Templates + workflows

Keyword research without a repeatable workflow is chaos. You do it differently every time, different sheets, different tools, different scoring. Nothing compounds. Everything takes three times as long as it should. A good workflow fixes that. This page walks through the exact 8-day process I use on every new project, the spreadsheet template it produces, and the refresh cadence that keeps the research current. Steal it and skip years of reinventing this for yourself.

Why you need a fixed workflow

The stages of keyword research are always the same. What changes project to project is the seeds, the competitors, and the keywords. If the workflow itself changes too, you're doing three jobs: the work itself, figuring out how to do it, and second-guessing last time's decisions. Fix the process once and you only do the work.

The 8-day workflow

Don't skip phases. Don't combine them. Each one has a specific output the next one depends on. Compressing the timeline past 8 days for a real project usually means skipping filtering, which pollutes everything after.

Phase 1. Setup (Day 1)

1. Define the business: product, audience, key locations, brand terms
2. Audit current rankings via Google Search Console plus a rank-tracking tool
3. Identify 3 to 5 SEO competitors (not business competitors, the sites that actually share SERPs with you)

Phase 2. Seed + Expand (Days 2-3)

1. Generate 10 to 15 seeds from product, customer language, job-to-be-done, and category
2. Expand each in Ahrefs or SEMrush: "Matching terms," "Related terms," "Questions"
3. Pull competitor top keywords (top 200 per competitor)
4. Scrape People Also Ask and Related Searches
5. Merge all sources into one spreadsheet. Dedupe.

Phase 3. Filter (Day 4)

1. Manual relevance pass: mark each keyword as relevant, irrelevant, or maybe
2. Drop irrelevant (usually 50 to 70% of raw pool)
3. Apply volume threshold (20+ per month for small sites, 100+ per month for larger)

Phase 4. Enrich (Days 5-6)

1. Pull volume, KD, CPC for each surviving keyword
2. Classify intent: I (informational), C (commercial), N (navigational), T (transactional)
3. Note current ranking from GSC or tool
4. Assign suggested format: guide, listicle, product, comparison, tool

Phase 5. Cluster (Day 7)

1. Run SERP-similarity clustering (tool or manual for small lists)
2. Name each cluster by its primary keyword
3. Assign each cluster to either an existing page or a new one

Phase 6. Prioritize (Day 8)

1. Score each cluster: volume times conversion potential divided by difficulty
2. Adjust upward for strategic value (clusters that unlock follow-on content)
3. Slot top 10 to 15 clusters into a 90-day content plan

The spreadsheet template

The output is two tabs. One row per keyword. One row per cluster. Both tabs share a backbone of predictable columns.

The cluster-level summary tab

The keyword tab is the data. The cluster tab is the plan. For each cluster:

• Cluster name (usually the primary keyword)
• Sum of volume across all keywords in the cluster
• Average KD across the cluster
• Intent (single label, since clusters should share intent)
• Format (guide, listicle, etc.)
• Target URL (existing or new, slug if new)
• Priority score
• Assignment (writer plus deadline)

This is the tab a writer or content strategist actually works from. Everything else is raw material.

The refresh cadence

Keyword research isn't one-and-done. SERPs move. New queries emerge. Your own content shifts what's ranking. Run a lighter version of this workflow every quarter:

• Week 1 of the quarter: rerun the competitor gap report. New keywords they rank for that you don't.
• Week 1 of the quarter: pull GSC queries where you rank positions 5 to 20. Those are your "quick win" upgrade candidates.
• Ongoing: note new PAA questions and trending searches you see in your niche.
• Week 12 of the quarter: reshuffle priorities based on what ranked, what didn't, and what's newly visible.

Common workflow mistakes

• Skipping setup. Jumping to seeds without defining the business means your seeds will drift off-brand.
• Filtering too softly. Leaving 30% noise in your list means everything downstream is slower and worse.
• Clustering before filtering. Wastes tool credits and pollutes cluster groupings with irrelevant keywords.
• Over-prioritizing by volume. The priority score should weight by business value more than raw traffic.
• Never refreshing. A plan that worked in January is usually stale by June.
• Skipping the cluster tab. The keyword list alone isn't a plan. The clusters are.

What to do with this

Block eight working days on your calendar. Copy the phases into your task tracker. Build the spreadsheet template once. Then run the workflow end-to-end on whichever project is next. The first pass takes the full eight days. By the third project you'll compress it to three or four. The workflow pays for itself immediately.

That closes out the Keyword Research section. Next up: on-page SEO, starting with title tags, the single most visible on-page signal.