Keyword research for small businesses: how to find words that actually sell

You are about to optimise your site for keywords nobody searches

Uncomfortable truth: the most expensive mistake we see in small businesses investing in SEO is not bad content, slow sites or missing backlinks. It is optimising for the wrong keywords.

You spend three months writing content, you pay an agency, you climb positions... and the traffic never comes. Because the word you are ranking for is actually searched four times a month. Or worse: lots of people search for it, but none of them can buy from you.

Proper keyword research is 80% of SEO success. The good news: for a small business, you can do it well and for free in one afternoon. In this guide we show you exactly how.

What keyword research is (and isn't)

Keyword research is the process of discovering which words and phrases your potential customers type into Google, how many of them do it, and how hard it is to rank for each. It is the foundation every SEO strategy is built on: get this wrong and everything afterwards is chasing the wrong target.

What keyword research is not:

• Sitting down and brainstorming 10 words you think your customer searches (bias)
• Copying the keywords your competitor uses (they might be wrong)
• Using the first free tool you find and exporting 500 unfiltered keywords (noise)
• Asking ChatGPT "give me keywords for my business" (no real volume data)

The 4 axes to evaluate a keyword

Not all keywords are equal. Score every candidate on 4 axes:

1. Volume — how many search for it?

Monthly searches in your geographic market. Typical ranges:

Range	Type
10K-100K	Generic — highly competitive, almost impossible for SMBs
1K-10K	Sweet spot — high volume but reachable
100-1K	Specific — low volume but high intent
10-100	Long-tail — very specific, high conversion

2. Intent — what does the user want?

There are 4 search intents. Each one demands a different type of page:

• Informational — "what is X", "how to Y" → blog post, guide
• Navigational — "Webifay reviews", "IKEA phone" → brand, not SEO
• Commercial — "best X", "X vs Y", "X reviews" → comparisons, reviews
• Transactional — "buy X", "X price", "X near me" → service or product landing

This is the most ignored dimension. If you optimise a blog post for a transactional keyword, Google will never rank you — it wants to show a service page, not an article.

3. Competitiveness — who is already ranking?

Look at the first Google page for the keyword. If the top 10 are Wikipedia, national brands and massive portals, forget it. If there are SMB blogs and lower-authority sites, there is room.

4. Conversion potential — does that visit buy?

A keyword with 5,000 monthly searches and 0.1% conversion (5 customers) is worth less than one with 200 monthly searches and 5% conversion (10 customers). Volume without purchase intent is noise.

An SMB with limited budget should ignore high-volume keywords without intent and focus on commercial/transactional keywords with 100-1,000 monthly searches. That's where the real customers are.

How to do keyword research in 5 steps (free)

Follow this order — it works equally for a dental clinic, a restaurant or a consultancy.

Step 1: seed brainstorm (30 min)

List 10-20 "seed" keywords without touching any tool. Just pen and paper:

• Your main services ("dental implants", "invisible braces")
• Local variants ("dental implants London", "dentist Manchester")
• Problems you solve ("toothache", "broken tooth")
• Frequent questions customers ask
• Industry terms you use that your customer might not

Step 2: expand with Google (1 hour)

Google itself gives you data for free. Three techniques:

Google Autocomplete — start typing your keyword and watch the suggestions. They are real, popular searches.

"People also ask" — the PAA block in the results. Each question is a mini-keyword with clear intent.

Related searches — at the bottom of the results page. Semantically close keywords.

Pull out 30-50 keywords from this.

Step 3: validate volume with tools (1 hour)

You need to know how many people search each keyword. Decent free tools:

Tool	What it gives	Limitation
Google Keyword Planner	Official Google volumes	Needs Google Ads account, gives ranges not exact numbers
Google Trends	Time trend and seasonality	No absolute volume
Ubersuggest (free)	Volumes and difficulty	Only 3 searches/day without account
Search Console	Keywords you already rank for	Only if you already have an indexed site

Pro tip: if you already have a site with traffic, Search Console is pure gold. It tells you exactly which keywords show your site, how many impressions you get and what your CTR is. The most reliable source — it's your data.

Step 4: filter and prioritise (45 min)

Take your list and filter:

• Remove any with 0-10 monthly searches (nobody searches them)
• Remove purely informational ones if your goal is to sell
• Mark as priority those with: 100-1K searches + commercial/transactional intent + SMB competitors on page 1

You should end up with 15-30 actually actionable keywords.

Step 5: group by intent and map to pages (30 min)

Each main keyword must be attacked from a dedicated page. Don't mix. If you have 3 services, that's 3 pages. Related informational topics are blog posts.

Example mapping for a dental clinic:

Keyword	Page type	Intent
dental implants London	Service landing	Transactional
dental implants price	Service landing (price section)	Transactional
what is a dental implant	Blog post	Informational
dental implant vs bridge	Blog post	Commercial
pain after dental implant	Blog post	Informational

Typical mistakes that drain SEO budgets

After auditing hundreds of sites, these are the costliest mistakes:

Real data from proper keyword research

In 2026 we did webifay's keyword research with real Google Keyword Planner data. Result: we discovered "website positioning" was growing +900% over the previous 3 months. We pivoted the entire content strategy towards that keyword and its derivatives — which is why you are reading this blog.

The lesson: data changes strategy. Without that keyword research, we would have kept writing about "SMB web design" (stable but slower-growing volume) and missed the wave entirely.

Keyword research and the rest of SEO

Keyword research doesn't work alone. Once you have the keywords, you need:

• A well-structured site to assign them to pages — we develop this in SEO web design
• Optimised content for each one — guide in how to write web content that sells
• A local strategy if your business is physical — start with local SEO
• Decent speed and technicals — because without Core Web Vitals, keywords don't get to rank

Your next step

If you have never done formal keyword research, do it this weekend following the 5 steps. The highest-return time investment you can make in SEO.

If you want to skip the learning curve, at webifay we include keyword research in every SEO project — with validated data, page mapping and a 6-month content plan. We do a free analysis in 24 hours and we show you which keywords you already have within reach and which ones are leaving money on the table.