Keyword research
Seeds or a website, location, the cost estimate, and reading the run page.
In shortKeyword research finds the Google keywords and the AI prompts worth targeting, from a page URL or up to 10 seed keywords. Open SEO → Research → Keyword research, pick a tab and a search market, check the cost estimate, and run. The run takes about a minute on our servers and opens a report with keywords, difficulty, clusters, AI prompts, SERP snapshots and content briefs. You pay only for the data lookups the run actually makes.
What keyword research is for
Before you write a page, you want to know what people search for, how hard it is to rank, and which questions they ask. Keyword research answers those three things for one topic at a time. It also turns the topic into AI prompts: the questions people type into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. You can track those prompts in Brand visibility.
Use it when you plan new content, when you check whether a page targets the right terms, or when you want a list of questions for an FAQ. If you already know your keywords and only want to see who ranks for them, SERP analysis is the cheaper next step.
Before you start
- Make sure you have enough credits for the worst case of the run, not just the expected cost. The worst case is reserved when the run starts, and the part the run doesn't use comes back when it finishes.
- Decide on the market. The Search market list sets the country for volumes and rankings. The page has no language picker; runs use English, and the report shows the market and language it used.
- Have either one page URL or a short list of seed keywords ready. The seed list takes up to 10 lines.
Run your first research
- Open the toolIn the sidebar, go to SEO → Research → Keyword research. The page is titled Keyword & Prompt Research, with a launcher card at the top and your Research library below it.
- Choose website or seedsOn Website & Page Analysis, paste a URL into Website or page URL, or click Use workspace domain to fill in your domain. On Seed Keywords & Prompts, type one keyword or question per line; the counter shows how many of the 10 you've used. Either tab has a button (Auto-suggest seeds or Suggest seeds & prompts) that proposes seeds you can add with one click.
- Pick the market and read the estimateChoose a country in Search market. Next to it, a dashed box shows the estimate: the expected credits, the maximum in brackets, the price per lookup, the expected number of lookups and your available balance. If your balance shows in red, you can't cover the maximum yet.
- Run itClick Research page or Research keywords & prompts. A toast confirms Research queued and how much was reserved. The run card shows Queued — waiting for a worker, then Fetching live search data, with an elapsed timer. You can leave the page; the run carries on on the server.
- Open the reportWhen the card says Your report is ready, it shows tiles for keywords, search volume, AI prompts, article briefs and credits charged. Click View full report, or use Export for a CSV spreadsheet or Markdown for AI tools.
How to read the report
| Tab | What it shows | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | Combined volume, keyword count, average difficulty (0–100, lower is easier), quick wins, keyword clusters | See the size of the opportunity and which cluster one page could win |
| Keywords | Each keyword with volume, difficulty, CPC and competition | Pick a primary keyword and a few supporting ones; star the ones to keep |
| Content strategy | Planned articles with briefs, prioritised | Hand a brief to a writer or the AI content writer |
| AI prompts | Questions people ask AI engines, with buyer stage and an AI difficulty score | Send the best ones to Brand visibility |
| SERP & questions | People also ask, plus the Google results for your seeds and whether an AI Overview appeared | See what already ranks and which questions to answer on the page |
| Run details | Credits charged, reserved and returned, billable lookups, cached lookups | Check exactly what you paid |
A cluster groups keywords one page can usually rank for together. Pick a cluster with lower average difficulty first, then use the Content strategy brief for that cluster when you write.
What it costs
Keyword research is billed per data lookup, not per run. A run with more seeds makes more lookups than a run with one. When you start, the worst case is reserved; when the run ends, you're charged only for the lookups it made and the rest is returned. Lookups served from our cache cost nothing, so repeating a recent query can be cheaper or free. If a run fails, the whole reservation comes back.
A run won't start unless your balance covers the maximum, even though you'll usually pay less. If you see Insufficient credits, the message tells you how much the run reserves and how much you have. There's also a cap of 100 runs a day for each tab.
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