Keyword research that ends in a plan,
not a spreadsheet nobody opens again
A keyword list without a plan is a spreadsheet that gets opened once and forgotten. We build the list and cluster it by topic and intent. Then we score each cluster for difficulty against your current authority, and hand over a 90-day plan: what to publish, in what order, and why.
Why keyword lists end up forgotten
Most content calendars get filled by whoever is free that week, not by what is actually searched for. A blog publishes articles that feel relevant and gets almost no organic traffic. Meanwhile a handful of high-intent terms with real buyer demand sit untouched, because nobody researched them. The team ends up producing a lot of content and a little traffic, which is the single most common way an SEO budget gets spent without a return.
A second, quieter problem: a team researches keywords once, builds a plan, and never revisits it as the market or the product changes. Eighteen months later, half the map targets a feature that got deprecated. It ignores a term that now drives half of sales. The plan ages out long before anyone notices, because nothing alerts a team that their own research has gone stale.
How we build the map
We start from your product and your competitors, not a generic keyword tool export. The seed list comes from how real customers actually describe the problem you solve. Every term gets clustered by intent: informational, comparison, commercial, transactional. Each cluster is scored for difficulty against your site’s current authority. That way the plan does not open with a keyword you have no realistic chance of ranking for in year one. The output is a 90-day map: which cluster to publish first, and which existing pages to upgrade instead of duplicate. It also flags which terms to leave for later, once authority grows.
Where you already have some content, we map it against the new cluster structure first. Upgrading a page that already has some authority is almost always faster than starting from zero. The map explicitly flags which existing pages to improve, and which topics genuinely need something new written from scratch.
What helps us build it faster
We need:
- Whatever ranking or analytics data you already have, even informal
- A list of your actual products, services or locations
- A short conversation about what your sales team hears prospects ask. That is usually a better keyword source than any tool
If you run paid search already, share your converting keyword list too. Commercial-intent terms that already pay back on paid traffic are usually worth an organic page too. That overlap rarely gets checked unless someone looks for it.
How we track whether the map works
We track clusters moved into the content plan, and pages published against the map versus published outside it. We also track ranking position and organic sessions on the mapped keywords over the following quarter. We flag clusters that are not performing as expected, rather than letting a stale map run unexamined. And we revisit the map itself every quarter against actual ranking data, not just the pages published against it. A map that was right at kickoff can quietly go stale as competitors, your product and search behaviour all shift.
Cost and timeline
| Option | Price | What it covers | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch or audit | from $500 | Seed research, clustering, difficulty scoring, 90-day map | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Monthly management | from $1,500 / month | Monthly content production against the map, 8 articles, internal linking | monthly, no lock-in |
| Full control, handover to your team | from $1,500 | We hand the map, writing briefs and a style guide to your own content team | 2 weeks |
Where the map feeds into
A good map is the input every other SEO service downstream depends on. Technical fixes get sequenced against it. Content production is scheduled from it. And link building knows which pages are worth the effort of earning a mention. Getting the map right before any of that spend happens is usually the single highest-value step in an SEO program. That is why we treat it as a distinct service, rather than folding it quietly into a content package. Follow the map with on-page SEO for the pages you already have. Or use programmatic SEO pages if the map reveals a pattern that repeats across hundreds of pages. The full service lives on SEO and content. For the automated version of this research step, see SEO briefs and content outlines. We ran this exact process to build a 40,235-phrase keyword core into a 973-page site. Get in touch and tell us your product. We will tell you honestly how big the opportunity is.
FAQ
How much does keyword research cost?
From $500 for a focused service area or product line, delivered in about a week. A full-site content map across multiple product lines or languages runs $1,000 to $2,000 depending on scope.
How long until results show up?
The research and the map are ready in 1 to 2 weeks. Rankings from the content built on it typically start moving in 6 to 12 weeks once pages are published and indexed. That is a content production question, not a research one.
What budget do we need beyond the research?
The map tells you how many pages or articles the plan needs. Writing them is quoted separately, either as our monthly SEO content package or as a brief for your own writers.
What do you need from us?
Access to your current rankings data, if you have it. A list of your actual products or service lines. And an hour to tell us what your sales team hears customers ask before they buy.
Do you include competitor research?
Yes. Every cluster is checked against what is currently ranking. The plan tells you honestly where you can realistically win soon, and where it will take sustained effort.