Keyword Research: A Simple, Effective Tool

Product-market fit. The magical words every entrepreneur or small business dreams of. While many a runway has been burnt chasing this elusive pot of gold, technology has made the process much easier than a scant decade earlier, when the best way to test out a new product was to send a minimum viable product into the market to fend for itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the easiest way to help you attain your goal: keyword research.

The easiest way to figure out if your product will have market fit is to first understand what your market wants. Luckily for us, the market constantly mashes out what they want in search engines across the entire internet. This is where keyword research comes in, and here is a simplified way to do it.

Step 1:

Brainstorm. Do this in whatever way you find works best for you, scribbled notes on a piece of paper or (like myself) hashed out on a structured spreadsheet. Ideate on your chosen medium with product ideas, from gold navel studs to pink embroidered doilies- you will be chasing many ideas and diving into many rabbitholes so ensure that you document the process.

Step 2:

Open a keyword tool like ahrefs in a separate tab. Start with a broad idea. To develop an article of clothing, start with “women’s fashion”, for example. The keyword tool will generate various key words that people have searched around the idea you put in. Using our previous example, some of the search keywords that may come up could include “sun dress”. Input that back into the keyword tool and see what comes up. They key thing you are looking for is Keyword Difficulty (KD). A low KD value implies a lack of competition in the market. Bingo, you may have hit your new product.

Step 3:

Do your research. Look around at options available, and place yourself in the shoes of a prospective buyer. Where would you go? What are your options at different price ranges? This allows you to find your market niche, and then enter it.

There you have it! This is a general guide to doing keyword research that can be adapted and tailored to different use cases. Generally, this should help point you towards a potential product you are looking to develop, or to figure out where your product currently fits in the market. Get searching!