SEO Keyword Research Tutorial for Beginners in 2025

published 12 days ago

If you found this article through a search engine, you're seeing the techniques covered in this article in action. For example, I discovered that thousands of people search for "best seo tutorial for beginners" each month, so I made sure this guide would be helpful for that audience. Everything you're about to learn was used to create this blog post, using free tools and 30 minutes of focused research.

Quick disclaimer: SEO is a complex field that's always changing. I'm learning the latest techniques alongside you and experimenting with what works without spending money on expensive subscriptions or "guru" courses. I have no affiliation with any tools mentioned here.

A 5-step diagram showing the keyword research process: from initial idea through research phases to final content
This guide covers steps 2-4 of the keyword research process. You bring steps 1 and 5: your initial keyword idea and the valuable content you'll create.

Why Do Keyword Research?

Imagine having a sales team that works 24/7, bringing potential customers directly to your content. That's what good SEO does. Search engine optimization is essentially passive marketing: once you rank for relevant terms, you get organic traffic without actively promoting your content.

While SEO has many components, this guide focuses on three important research steps to help you get started:

  • Finding Related Keywords: Discover the exact terms your audience uses when searching
  • Checking Search Volume: See how many people actually search for these terms monthly
  • Assessing Competition: Figure out which terms you have a realistic chance of ranking for in search engines

By the end of this guide, you'll know how to find keywords that: 1) your audience is actually searching for, 2) have enough monthly searches to be worth targeting, and 3) you have a realistic chance of ranking for.

Step 1. Start with Core Keywords

The foundation of effective SEO is starting with the right core keywords. Simply targeting broad terms like 'boots' isn't enough - you need to be specific, like 'hiking boots', 'waterproof hiking boots', or even 'waterproof hiking boots for women'. This specificity helps you target exactly what your audience is searching for and will ultimately improve your ability to do research on the topic.

For the exercise of creating this beginner's guide to SEO in 2025, I started with two different sets of keywords: "seo tutorial" and "keyword research".

Step 2. Research Related Keywords

Once you have your core keywords, it's time to discover related searches. Tools like KeywordSheeter can help you generate tons of keyword variations that people are searching for. This step helps you understand the different ways people search for your topic.

Exact steps to expand the keyword terms:

  1. Visited KeywordSheeter
  2. Input my first core keyword "seo tutorial" into the search box
  3. Clicked the "Sheet Keywords" button to start generating variations
  4. Let it run until I had about 50 variations, then clicked "Stop"
  5. Copied these into a word document and manually filtered out irrelevant variations (like tutorials in other languages or for different years), leaving me with about 20 variations on my original keyword that were relevant to what I wanted to write for my audience

Thanks to this process, my original keywords were then enumerated into several valuable terms like "seo tutorial for beginners" and "keyword research tutorial".

Step 3. Research Keyword Volume

The next step is to gauge how many people are currently searching for your terms. For this step, I used RyRob's free keyword tool. From your expanded list from the previous step, check each keyword one at a time. The tool will show you approximately how many people are searching for that term each month. I focused on terms that had 100 or more monthly searches.

Note about Google Keyword Planner: While Google's Keyword Planner used to be freely accessible, it now appears to require setting up an ad campaign with payment info. Instead, I've found tools like RyRob's keyword tool, Bing's Keyword Research, and SearchVolume.io to be good free alternatives for basic keyword research.

Exact steps to check search volume:

  1. Visited RyRob's keyword tool
  2. Entered a keyword from my expanded list from KeywordSheeter
  3. Clicked "Submit" to see the search volume
  4. Recorded the keywords in my spreadsheet if it showed 100+ monthly searches
  5. Made note of any relevant suggested keywords that appeared in the results
  6. Repeated for each keyword from my list

Step 4. Research Keyword Difficulty

Now for the slowest step, use tools like Ahrefs keyword difficulty checker to check the difficulty of ranking for each keyword.

Why Ahrefs? While RyRob's tool shows a simple low/medium/high difficulty rating, I chose to use AHRefs because their difficulty scores (0-100) are widely trusted in the SEO community for being more precise. The tradeoff is you add another step to your research process.

To organize my findings here a bit better I created a Google Sheet (here's the exact sheet I used for this research). One-by-one I entered the terms that I knew had decent volume into this difficulty checker. The higher the number the more difficult it is for that particular keyword to rank in search so you likely want to avoid creating content for those. For this article, I chose to focus on terms with low or unknown difficulty with the thought being that these represent your best opportunities.

Exact steps to check competition level:

  1. Opened the ahrefs keyword difficulty checker
  2. Copied a term from my list that showed decent monthly search volume from the previous step
  3. Entered the term into the difficulty checker
  4. Recorded the difficulty score in my research spreadsheet

Step 5. Create Targeted Content

Your keyword research up to this point has revealed two crucial things: what people are actively searching for (meaning there's a real need for this content) and which topics you have a realistic chance of being discovered for. Now it's up to you to create content that serves both purposes where you help your audience while ensuring they can actually find it.

Remember: your content should serve readers first, with SEO supporting that goal, not driving it. The best SEO strategy is creating genuinely helpful content for the people searching for it.

Final Thoughts

At the time of writing this, I don't know how well this approach to keyword research will work. But if you found this through a search engine, then there's your proof that it did! Either way, I plan to keep documenting my SEO experiments here: no expensive tools, no guru courses, just practical techniques and honest results.

To better visibility,
James

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