Start Here
Scope and seed topics. Five to ten broad areas that every keyword you collect will hang off — the thing that stops a keyword sheet becoming three thousand rows nobody ever actions.
Free Template
The Keyword Research Template that ranks the list for you
Anyone can export three thousand keywords. The hard part is knowing which forty to act on this quarter, and which page should target each one. This template scores every keyword on volume, difficulty and how winnable your current position makes it — then flags the moment two pages start competing for the same term.
Get the TemplateFree · Google Sheets + Excel · No credit card, no trial
- Opportunity scoring, not a raw volume dump
- Cannibalisation flagged automatically
- Works with any keyword tool, free ones included
- Format
- Google Sheets + Excel
- Columns
- 11 tracked fields
- Capacity
- 300 keywords
- Time to complete
- 2–3 hours
What's inside
Six tabs. One you live in.
A single workbook. You type into the Keyword Master List; the clusters, the URL map and the log all count themselves from it.
Keyword Master List
The core sheet. 11 columns per keyword: volume, difficulty, your current position, intent, SERP feature, target URL and notes. Opportunity and the warning flags calculate themselves.
Topic Clusters
Counts every seed topic automatically — how many keywords, how much volume, and how the intent splits. A cluster that is entirely informational is a cluster that will never convert.
Keyword to URL Map
Type a URL and the sheet tells you how many keywords are pointed at it and grades it Focused, Cluster or Overloaded. This is where most sites quietly lose rankings.
Competitor Gaps
Keywords a competitor ranks for and you do not. The sheet checks each one against your master list and gives you a verdict on whether it is worth chasing yet.
Re-Research Log
Track keywords moving into positions 4–20 over time. That count is the leading indicator — top-three rankings follow it by a quarter or two.
The framework
The seven steps of the method
Here is the whole method, in the order the template walks you through it. It starts with your customers rather than a keyword tool, because the tool can tell you how many people search a phrase and cannot tell you whether it matters to your business.
01Do this first
Start with the customer, not the tool
Before you open a keyword tool, write down the questions your customers actually ask — the ones that come up on sales calls, in support tickets, and in the review inbox. Tools are very good at telling you how many people search a phrase and very bad at telling you which phrases matter to your business.
- List 10–20 real questions customers ask, in their words
- Note the words your customers use that your industry does not
- Mark which questions come up right before someone buys
- Capture the objections that stop a deal — those are searches too
02Breadth
Build the seed list
Turn those questions into seed topics — five to ten broad areas, not hundreds of keywords. Every keyword you collect later hangs off one of these, which is what stops the sheet turning into an undifferentiated list of three thousand phrases nobody will ever action.
- Group your questions into 5–10 seed topics
- Add the terms competitors clearly organise their site around
- Pull existing queries you already get impressions for
- Add product and service names people search by
03Volume
Expand each seed
Now use the tools. Expand each seed into its long tail, and pull the questions, comparisons, and modifiers attached to it. Free sources will get you most of the way: autocomplete, People Also Ask, related searches, and your own Search Console query report.
- Expand every seed with a keyword tool or autocomplete
- Harvest People Also Ask and related searches
- Export Search Console queries you already receive impressions for
- Add "vs", "alternative", "cost", "near me" style modifiers where they fit
04The data
Record volume, difficulty, and where you stand
Fill in three numbers per keyword: monthly volume, difficulty, and your current position if you have one. Position is the column most people skip and it is the one that changes the answer most — a keyword you already rank eleventh for is worth far more than a bigger one you have never touched.
- Monthly volume from any keyword tool
- Difficulty on a 0–100 scale, whatever your tool calls it
- Your current position, left blank if you do not rank
- Be consistent — one tool for the whole sheet, or the numbers do not compare
05The judgement call
Classify the intent
Label every keyword Informational, Commercial, Transactional, or Navigational — then go and look at the live SERP to check you were right. Intent is the difference between a page that ranks and a page that is technically relevant and completely ignored, and it is the one column no tool can fill in for you.
- Label intent for every keyword
- Open the live SERP and confirm the label matches what is ranking
- Note the SERP feature that owns the result
- Flag any keyword whose SERP is entirely different from what you expected
06Where money is lost
Map one keyword to one page
Assign each keyword a single target URL. The template flags the moment two rows claim the same keyword, or one page tries to own several unrelated primary terms — the two mistakes that quietly cap a site's ceiling long before anything technical does.
- Give every keyword exactly one target URL
- Resolve any duplicate-keyword flags the sheet raises
- Group supporting keywords under the pillar page they belong to
- Decide, for each gap, whether to build a page or fold it into an existing one
07The output
Sort by opportunity and pick this quarter
The Opportunity column scores every keyword on volume, discounted by difficulty and multiplied by how winnable your current position makes it. Sort by it, take the top of the list, and you have a quarter of work you can defend to anyone who asks why these keywords and not those.
- Sort the master list by Opportunity, descending
- Take the top 10–20 as this quarter's targets
- Check the mix — not every target should be a twelve-month bet
- Re-score in 90 days once positions have moved
How to use it
From a blank sheet to this quarter's targets
Budget two to three hours for a first pass on a small site. Gather your data before you start scoring and it goes considerably faster.
Make a copy and write your seed topics
Open the workbook, make a copy, and fill in the Start Here tab: the domain, the market, and five to ten seed topics drawn from questions customers actually ask. Everything downstream hangs off those topics, which is what keeps the sheet actionable instead of enormous.
Collect keywords into the master list
Expand each seed with whatever tool you have, plus autocomplete, People Also Ask, and your own Search Console query export. Paste them into the Keyword Master List. Use one tool for the whole sheet — mixing sources makes the difficulty numbers incomparable.
Fill in volume, difficulty and your position
Three numbers per keyword. Position is the column most people skip and the one that changes the answer most: a keyword you already rank eleventh for is worth far more than a bigger one you have never touched, and the scoring reflects that.
Classify intent against the live SERP
Label each keyword, then actually open the search results and check you were right. This is the one column no tool can fill in for you, and getting it wrong is why technically relevant pages get ignored.
Map one keyword to one page and clear the flags
Assign each keyword a single target URL. Resolve every duplicate-keyword warning the sheet raises and split anything the URL map grades as Overloaded. This step alone lifts more sites than any technical fix.
Sort by opportunity and commit to a quarter
Sort the master list by the Opportunity column and take the top ten to twenty. That is your quarter, and it is defensible: you can show anyone who asks exactly why these keywords and not those. Re-score in 90 days once positions have moved.
Download the Keyword Research Template
One file, yours to copy and reuse on every site you touch. Tell us who you are and it unlocks immediately.
- Format: Google Sheets + Excel
- Columns: 11 tracked fields
- Capacity: 300 keywords
- Time to complete: 2–3 hours
Get the Template
Instant access — plus a copy sent to your inbox.
Who it's for
Built for people who have to choose
This template is for the person who has already exported the keyword list and is now staring at it wondering what on earth to do with it — and who has to justify the answer to someone else.
It will earn its keep if you are:
- An in-house marketer who owns organic traffic and needs a defensible reason for targeting these keywords instead of the ones the CEO forwarded from a competitor
- A founder doing it yourself who needs the shortest path from "we should do SEO" to a list of ten things worth writing this quarter
- A consultant or freelancer who wants one keyword deliverable that works across every client instead of rebuilding a spreadsheet each time
- Anyone inheriting a messy site who suspects pages are competing with each other and wants the sheet to prove it rather than guessing
You do not need a paid keyword tool. Google Search Console, autocomplete and People Also Ask will get you a genuinely useful first pass, and the template is explicit about which columns you can leave blank without breaking the scoring.
If you are an experienced SEO, the part worth arguing with is the position multiplier: it deliberately values a keyword you rank eleventh for above a larger one you have never touched. That ordering is the opinion in the file.
Questions
Before you download
What is a keyword research template?
A keyword research template is a structured sheet for collecting keywords and then deciding what to do about them — recording volume, difficulty, intent and the page that should rank, so the decision is repeatable rather than a matter of taste. This one adds an opportunity score that ranks the list for you and warns when two pages target the same term.
Is the keyword research template really free?
Yes. Enter your name and email and the download unlocks immediately, with a copy sent to your inbox as a backup. No trial, no card, no drip sequence.
Which keyword tool do I need?
Any of them, or none. The template is tool-agnostic — it just needs a volume number and a difficulty number, and it treats a missing difficulty as average rather than breaking. Google Search Console, autocomplete and People Also Ask are enough for a first pass. The only rule is to use one source for the whole sheet, because difficulty scores are not comparable between tools.
How does the opportunity score work?
Monthly volume, discounted by difficulty, multiplied by how winnable your current position makes it. Keywords sitting in positions 4–20 are weighted up by half again because that is the cheapest traffic on any site; keywords you already rank top three for are weighted down, because defending is not the same as growing. Sort by the column and the top of the list is your quarter.
How does it catch keyword cannibalisation?
Two ways. The Flag column warns the moment two rows claim the same keyword, and the Keyword to URL Map grades every target URL — Focused, Cluster, or Overloaded — based on how many primary keywords you have pointed at it. Overloaded pages are the most common self-inflicted ranking cap we see.
How many keywords does it hold?
300 rows are pre-formatted with the formulas already in place, and you can copy the last row down if you need more. In practice a focused list of 100–300 keywords is far more useful than a dump of three thousand.
Does it work in Google Sheets?
Yes. It is an Excel workbook that opens natively in Google Sheets, Excel and Numbers, and every formula was deliberately written to work in all three — no dynamic arrays, no Excel-only functions. Dropdowns and conditional formatting carry across too.
Can I use it for client work?
Yes. Use it on client sites, rebrand it, and charge for the research if you like. We only ask that you do not resell the template itself as your own product.
Want the research done for you?
The template exists because keyword research is genuinely doable in-house. If you would rather have it run by people who do it every week — and get a content plan out the other end instead of a spreadsheet — that is the work we do.