What is keyword research?
Finding the searches your customers actually make, how often, and with what intent, before writing a word. It decides which pages a site needs and what each is for.
Keyword research is finding out, before you write anything, what your customers actually type into Google when they are looking for what you sell, how many of them do it, and what they want when they do.
The value is in the gap between how a business describes itself and how its customers search. A firm might call itself a provider of “residential building solutions” while everyone near it searches for “house extension builders”. No amount of good writing ranks a page for words it never uses.
Good research looks at more than volume. A search with a thousand monthly searches from people idly curious can be worth less than one with thirty from people ready to buy. It also looks at intent, at what Google is already showing for the search, and at how realistic it is to compete.
It has a limit worth knowing. AI assistants break a question into sub-questions nobody types into a search box, so they never appear in a keyword tool. That is why the questions your customers ask you on the phone are research too. We explain that in our piece on query fan-out.
Search that compounds, run by people who show their work.
Strategy, technical, content, links and local, planned together and reported against the numbers your business cares about.