How to do SEO Research for your Startup

An actionable guide on how to grow your organic traffic

Introduction

It became very clear to me that most people have no idea how to do SEO research.

I'll show you my personal method for finding keywords that:

• Are low competition
• Are relevant to your niche
• Have decent search volume

We'll then use these keywords to create a blog around our product.

I've picked a startup called 1Price for the sake of this guide.

I'll show you the exact way I'd do SEO research for this startup.

The mentality

The classic SEO approach would be to rank for the keywords with the most search volume.

This is expensive, takes long time and is very hard to do.

Instead we'll focus on finding keywords that have lower search volume and we'll create a large volume of blog posts around these keywords.

With the right execution the search volume can pile up and result in as much organic traffic as the high volume keywords.

Required tools

No one likes paying $130/mo for tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush.

While these tools are great, we'll stick to tools that don't break the bank.

We'll use:

• KeywordsEverywhere - costs 2-6$/month depending on usage
• ChatGPT - for ideas
• Ahrefs Keyword Generator - free, used to understand difficulty

1. Generate keyword ideas

Go to ChatGPT and copy and paste this prompt:

<context>
Analyze this website and give me 100 informational and commercial keywords for a blog.

The keywords should simulate the way users type normal search queries.

Don't mention this brand directly.
</context>

<website>
[PASTE WEBSITE CONTENT HERE]
</website>

Here's how to do it:

Now pick a few keywords that you think are solving a real problem and that someone would actually search for.

This comes down to a bit of intuition and expertise in your niche.

However it's usually pretty easy and you can get far with just trial and error.

Just pick a few that you find good and move to the next step.

Skip big subtopic keywords for now and focus on the ones that are more specific.

2. Validate keywords

Start by copying the keyword and pasting it into Google.

KeywordsEverywhere will give you the search volume.

Like this:

As you can see the search volume for the term is 50 searches per month.

This is the lowest acceptable search volume, I wouldn't suggest going any lower.

We need to check the keyword difficulty now, we'll use a different tool for this.

You should also know that Competition is not the same as SEO difficulty.

• Competition = competition for Google ads
• SEO difficulty = competition for organic traffic

I recommend using Ahrefs Keyword Generator

Only go for keywords that are "EASY".

3. Explore subtopics

We can easily leverage Google to find more keywords in the subtopics that ChatGPT gave us. (Those I marked with blue)

Just take the subtopic keyword, paste it in the search bar and add one space after it to make sure the recommendations kick off.

Take these and put them through the validation phase.

Here's a few other ways you can find even more keywords.

Trick 1: Add "for" after the end of the subtopic keyword

Trick 2: Add "vs" after the end of the subtopic keyword

Conclusion

This guide should help you with the basics but the best way to learn is by doing.

So start doing your research today.

Good luck.