SEO Keywords List: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Keywords for Your Business

SEO is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business, but it all starts with choosing the right keywords. If you’re a course creator, coach, or online business owner, you’ve probably heard that SEO can help you get more traffic to your website. And that's definitely right; the challenge is that most people don’t know how to pick the right keywords, so they end up choosing the wrong ones. They may end up using keywords their website can't rank for on Google (so they don't get any traffic), or they find ones that they can rank for, but no one is searching. Sometimes, they choose keywords thinking they're great and they can rank for them, but then, after doing the work, they realize they're bringing the wrong people to their website because they aren't converting. 

Choosing the right keywords for your business is critical to your SEO success. It's truly the most important part of the process. 

If you’ve ever felt like SEO is confusing or overwhelming, you’re not alone. The good news is that finding the right keywords is easier than you think. This step-by-step guide will walk you through exactly how to create an SEO keywords list for your business and ensure you have chosen the right ones for you. 

Brainstorm Keywords Using ChatGPT and Customer Data

The first step is to think about what your audience is searching for. Start by considering the words and phrases your ideal customer would use when looking for information related to your business.

To make this easy, you can brainstorm keywords using ChatGPT. Start with a prompt such as, "Think like an SEO expert and help me generate a list of potential keywords for X niche and X audience. I want lower competition keywords so that a small business website has a good chance of ranking for the word. If you have content pillars you write about on your blog; you can ask it to generate a keyword list for each pillar. I'd ask for 25 keywords for each pillar, up to 100 in total. You can also ask it to put the data in a table format with search volume and competition information. I like it in this format because it's easier to review. ChatGPT isn't a keyword research tool, so its recommendations aren't necessarily correct. Be sure to complete the keyword research phase using a true keyword research tool before making any decisions. 

Another great way to generate a keyword brainstorm list is to think about your customers' questions. What phrases do they use in consultations, emails, or comments? If your audience is always asking how I grow my email list, that might be a good keyword for your list. You might even want to consider using email list growth (or email marketing) as one of the content pillars for your blog or website. You want to use their words so they connect and feel seen. You can also use the tool Answer the Public to see what questions people have related to your niche or keyword ideas you're generating. Answer the Public doesn't give you search volume but it gives you a question list so you have an idea as to what to say. Then you can take your list to a keyword research tool to find out the search volume and start choosing your keywords. 

One more place you can find keyword ideas during the brainstorming phase is Google's suggested search, related searches, and the People Also Ask section in the search results. Start by searching a keyword related to your business and see what Google populates in the search bar. This data is based on search data, and it's Google anticipating what you might be looking for. This can be a great starting point for ideas. You can also check the related searches at the bottom of the page, and the People Also Ask section on the page. This data is all related to the search you're doing and often has keyword ideas. If you use the Keywords Everywhere Chrome plug-in that I'll talk about more in the next section, you can review all of these suggestions with keyword data right on your search results page. This is my favorite way to brainstorm and refine my keywords because I don't have to leave my Google tab. Everything I need is right there. 

Use an SEO Keyword Research Tool to Verify

Once you have your brainstorm list, it's time to move on to a keyword research tool to verify the competition and search volume for the keywords you've brainstormed. It's going to be important to check both competition and search volume. You want to choose the keyword with the highest search volume and lowest competition of the options. Sometimes, you'll find that changing how you word something makes a big difference in the keyword competition. You'll likely find that long-tail keywords or key phrases are easier to rank for than single or 2-word keywords. 

Three keyword research tools that I use and recommend are as follows: 

• Keywords Everywhere – This is probably my current favorite keyword research tool because of how easy it is to use. There's a website, but I prefer just to use the Chrome plug-in. You need to toggle it on and off when you want to use it. It's affordable at under $100 for the year, and thanks to the Chrome plug-in, you're able to review search volume and competition information right in your Google Chrome tab. You can search a keyword on Google and get insights right in the search results. It also gives you all sorts of other suggestions on the right side of the page. If you're focusing on Pinterest, Keywords Everywhere gives you pin data in the Pinterest search results, too. They've also got a ChatGPT integration where you can do your brainstorming and keyword research with their data in ChatGPT. I personally prefer to review options and data in my browser window right on the Google search results. 

• Ubersuggest – this is another tool I recommend to my students. This one is more robust than Keywords Everywhere because it's got keyword rank tracking and reporting capabilities. You can track the rankings of the keywords you're focusing on in your SEO program in Ubersuggest in addition to doing keyword research and verifying competition and search demand information. 

• Google Keyword Planner – This is the original keyword research tool, and it's the one I started out using (and used for at least a decade), but it's not the most user-friendly because of some of the changes Google has made to it over the years. It used to be a standalone tool you could access directly, but that's no longer the case. Today, it's within AdWords, and the only way to use it is to set up an AdWords account and create an ad. You never have to run the ad, but I have a lot of students who aren't super comfortable with this setup, so they prefer the other options. 

Ubersuggest and Keywords Everywhere will give you the competition information for SEO, but the Google Keyword Planner's competition information is specific to Google Ads. It's not really an issue because, in my experience, the competition level is very similar for paid search or SEO traffic. If a company is doing SEO for a keyword, they're often running ads and bidding on that keyword, too. 

Note the search volume and competition for each of your keywords. You want to choose keywords with low or medium competition, not high. Your website won't rank for high-competition keywords in most cases. Focusing on keywords that are lower in competition will work better for small business owners.

Choose Your Keywords 

Most of us know we need to create weekly content. I like to go through this process and choose 12 keywords at a time so that I have a list that gives me a quarter's worth of blog content at once. If you're working on your website optimization, you may not need 12 keywords; you only need enough keywords to get through the pages you're optimizing (doing SEO on). If 

Now that you have a list of keywords, search volume, and competition information, it’s time to narrow it down. The goal is to select 12 keywords to give you content ideas for the next three months or the number of keywords you need for the pages you're working on for your website. 

When choosing your final keywords, ask yourself:

• Does the person searching with this keyword want what I sell or have on this page? This is to verify that it's aligned with your business.

• Is there search volume for this keyword? 

• Do I have a realistic chance of ranking for it? 

Organize Your Keywords and Plan Your Content

Create a content plan once you have your final list of 12 keywords. Each keyword should be the foundation for a blog post or website page. Think about how each topic can tie back to your offers and how it fits into your marketing strategy. 

Create a list of potential blog post titles (you can use ChatGPT to help you with this, too), and then choose the 12 posts you will write this quarter. If you have four content pillars or topic areas that you cover, you need to pick three posts for each pillar. You want to have one post per pillar each month to cover a good mix of topics that are interesting to your customers. 

Once you have your topic ideas, you'll be ready to batch your blog posts. This post here will walk you through how to do that. I find batching content speeds up the process a lot for me. This is the 5th blog post I've written in the past few days. I'm writing it 6 weeks before the corresponding email and podcast episode will be released to my audience. Working in batches helps you stay ahead in your content production so you remain consistent where it matters most - your blog, email, and podcast. 

Learn More About SEO

Finding the right keywords is the first step in your SEO strategy. The next step is knowing how to use them correctly in your content. If you’re not sure where to put your keywords or how to optimize your website, I have a free resource that will walk you through it. Request a copy of my Beginner's Guide to SEO today, and I'll send it to you. It walks you through what to do for SEO on your website page or blog post. 

Creating an SEO keyword list for your business doesn't have to be hard or overwhelming. It's pretty easy once you understand what to do.