How to do keyword research for a small business website

Keyword research is how you find out what your customers type into Google, and which of those searches your website should try to rank for. Get it right, and every page you write has a clear job. Get it wrong, and you can spend months on content nobody searches for.

This guide walks through the process I teach in the SEO course, using a simple example: a home bakery in Lahore that takes custom cake orders.

Start with what you sell

Before opening any tool, write down what the business offers and who buys it. For the bakery, that’s custom birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cupcakes and dessert boxes, mostly for families and event planners in Lahore.

Then list the words a customer would use, not the words the business uses. A baker might say “fondant cake”, but a parent searches for “birthday cake for kids“. Both matter, but the customer’s words come first.

Understand search intent

Every search has a purpose behind it. Google ranks the pages that best match that purpose, so your page has to match it too.

• Informational: the person wants to learn something, like “how to store a fresh cream cake”.
• Commercial: they’re comparing options, like “best cake shops in Lahore”.
• Transactional: they’re ready to buy, like “order birthday cake online Lahore”.
• Navigational: they’re looking for a specific brand or website.

The quickest way to check intent is to search the keyword yourself. If the first page is all shops and order pages, a blog post won’t rank there. If it’s all guides, a product page won’t either.

Find keywords with free tools

You don’t need paid tools to start. These free sources give you plenty of ideas:

1. Google’s suggestions. Type a word into the search box and note what Google suggests. Then check “People also ask” and “Related searches” at the bottom of the results.
2. Google Keyword Planner. It’s free with a Google Ads account and shows rough search volume ranges.
3. Google Search Console. If the site already exists, the Performance report shows the searches it already appears for.
4. Google Trends. Useful for seasonal demand, such as cake searches rising before Eid and New Year.

Judge whether a keyword is worth it

For each keyword, ask three questions: Do enough people search for it? Could this site realistically rank for it? And if someone finds the page, are they likely to become a customer?

A keyword with fewer searches but clear buying intent, like “custom number cake Lahore”, is often worth more to a small business than a broad one like “cake”, which big brands and recipe sites dominate.

Group keywords into pages

Keywords that mean the same thing belong on the same page. “Kids birthday cake Lahore” and “birthday cake for children in Lahore” should be one page, not two. Splitting them makes your own pages compete with each other.

The result is a keyword map: a simple table that matches each group of keywords to one page.

Main keyword	Intent	Page
custom birthday cake lahore	Transactional	Birthday cakes
wedding cake price lahore	Commercial	Wedding cakes
cupcakes delivery lahore	Transactional	Cupcakes
how to store fresh cream cake	Informational	Blog post

What to do next

Once the map is ready, each page has one clear goal. The next steps are writing or improving those pages so they answer the search better than what’s ranking now, then tracking results in Search Console.

Good keyword research doesn’t find the biggest keywords. It finds the ones your business can win and that bring in customers.

If you’d like to practise this with feedback, the SEO course covers keyword research in Module 2, with a keyword map as the first task.