Keyword Research in Practice: Finding the Words Customers Actually Search

The most common way SEO fails isn't weak technique — it's "guessing what customers search for using your own vocabulary." We run our own e-commerce product lines and look at real query strings in Search Console every day, and the biggest takeaway is: what customers type is often far from what you assume. You call it a "brand website"; customers search "company website design cost." You call it a "functional skincare product"; customers search the specific product name plus "does it work."

Keyword research is the process of closing that gap. Don't guess — look at the data. This article shares the three-dimensional evaluation method we actually use: search volume, competition, and commercial intent.

First, dig up the words: tools and sources

Where you dig matters more than which tool you use. Our order of priority:

1. Search Console's performance report: these are the queries where your site "already has a shot." Queries ranking 5th through 20th are the fastest wins — Google already considers you relevant; you're one push away.
2. Google autocomplete and "related searches": type your topic into the search box and watch what autocomplete suggests; scroll to the bottom of results for related searches. These are free samples of real search behavior.
3. Google Ads Keyword Planner: for volume brackets and bid ranges. Accounts actively running ads see more precise volumes; without ads you only get rough brackets, but that's enough for ranking priorities.
4. Support and sales conversation logs: the exact words customers use to ask questions are your long-tail keywords. Quite a few of our evergreen articles took their titles directly from questions we'd been asked three or more times.

Three-dimensional scoring: volume, competition, intent

Once you've dug up a pile of words, don't just sort by volume and start writing. We score along three dimensions:

• Search volume: bigger is better, of course, but in the Taiwan market many valuable keywords get only two or three hundred monthly searches — sometimes just dozens. This is especially true in B2B and niche industries. Low volume doesn't mean low value: ten right visitors a month can mean one order.
• Competition: search the term yourself and see who's on page one. If the top ten are all major media, government sites, and Wikipedia, a new site won't break in soon. If you see forum posts and thin, outdated articles, that's an opening. Tool-generated competition scores are only a reference — eyeballing the actual results page is the most accurate check.
• Commercial intent: "what is SEO" is informational — the searcher is learning. "SEO agency recommendation Taipei" is transactional — the searcher is shopping for a vendor. The closer the intent is to a purchase, the more each visit is worth. Your content strategy should cover both, but don't pour all your effort into terms that bring traffic and no conversions.

Keyword research isn't really about finding words — it's about finding people: the ones carrying a question, already walking toward you. Your job is to place the answer along their path.

When the intent is right, the format follows

After choosing a keyword, there's a step people often skip: look at what format Google currently uses to answer it. If page one is all listicles, your essay-style reflection will struggle to break in; if it's all product pages, attacking with a blog post is an intent mismatch. The results page itself is Google's verdict on "what the user wants" — go with it and you get twice the result for half the effort.

Our own practice maps every target keyword to a page type: transactional terms to service or product pages, comparison terms to comparison articles, informational terms to tutorials — then internal links tie them together. For how this logic flows into content production, read our piece on SEO content strategy next.

In short: go narrow before you go wide

For a new site, rather than locking onto one big keyword and grinding against it, take twenty long-tail terms first. Long-tail terms have low competition and clear intent, and the traffic and conversions they accumulate end up supporting your authority on the big terms anyway. When we build brand websites for clients, keyword research is homework finished before construction begins — because it determines not just article topics but the entire page structure of the site. Choose the right words, and none of the effort that follows is wasted.