How to Find Keywords for My Website: A Free Method for Beginners

To find keywords for your website, start with what your customers ask and the services you sell, then let Google show you how people actually phrase those searches: autocomplete, "People also ask" and related searches. Check Search Console for searches you already appear in, look at what ranks on page one to judge intent and difficulty, group similar searches into topics, and pick five to write first. You can do all of it free, in an afternoon, with no paid SEO tool.

This is keyword research for beginners, step by step, with a worked example for a small local business at the end of each step.

The example we will follow#

Say you run a small bakery in Portland, Oregon. You sell custom birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cupcakes for events and a range of gluten-free bakes. You have a simple website with a home page, a menu, an order page and an about page. You want more local orders and you are willing to write a few blog posts.

Keep your own business in mind as we go. Every step works the same way for a plumber, an accountant, a Shopify store or a software tool.

Step 1: Build a seed list from customers and services#

Seed keywords are the short, obvious phrases that describe what you do and what your customers need. Do not open a tool yet. The best seeds come from your own business:

• Your services and products, in the words customers use, not your internal names. Customers say "birthday cake", not "celebration gateau".
• Questions customers ask in emails, on the phone, in the shop and in reviews.
• Problems they have before they find you. Someone planning a wedding worries about cost and timing before they look for a baker.
• Where you work, if you serve a local area: your city and neighbourhoods.

Aim for 20 to 40 seeds. Write them in a spreadsheet, one per row. (If a blank sheet is the hard part, MyKavo's keyword report drafts seeds like these from your website; more on that at the end.)

For the bakery: custom birthday cakes portland, wedding cake portland, gluten free bakery portland, cupcakes for a party, how much does a wedding cake cost, how far in advance to order a wedding cake, how many cupcakes per person, cake tasting, smash cake, sheet cake vs tiered cake.

Step 2: Expand with Google autocomplete#

Type each seed into Google slowly and note the suggestions that appear. Autocomplete predictions come from real searches. Google explains that its system looks at common searches that match what you are typing, while also considering language, location and trending interest (how Google autocomplete works).

Three tricks give you more suggestions:

1. Add each letter. Type "wedding cake a", "wedding cake b" and so on.
2. Start with question words. "how", "what", "why", "can", "should", "is" followed by your topic.
3. Use a private window. Autocomplete can be influenced by your own past searches, so a private or incognito window gives you a cleaner view. Location still matters, which is fine for a local business.

For the bakery, typing "how far in advance" might bring up suggestions like "how far in advance to order wedding cake" and "how far in advance to order birthday cake". Add each relevant one to your sheet.

Step 3: Mine "People also ask" and related searches#

Search your best seeds and look at two parts of the results page:

• People also ask. A box of questions related to your search. Clicking one often reveals more. These are perfect section headings and FAQ questions.
• Related searches near the bottom of the page. These show other ways people search for the same thing and nearby topics.

Copy useful questions and phrases into your sheet. You will now have somewhere between 60 and 150 rows. That is normal.

Step 4: Check Search Console for searches you already get#

If your site has been live for a while, connect it to Google Search Console (free). Open Performance > Search results, select the Queries tab and look at the searches where your site already appears, as described in Google's Performance report help.

Look for two things:

• Surprises. Searches you appear for that you never thought of. They tell you how Google sees your site.
• Near misses. Searches where your average position is around 8 to 20. These are often quicker wins than new posts, and our guide to striking distance keywords explains how to improve them.

For the bakery, Search Console might show impressions for "gluten free birthday cake portland" at position 14, even though no page targets it directly. That goes straight onto the list.

Step 5: Look at competitors' pages#

Search your main seeds and note which local businesses and sites show up. Open their pages and look at:

• What pages they have: service pages per product, blog posts, FAQ pages, pricing pages.
• What their headings cover: questions answered, details included.
• What they miss: missing prices, vague timelines, no photos of real work, outdated information.

You are not copying them. You are learning which topics people expect to see covered, and spotting gaps you can fill with your own knowledge.

For the bakery: maybe competing bakeries all have a "wedding cakes" page, but none clearly explains how far in advance to order or what affects price. That is your gap.

Step 6: Judge the search intent#

Every search has a purpose. Your page must match it, or it will not rank, however good it is.

The fastest way to check intent is to search the phrase and look at page one. If the top results are all guides, Google has decided people want to learn. If they are all shop pages and map listings, they want to buy.

A note for local businesses: if a search shows a map with local businesses at the top, your Google Business Profile matters as much as your website for that search. Blog posts are better suited to the informational questions around it.

Step 7: Judge difficulty by looking at page one#

Paid tools give a "keyword difficulty" score. You can get a useful read for free by looking at the top ten results yourself.

Mark each candidate as low, medium or high difficulty in your sheet. As a beginner, start with the low ones. Results with forums and thin pages mean Google is struggling to find a great answer, and you can write one.

Step 8: Group keywords into topics#

Many rows in your sheet are really the same search phrased differently. "How far in advance to order a wedding cake" and "when should you order your wedding cake" want the same answer. They belong on one page.

Group your rows into topics. Each group becomes one page, with the clearest phrase as the main keyword and the others covered in headings and the FAQ. Writing separate posts for near-duplicates splits your effort and can leave two of your own pages competing.

For the bakery, the groups might look like this:

Step 9: Pick the first five to write#

Score each topic on four questions, 1 to 3 points each:

1. Business fit. Would someone searching this plausibly become a customer?
2. Winnable. Is page one weak enough (Step 7)?
3. Your experience. Can you add real detail nobody else has?
4. Demand signal. Did it show up in autocomplete, "People also ask" or Search Console?

Add the scores and take the top five. If two score the same, pick the one closest to what you sell.

The bakery's first five:

1. How far in advance to order a wedding cake (strong fit, weak page one, the baker knows the real lead times)
2. How much does a wedding cake cost (strong fit, can include real price ranges)
3. Gluten-free birthday cakes in Portland (already ranking at 14 in Search Console, so improve or create a focused page)
4. How many cupcakes per person (useful for party orders, easy to answer with real experience)
5. What is a smash cake (popular question, links naturally to the order page)

Each post links to the relevant order or menu page, and the order page links back to the guides.

What about search volume?#

Notice that this method never needed an exact monthly search number. For a small business, the questions above matter more: does the search fit your business, and can you win it? Autocomplete and Search Console already tell you people search for these phrases.

If you do want numbers, Google Keyword Planner (free inside a Google Ads account) gives search volume estimates, often as broad ranges. Use them as a rough guide, not as a target.

How to do this in MyKavo in about two minutes#

Steps 1 to 9 take an afternoon the first time. The keyword report in MyKavo's AI Keywords & Blog Writer runs the same process in about two minutes:

1. It learns your business. It reads your website and drafts a short profile: business type, audience, main services, country and language. You confirm or edit it.
2. It builds the seed list. It starts from 20 to 40 seed searches based on your profile (Step 1).
3. It expands with autocomplete. It pulls Google's autocomplete suggestions for real phrasing and estimates popularity on a 1 to 5 scale from how often and how high each phrase appears (Steps 2 and 3).
4. It checks page one. For up to 5 of the most promising searches, it looks at who ranks today and whether the results look weak: forums, thin or outdated pages, small sites (Step 7).
5. It ranks and groups. You get the top 20 opportunities, best first, grouped into topic clusters (Step 8). Each shows the search intent, a plain-English reason, a suggested post title and a competition estimate of low, medium or high (Steps 6 and 9). If a page on your site already covers a keyword, it tells you to update that page instead. A two-sentence plan summary tells you where to start.
6. It covers Search Console too. Connect Search Console (optional) and the "Already ranking" view lists searches you rank 8 to 20 for, matched to the ranking page, with an estimated upside (Step 4).

From any keyword, one click writes a full draft (title, slug, meta description, headings, FAQ, structured data and internal links to your real pages) that you can add your own notes to first, edit, and copy into your site. If you are weighing up AI writing tools, see what to expect from an AI blog writer.

The honest limit: MyKavo does not show monthly search volumes. Its popularity score is a 1 to 5 estimate from autocomplete. If you need volume numbers, use Google Keyword Planner alongside it.

The Free plan includes one keyword report (top 10 keywords shown) and one blog post a month, with no credit card. Create a free account and run your first keyword report.

FAQ#

How do I find keywords for my website for free?#

List your services and customer questions, expand them with Google autocomplete, "People also ask" and related searches, check Search Console for searches you already appear in, then judge intent and difficulty by looking at page one.

How many keywords should a small business target?#

Start with five topics, each targeting one main keyword plus its close variations. Five well-chosen, well-written pages are worth more than thirty thin ones.

Do I need search volume to choose keywords?#

Not to get started. If a phrase appears in autocomplete or Search Console, people search for it. Google Keyword Planner gives volume estimates if you want them.

What is the easiest way to judge keyword difficulty as a beginner?#

Search the keyword and look at the top ten results. Forums, thin pages, outdated posts and small sites mean it is winnable. Big brands with thorough, recent guides mean it is hard for now.

Should every keyword get its own page?#

No. Group searches that want the same answer onto one page. Separate pages for near-identical searches split your effort and can compete with each other.