit.

If you are wondering how to do keyword research without getting lost in spreadsheets, work through this keyword research template one part at a time. There are eight parts. Checking Google’s results takes the most time, because you judge intent for every keyword and run the overlap test for every pair you are unsure about.

1. Describe the business and the goal. List your services, service area, site language and what you do not sell. That lets you drop off-topic keywords before you spend time scoring them.
2. Collect seed keywords from four sources. Search Console, customer questions, Google autocomplete with People also ask, and competitors plus Keyword Planner. At this stage, just collect; do not judge.
3. Add search volume and current rankings. For each keyword, enter monthly searches with the source, or “no data”, plus your current position and ranking URL from Search Console.
4. Check search intent in Google. Note what ranks in the top 10: service pages, guides, comparisons, shops, the map pack, videos, an AI Overview. Read intent from the results, not from the wording.
5. Group keywords into clusters. Compare the top 10 results for pairs of keywords. Four or more shared URLs means one cluster; zero or one means separate clusters. Re-check the grey zone on another day.
6. Assign target pages and priorities. Give every cluster one URL, an action and an ICE score. Start with clusters close to a purchase and keywords where you already rank in positions 4–20.
7. Check for cannibalization and hand the map on. List queries where several of your URLs show up, with a decision for each. Move the finished clusters into your SEO strategy and content calendar.

The finished map is a working document, not a report. You come back to it every month for the cannibalization check, and every quarter when you review your strategy.

• Choosing keywords by volume alone. A big broad keyword rarely brings a small business customers. Long-tail keywords with purchase intent do so far more often.
• A keyword list with no target pages. Without a map, several pages end up competing for the same queries.
• Guessing the intent. The keyword sounds commercial, but Google shows guides. A service page then has little chance of reaching the top 10.
• A separate page for every keyword variant. “Accountant leeds” and “accounting firm leeds” are usually one cluster. A set of near-identical pages created to rank for similar queries, such as pages that differ only by city name, is what Google’s spam policies call doorway abuse.
• Keyword stuffing. Repeating the same phrase and lists of cities wears readers out, and Google classes it as spam.
• Writing to a word count. Google says plainly that it has no preferred word count. Length should follow from what it takes to answer the question.
• Changing URLs to add a keyword. According to Google, keywords in the domain name or URL path alone have hardly any effect on rankings, and a URL change needs redirects.
• A one-off map. Without a monthly cannibalization check and a quarterly review, the map soon stops matching the site.

If you would rather have a team that does this every day handle your keyword research and mapping, see our SEO services. Our SEO Standard plan (€450 net per month) covers up to 20 keywords, and SEO Premium (€590 net) up to 50. Full details are on our SEO pricing page.