What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the actual words and phrases people type into search engines when looking for something related to your business, then judging carefully which ones are genuinely worth targeting.

A real keyword research process looks at three things together at once: search volume, how competitive it realistically is to rank, and the intent sitting behind it, since a high-volume term with the wrong intent is often still a bad target.

For example, best running shoes for beginners has a much clearer buying intent than what are running shoes, even if that second, broader term technically gets more total searches each month.

Pulling that data from live search results, not guesses, is the first step automatic SEO software runs before writing anything.