How to research keywords using only free tools!

THIS WEEK: Rather than another list of tools, this week we walk through an actual keyword research session from start to finish, using nothing but free tools, including AI platforms, to build a genuine list of keywords a small business could target. .

Keyword research sounds like something that requires expensive software. It does not. What it requires is understanding what your customers are actually typing into Google, or increasingly, asking ChatGPT and Perplexity, before they find a business like yours. Five free tools, used together properly, replace roughly 80 to 90% of what a £99 a month Ahrefs subscription does for a small business according to independent testing published in 2026. For a business publishing a couple of blog posts a month rather than running a large-scale content operation, that free stack is genuinely enough.

The mistake most small business owners make is not that they use the wrong tools. It is that they open one tool, type in one keyword, look at the number it gives them, and stop. Proper keyword research is a process of layering several free sources on top of each other to build a genuine picture: what people search for, how they phrase it, how much competition exists, and what is seasonal versus constant. Below is a real session showing exactly how that process works.

The Session: Researching Keywords for a Fictional Local Locksmith

Let us say you run a locksmith business in a mid-sized UK town. You want to write a blog post and improve your service pages, but you do not know what to actually target. Here is the real workflow.

Step one: start with Google Keyword Planner. Open ads.google.com/keywordplanner (free with any Google Ads account, even one that has never spent a penny) and type in your core service: "locksmith." It returns a broad volume range along with related terms. You will see variations like "emergency locksmith," "locksmith near me," "car locksmith," and "24 hour locksmith," each with an approximate monthly search volume range and competition level. This is your baseline. It is Google's own data, so the volume direction is trustworthy even though the exact numbers are given as ranges rather than precise figures.

Step two: layer in AnswerThePublic at answerthepublic.com. Type "locksmith" in again. This time you are not looking for volume, you are looking for the actual questions people ask. It organises results by question words: who, what, why, how, will, can. You will typically see things like "why is my key stuck in the lock," "how much does a locksmith cost," "can a locksmith open a car door without damage," and "will a locksmith break my lock to get in." These are not keywords in the traditional sense. They are the actual sentences your customers are thinking before they search. Every one of these is a potential blog post title, because it matches search intent exactly. Free plan allows 5 searches per day, which is enough for a session like this.

Step three: check Google Trends at trends.google.com. Type in your top two or three candidate terms from steps one and two. This tells you whether interest in a term is flat, rising, or seasonal. For a locksmith, you might find that "emergency locksmith" spikes in winter, when cold weather causes more lock and key problems, while "car locksmith" stays roughly flat year-round. This matters because it tells you when to publish and promote specific content, and it stops you from being surprised when a seasonal keyword's traffic drops off in a predictable way.

Step four: check Google Search Console if you have an existing website, at search.google.com/search-console. Look at the Performance report and sort by impressions. You are looking for search terms your site is already getting impressions for but few clicks on. If "locksmith [your town]" shows a reasonable number of impressions but a low click-through rate, that tells you Google already considers your site relevant for that term, and a better-optimised page targeting it directly is likely to convert those existing impressions into actual clicks.

Step five: bring in an AI platform to sanity check and expand the list. Open Perplexity at perplexity.ai (better than ChatGPT for this specific task because it searches the web in real time and shows sources) and ask something like: "What questions do people typically have before hiring a locksmith in the UK? What is the difference in search intent between someone locked out of their house versus someone wanting a new lock fitted?" Perplexity will pull current information and often surfaces angles that a keyword tool alone will not, because it is reasoning about intent rather than just returning volume data. Claude or ChatGPT are also useful here, though without live web access their strength is in helping you cluster and prioritise the keyword list you have already built, rather than discovering new terms. Ask Claude: "Here is a list of keywords I have found for a locksmith business. Can you group them by search intent, emergency, informational, and pricing, and suggest which ones would make the best blog post titles?" This turns a flat list into a structured content plan in minutes.

Step six: check Ahrefs Webmaster Tools if you have a website already verified, at ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools. Run a site audit and look at the organic keywords report. Even on the free tier, this shows you what your own site is already ranking for and where you sit in the results. Cross-reference this against your list from steps one through five to see which terms you are already competing for and which represent genuine gaps.

By the end of this session, which takes roughly 45 minutes including thinking time, you have a list of specific keywords with an understanding of volume direction, actual customer language, seasonality, existing site performance, and a prioritised content plan grouped by intent. That is a genuinely useful keyword research output and it cost nothing.

Google Keyword Planner gives you Google's own search volume data, in ranges rather than exact figures, for free with any Google Ads account. Link: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner

AnswerThePublic visualises the actual questions people search around any keyword. Free plan allows 5 searches per day. Link: https://answerthepublic.com

Google Trends shows how interest in a term changes over time and by location, completely free with no account required. Link: https://trends.google.com

Google Search Console shows exactly which queries your existing site already gets impressions and clicks for, completely free once you verify your site. Link: https://search.google.com/search-console

Perplexity is an AI search tool that answers questions with live web sources rather than a static database, useful for understanding customer intent and current context around a topic. Free plan available. Link: https://perplexity.ai

Pick your main service. Spend ten minutes in Google Keyword Planner noting down every related term with reasonable volume. Spend ten minutes in AnswerThePublic writing down every question that is directly relevant to what you offer. Check Google Trends for your top three candidates to see if timing matters. If you have Search Console set up, spend five minutes checking which terms you already get impressions for but few clicks.

Then open Claude or ChatGPT and paste your list in with a prompt like: "Here are keywords and questions I have found for my [type of business]. Group them by whether someone is searching to solve an emergency, to compare options, or to check pricing. Then suggest the three best blog post titles based on this list."

You will walk away with a prioritised list of blog topics, grouped by what stage of the buying decision the searcher is at, built entirely from free tools in under an hour.

NEED HELP? In over your head? Wearing too many hats already? No idea where to start? I can help you. Alternatively, feel free to WhatsApp me on 07800596333!

AlsoAsked (alsoasked.com) is a free tool that mines the "People Also Ask" data from Google search results and presents it as a question map, similar to AnswerThePublic but with a cleaner interface and, according to independent testing, often more accurate question data. Worth trying alongside AnswerThePublic to see which interface you prefer.

Keyword Surfer is a free Chrome extension that shows estimated search volume directly inside Google's search results as you browse, with no daily limit and no signup required. Useful for quick checks while you are already searching rather than opening a separate tool.

Nearly 95% of all keywords get 10 or fewer searches a month, and the vast majority of web pages get no meaningful Google traffic at all. That is the reality free and paid keyword tools alike are working within. The tool does not create demand. It shows you where demand already exists so you are not writing content nobody is searching for.

The free stack above will not give you the precision of a paid tool's proprietary difficulty score, and you will occasionally have to make a judgement call with less data than you would like. For a small business publishing a handful of pieces of content a month rather than running a large content operation, that trade-off is entirely reasonable. The free tools get you 80 to 90% of the way there. The remaining gap is closed by knowing your customers, which no keyword tool, free or paid, can do for you.

Need someone to do this properly rather than doing it yourself? I have been doing this for 17 years. Get in touch. Alternatively, feel free to WhatsApp me on 07800596333!