How to Find Keywords for SEO: 6 Free Methods

How to find keywords for SEO: the process at a glance

Finding keywords is not about guessing what sounds popular. It is about collecting the phrases real people type, then filtering them down to the ones that fit your site. The six methods below build on each other, and all of them can be done for free.

1. Brainstorm seed keywords from your products, services and customer questions.
2. Expand seeds with autocomplete to uncover long-tail phrases.
3. Mine the search results page for "People also ask" questions and related searches.
4. Find your competitors' keywords from their pages and the results they rank in.
5. Check demand and trends with Google's free tools.
6. Choose and map keywords to pages based on relevance, intent and competition.

Keep a simple spreadsheet as you go, with columns for the keyword, where you found it, the likely intent and which page it belongs to. By the end you will have a short list of targets rather than a long list of ideas.

1. Start with seed keywords from your audience

Seed keywords are the broad terms that describe your topic: "running shoes", "bookkeeping", "keyword research". They are rarely what you end up targeting, but every other method starts from them.

Good places to find seeds:

• Your own offer. Product categories, service names and the problems you solve.
• Customer language. Support emails, sales calls, reviews and comments often use different words than you do internally.
• Your site's existing data. If your site is live, Google Search Console shows the queries your pages already appear for.
• Communities. Forums, Reddit threads and social media show how people describe a problem before they know the jargon.

Aim for 5 to 15 seeds. Too few and you miss whole topics; too many and the expansion step becomes unmanageable.

2. Expand seeds with autocomplete suggestions

Search autocomplete is a useful free keyword source because the predictions come from the search engine and reflect what people actually search. Google's own help pages explain that autocomplete predictions are based on real searches.

The manual method is simple: type a seed into the search box and note the suggestions, then add a letter after the seed ("seed a", "seed b" and so on) to surface more. Long-tail phrases appear that you would not have thought of.

Here is what Google suggested for "how to find keywords for seo" when we checked, and what each variation tells you:

• "how to find seo keywords for a website" and "how to find seo keywords for my website" are site-owners looking for a general method.
• "how to find long tail keywords for seo" and "how to find target keywords for seo" are people refining a strategy they already have.
• "how to find keywords for local seo" is a local business with a narrower need.
• "how to find seo keywords for etsy", "how to find seo keywords for pinterest" and "how to find seo keywords for tiktok" are platform-specific searchers.
• "how to find keywords for seo using ai" signals growing interest in AI-assisted research.

Each group could become its own page or section. To speed this up, Egosaru, a free suggestion tool, runs the alphabet method for you: it collects suggestions for the keyword plus each letter A to Z and each digit 0 to 9 from Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, Rakuten, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo. You can view all suggestions for "how to find keywords for seo" and download them as CSV without registering. The interface is in Japanese, with an English toggle.

Platform-specific keywords

Search behaviour differs by platform, so research where your audience searches. For video, check YouTube's own autocomplete, for example YouTube suggestions for "keyword research". For Etsy, Pinterest or TikTok, type seeds into each platform's search bar and note its predictions, since a Google keyword list will not reflect how people search there.

3. Mine the search results page

Google's results page is a free keyword tool in disguise. Search one of your best expanded phrases and look at three areas:

• People also ask. These boxes list related questions. They make good subheadings and FAQ entries, and clicking one often loads more.
• Related searches. At the bottom of the page, these show how people rephrase or narrow the query.
• Top-ranking titles. The words the top results use in their titles can hint at what Google considers relevant for the query.

The results page also tells you the intent. If the top results for a phrase are all step-by-step guides, a product page is likely to struggle there. If they are all product listings, a blog post is likely to struggle. Match the format that is already winning.

4. How to find competitors' keywords for free

Your competitors have already done some of this research. Several free techniques reveal what they target:

1. Search your own target keywords and note which sites appear repeatedly. Those are your real search competitors, which may differ from your business competitors.
2. Read their page titles, headings and URLs. Many sites put their main keyword in these places. Scan their blog index or category pages for a quick list of topics.
3. Use a site search. Searching site:example.com plus a topic shows which of their pages Google has indexed on that subject.
4. Check their sitemap. Many sites publish one at /sitemap.xml, which lists their pages and often reveals their content plan through the URLs.
5. Consider SEO suites. Paid suites such as Ahrefs and Semrush offer estimates of the keywords a domain ranks for. Whether any free access covers competitor data differs by vendor (some free tools only cover your own verified site), so check the official sites.

Do not copy a competitor's list wholesale. Look for gaps: keywords they rank for with weak or outdated pages, and relevant topics they have not covered at all.

5. Check demand with Google's free tools

Autocomplete tells you a phrase is searched, not how often. Egosaru, for instance, does not show search volume. Before committing to a keyword, check demand with one of these:

Treat volume figures as rough guides for comparing keywords, not precise forecasts. A phrase with modest volume but a perfect fit for your page is often worth more than a broad term you cannot rank for.

6. Choose the right keywords for each page

Once you have a list, filter it. For each candidate, ask:

• Relevance: would someone searching this be satisfied by your site?
• Intent: does the searcher want to learn, compare or buy, and does your page do that?
• Competition: are the current top results from very strong sites, or are there forums, thin pages and old posts you could outdo?
• Value: does ranking for this bring visitors who might subscribe, enquire or buy?

Then group phrases that share the same intent. "how to find keywords for seo", "how do you find keywords for seo" and "how to search keywords for seo" are worded differently but ask the same question, so one page should cover all of them. Give each page one main keyword and a few close variations, and avoid creating several pages that target the same thing.

New sites often do better by starting with specific, long-tail phrases, such as "how to find seo keywords for blog" rather than a broad term like "seo keywords", and moving to broader terms as the site builds authority.

A quick worked example

Say you run a small marketing blog. Starting from the seed "how to find keywords for seo", autocomplete surfaces "how to find seo keywords for blog", "how to find long tail keywords for seo" and "how to find competitors seo keywords". Searching each one shows step-by-step guides at the top, so guides are the right format. The main phrase and its close rewordings become one core guide. The long-tail and competitor phrases have distinct intent, so each gets its own deeper post that links back to the core guide. Keyword Planner estimates then help you decide which to write first.

Conclusion: how to find keywords for SEO in six steps

You now know how to find keywords for SEO without paying for a tool: brainstorm seeds, expand them with autocomplete, mine the results page, study competitors, check demand in Google's free tools, and map each keyword group to a single page. Repeat the process every few months, because new phrases appear as search habits change.

Start with one seed today and build a list of ten specific phrases you can answer well. For more guides on using search suggestions in SEO, see the Egosaru article library.