# How to Do Keyword Research for Free (A Simple 8-Step Process) > A plain, sequenced walkthrough that turns Google autocomplete, Keyword Planner, Trends, AnswerThePublic, and a free Ubersuggest tier into a real keyword list. No paid tools, no jargon, and honest daily limits so you know exactly what free gets you. *Roald, Founder Fonzy · Jul 27, 2026 · 8 min read* Source: https://www.fonzy.ai/blog/keyword-research-for-free --- **Short answer:** You can do keyword research for free with tools you already have access to. Start with seed words, mine Google's autocomplete and "People also ask", then pull real search volumes from Google Keyword Planner and check seasonality in Google Trends. Expand with AnswerThePublic, then favor long, specific phrases that have low difficulty. One beginner on r/SEO put the problem plainly. They said they had found plenty of free tools but wanted "something like SEMRUSH which gave me K/D and search volume for free at least 30 to 50 keywords per day." That is the real question most owners are asking. Not "what is keyword research," but "how do I do it without paying for the expensive tool everyone recommends." You can. The free stack below gets you volume and difficulty numbers, it just makes you work in small daily batches instead of one giant export. Here is the exact order. ## Step 1: List the words a customer would type, before you touch a tool Start with a blank page, not software. Write down every phrase a customer might type to find a business like yours. If you run a bakery, that is "birthday cakes near me," "gluten free bread," "custom cupcakes," "wedding cake baker." A plumber writes "boiler repair," "blocked drain," "emergency plumber," and the town name. These are your seed words. Everything else grows from them. The trick is to think like the customer, not like the business. You might call it "artisan sourdough." They type "crusty bread near me." Write down the words they use, including the plain ones. If you want a fuller sense of what counts as a keyword and how search phrases map to intent, this guide on [what keywords are in SEO](/blog/what-are-keywords-seo) covers the basics before you build on them. Aim for ten to twenty seed phrases. You are not finishing here. You are giving the free tools something to chew on. ## Step 2: Mine Google itself for free with autocomplete and "People also ask" Google is the biggest free keyword tool there is, and most owners walk right past it. Type one of your seed words into the search box and watch the dropdown. Those autocomplete suggestions are real phrases real people search, ranked by popularity. Type "wedding cake" and you see "wedding cake prices," "wedding cake near me," "wedding cake ideas." That is free demand data, straight from the source. Then run the search and look at two more spots. The "People also ask" box shows the exact questions people type around your topic. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you get "related searches," a block of nearby phrases Google thinks are connected. Both are gold for a small business, because they are phrased the way customers actually think. Do this for each seed word and paste what you find into your list. Five minutes per seed word builds a surprisingly deep list, and it costs nothing. This same habit doubles as a way to [find content ideas from customers and competitors](/blog/find-content-ideas-customers-competitors), since every question is a page you could write. ## Step 3: Pull real search volumes from Google Keyword Planner Now you want numbers. Google Keyword Planner is free, and according to Google Ads Help it lets you "discover new keywords related to your business and view estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them." It produces search volume figures and forecasts. The catch is small: it lives inside a Google Ads account, which is free to create. You do not have to run a single ad to use the planner. Drop your seed words in, and it returns volume ranges plus a stack of related terms you had not thought of. It groups them, shows rough monthly searches, and flags how competitive each one is for advertisers. For an owner, the volume ranges matter most. You want to know whether "gluten free birthday cake" gets searched a hundred times a month or ten thousand. One honest note. On a fresh account with no ad spend, the planner often shows broad ranges like "1K to 10K" rather than exact numbers. That is fine for what you need. You are sorting big from small, not chasing decimals. ## Step 4: Check the season with Google Trends Volume tells you how much. Google Trends tells you when. It is free, it needs no account, and it shows whether interest in a phrase is rising, falling, or spiking at certain times of year. For a bakery, "Christmas cake" is not a year-round term. It climbs every autumn and collapses in January. Trends shows you that curve so you plan pages before the wave, not after. Compare two or three phrases at once to see which one holds steady and which one is seasonal. A steady term is worth a permanent page. A seasonal one is worth a page you push at the right moment. If you have not used the tool before, this walkthrough on [how to use Google Trends](/blog/how-to-use-google-trends) shows where each setting lives. Trends will not give you volume numbers, so pair it with Step 3, never instead of it. ## Step 5: Expand into questions with AnswerThePublic and a free Ubersuggest tier Your list is solid now, but it is mostly nouns. Real customers ask questions, and questions are easier to rank for. Two free tools fill that gap. AnswerThePublic maps the questions people ask around a keyword. Its free plan allows up to three searches per day, and each one returns a full visual report, the Keyword Wheels, a "People also ask" set, and search modifiers, across Google, Bing, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon and more. Type "sourdough" and you get "why is my sourdough flat," "how to store sourdough," "can sourdough go bad." Every one of those is a page a small bakery could own. Ubersuggest covers the other half: difficulty scores. Its free account is free to use indefinitely with no time limit, but it caps you at three searches or reports per day. Inside that limit it still returns search volume and keyword-difficulty data, the two numbers you actually need. So you get three question-shaped pulls from AnswerThePublic and three difficulty checks from Ubersuggest, every day, for nothing. Three a day feels tight. It is. But over a week that is more than forty checked keywords, which is roughly the "30 to 50 per day" that r/SEO poster wanted, just spread across a few sittings instead of one. ## Step 6: Read the two numbers that matter, volume versus difficulty Ignore the dashboard clutter. Two numbers decide everything: search volume and keyword difficulty. Volume is how many people search a term. Difficulty is how hard it is to rank for. A small site wins by finding phrases with enough volume to matter and low enough difficulty to reach. Here is why that balance is not optional. Ahrefs studied around 14 billion pages and found that 96.55% of all pages get zero traffic from Google, and only 1.94% get between one and ten monthly visits. Most of that failure is chasing terms that are too competitive. A new bakery site will not outrank a national chain for "birthday cake." It can absolutely rank for "eggless birthday cake in Leeds." Lower volume, far lower difficulty, and the search still comes from someone ready to buy. So the rule is simple. When two phrases are close on volume, pick the one with lower difficulty. The whole point of the [long-tail keyword approach](/blog/long-tail-keywords-guide) is to trade a little reach for a real chance of ranking. Volume you cannot win is worth nothing. ## Step 7: Favor long-tail, buyer-intent phrases Longer, more specific phrases are your best friends. They have less competition, and they sit closer to a purchase. "Cake" is a browser. "Gluten free wedding cake baker near me" is someone reaching for a phone. The specificity is the buying signal. There is more of this demand than owners expect. Ahrefs found there are 2.3 billion keywords that get fewer than ten searches per month, and terms under ten searches a month account for almost 93% of its U.S. keyword database. The vast majority of what people type is low-volume and long-tail. That is not a problem to route around. It is the exact space a small site can win, one specific phrase at a time. Doing this work for owner-run shops, the same pattern shows up again and again. The phrase the owner is proudest of, the broad one-word term for their craft, is almost never the one that brings a customer. The traffic comes from the oddly specific searches: the dietary requirement, the neighbourhood name, the "open on Sunday" question. Owners want to rank for the trophy word, but their actual buyers are typing the boring, specific one. ## Step 8: Pick the handful you can actually win Do not target your whole list. A giant spreadsheet of five hundred keywords is a way to feel busy and rank for nothing. Pick five to ten phrases that clear one test: real search volume, low difficulty, and clear buyer intent. That short shortlist is your plan for the next few months. Map each keyword to one page. One phrase, one page, written to answer that exact search. When those pages start ranking, come back and pick the next handful. Slow and winnable beats broad and hopeless every time. From here, the work shifts to putting those keywords to use, which is where [on-page SEO basics](/blog/on-page-seo-basics) and a steady plan to grow organic traffic take over. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can you really do keyword research for free? Yes. Google's own free tools, autocomplete, "People also ask", related searches, Keyword Planner, and Trends, cover most of the job. Add AnswerThePublic and a free Ubersuggest account for questions and difficulty scores. The trade-off is daily search caps, not missing data. ### What is the best free keyword research tool for a small business? There is no single winner, which is why you combine a few. Google Keyword Planner gives you volume estimates inside a free Google Ads account. Ubersuggest gives volume and difficulty at three searches a day. AnswerThePublic gives question phrasing at three searches a day. Together they replace most of what a paid tool does. ### How many keywords should I actually target? Start with five to ten. A small site cannot rank for hundreds of terms at once, and trying spreads your effort too thin. Pick the phrases with real volume, low difficulty, and clear buyer intent, build a page for each, then repeat once they land. ### Why do people say I should chase long-tail keywords? Because that is where a small site can win. Ahrefs found almost 93% of its U.S. keyword database gets fewer than ten searches a month, and most pages get no Google traffic at all. Long, specific phrases have less competition and sit closer to a purchase, so they convert the traffic they do bring. Keyword research is not about finding the biggest word. It is about finding the specific ones your customers actually type and that your site can realistically reach. Fonzy runs this whole process for you in the background, finding the winnable phrases and building the pages that target them, so you get the result without spending your evenings inside three free tools and their daily limits. ## Sources - [Ahrefs, "Long-tail Keywords": 2.3 billion keywords get fewer than 10 searches a month, and terms under 10 searches account for almost 93% of Ahrefs' U.S. keyword database](https://ahrefs.com/blog/long-tail-keywords/) - [Ahrefs search traffic study: 96.55% of pages get zero Google traffic and only 1.94% get 1 to 10 monthly visits](https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/) - [Google Ads Help, "Use Keyword Planner": free keyword discovery and search-volume estimates inside a Google Ads account](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7337243) - [Ubersuggest Help Center: the free account is free indefinitely but caps you at 3 searches a day, still returning volume and difficulty](https://ubersuggest.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9704437892635-Free-Account-Key-Features-and-Limits) - [AnswerThePublic Help Center: the free plan allows up to 3 searches a day, each a full visual question report across Google, Bing, YouTube, TikTok, and Amazon](https://answerthepublic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/22617503900187-Is-There-a-Free-Version-of-AnswerThePublic) --- Published by [Fonzy](https://www.fonzy.ai) — expert articles that get you found on Google and AI search.