Start With the Questions Your Customers Already Ask

Keyword research sounds technical, but for most small UK businesses it starts somewhere far more familiar: the phone, the inbox and the shop counter. Before you open any tool, spend half an hour writing down the questions people actually ask you. The wording they use when they ring up is often the wording they type into a search box.

Aim for twenty to thirty phrases. Pull from your enquiry emails, your most common objections, the things you explain again and again, and the questions new customers ask before they trust you. If you run a plumbing firm in Leeds, that list might include boiler not heating water, emergency plumber Leeds and how much does a boiler service cost. If you run a café in Bristol, it might include dog friendly cafes Bristol and bottomless brunch near me.

Two warnings here. First, avoid the jargon your industry uses but your customers don't — nobody outside your trade searches for "thermal efficiency solutions". Second, include phrases from people who have never heard of you. Your existing customers search your business name; strangers search the problem.

Check That People Actually Search for Those Phrases

Once you have your list, test it. The quickest free method is the search bar itself. Type your phrase in and watch what autocomplete suggests — those suggestions are drawn from real searches. Then scroll to the bottom of the results page for related searches, and look at the "people also ask" boxes for question variations.

When you check demand, think in realistic local numbers rather than national ones. A phrase searched fifty times a month in your town can be worth more to you than one searched five thousand times across the UK, because those fifty people are the ones who can actually buy from you. Useful things to note:

• Local modifiers: town, county, "near me" and postcode-adjacent phrases often convert far better.
• Seasonality: "emergency plumber" spikes in cold snaps; "wedding venue" searches cluster in January and February.
• Buying stage: "how to fix a leaking tap" attracts browsers, "plumber to fix leaking tap" attracts bookers.

If a phrase turns out to have almost no demand, don't force it. Park it in a separate tab and move on.

Judge How Hard Each Phrase Will Be to Rank For

Now search your candidate phrases and study page one honestly. Ask yourself a simple question: could my website realistically sit here within six to twelve months? If the results are dominated by national chains, major directories and large retailers, that phrase is probably a long game. If you see small local competitors, thin pages, forum threads or outdated content, there's an opening.

Longer, more specific phrases are usually the better bet for a small business. Three to five words, with a location or a clear qualifier, is the sweet spot. They bring less traffic but far more of the right traffic.

One more check: make sure the results match what you actually offer. If you sell commercial cleaning and the top results are all domestic cleaners, the phrase is pulling the wrong intent, and ranking for it would simply waste your time.

Match Each Phrase to One Page and One Intent

Every keyword needs a home. Pick one main phrase per page, then support it with two or three close variations in your headings and body copy. A page trying to rank for eight different things usually ranks for none of them.

Group your phrases by intent before you assign them:

• Informational: guides, how-tos and cost explainers — good for building trust early.
• Commercial: comparisons and "best" searches — people are weighing up options.
• Transactional: "book", "hire", "quote", "near me" — these deserve your service pages.
• Local: town or region plus service — often the easiest wins for small firms.

If you already have a website, check your search console data first. Phrases where you're sitting in positions five to twenty are gold: a few improvements to the existing page — a clearer title, a better opening paragraph, a more useful section — can push them onto page one without writing anything new.

Build a Short, Focused Keyword List You'll Actually Use

Keep it simple. A spreadsheet with five columns does the job: phrase, intent, target page, rough monthly volume, and a note on difficulty. Ten to fifteen phrases is plenty to begin with — more than that and nothing gets done.

Prioritise ruthlessly. For most small businesses, the order should be transactional and local phrases first, commercial second, informational third. Those first two groups pay the bills; the third builds long-term visibility. If you have a physical premises, add location pages for each town you genuinely serve, but only where you have something real to say.

Revisit Your Keywords Every Few Months

Keyword research isn't a one-off task. Review your list quarterly. Check which phrases are gaining impressions and which have stalled, and note any phrases that have started appearing in your search console data that you never targeted — those are free hints.

Watch out for pages competing with each other for the same phrase. If two pages target "wedding photographer Cheshire", merge them into one stronger page. And keep updating: a cost guide with last year's prices will slide down the results, no matter how well it once ranked.

Start small, stay specific, and let the enquiries tell you whether you got it right.