Keyword research services for buyers, not volume.

What keyword research services deliver

Keyword research services map the commercial searches your site can realistically compete for and end in a prioritised list of 50-100 keywords. Every keyword gets a label for what the searcher wants (research, compare or buy), a difficulty score adjusted to how strong your site is, and a score for impact versus effort. One priority topic usually supports a main page plus 5-10 supporting pages, so the list becomes the backbone of your content strategy.

Keyword research is not the same as keyword planning. Research decides which keywords are worth pursuing; planning decides which keyword goes on which page and when. We do the research first, then hand over a clear keyword strategy for your own writers or for our SEO copywriting.

Why companies choose LASEO as their keyword research agency

A 5,000-row export is the easy part. The value is in what gets cut: keywords with the wrong intent, results locked by giants and difficulty far beyond what your site can win. A senior consultant reads the top 10 for every keyword on the priority list, because tools label intent automatically and get it wrong roughly 30% of the time on commercial searches.

LASEO does exactly one thing: SEO, for brands like Philips, Bang & Olufsen and Bugaboo, and 98% of our clients stay. We use both Ahrefs and Semrush, because their volume estimates can differ by a factor of three on long, specific searches, and check the result against your own Google Search Console data.

Keyword research for AI search

Search is moving from ten blue links to AI answers in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. When a new AI Overview appears for a priority keyword, that usually means Google reads the intent differently, so we revisit that topic instead of waiting for the yearly refresh.

We also map the questions your buyers ask, because those are what AI tools answer. With AI SEO we then make the pages built on that research easy for AI tools to read and quote, and track how often they mention your brand next to your Google rankings.

Keyword research, explained without the tool-vendor hype

Keyword research is the discovery and prioritisation step before content strategy. It maps the commercial searches your site can realistically compete for. It is different from keyword planning (choosing which keyword goes into which piece of content) and from content gap analysis (comparing your rankings with a specific set of competitors).

Keyword research vs keyword planning

Keyword research is discovery and prioritisation: which keywords are worth pursuing across your market. Keyword planning is execution and assignment: which keyword goes on which page, in which week, written by whom. Most teams confuse the two and end up with a research report that pretends to be a content calendar. Research first, planning second, with a clear handover in between.

Search intent, the part most tools skip

Ahrefs and Semrush both label intent automatically, and both get it wrong roughly 30% of the time on commercial searches. The only reliable way is a person reading the top 10 results and noting whether they are guides, comparisons, product pages or brand results. We do that for every keyword that makes the priority list. The tools support the judgement; they do not replace it.

Why difficulty scores must match your site

Keyword difficulty (KD) is a tool's estimate of how hard it is to reach the top 10. A KD of 35 means something different to a weaker site (authority score 30) than to a strong one (authority score 75). The score assumes a site of average strength for those results. If your authority is half the top 10 average, your real difficulty is closer to 60. If it is above the average, your real difficulty might be 20. Fixed rules like 'always go for KD under 30' are why most beginner keyword lists fail.

One main topic plus specific variations

A page aimed at a single keyword rarely ranks well, because Google judges how well your site covers the whole topic. A page targeting one broad term without supporting articles on the narrower, more specific searches (the long tail) will lose to a competitor with a main page plus 8 supporting articles. We map the whole topic before we recommend any single keyword: the broad term for the main page, the specific variations for supporting articles, and internal links between them.

Buyers over vanity volume

High-volume informational searches are the most common keyword research trap. They look impressive in a report, bring traffic that converts at zero, and crowd out the lower-volume buying searches that actually pay. We score every keyword on commercial value times traffic potential, not volume alone. What advertisers pay per click (CPC) is a useful shortcut: a high CPC means buyers, a low CPC means browsers.

Seasons and trends

Google Trends matters. A keyword with steady volume all year is worth more than the same volume packed into one season, because the content keeps paying off all year round. We check Google Trends for every priority topic and flag seasonal keywords, so the content goes live before the search peak, not after. Keywords on the rise get their briefs fast-tracked.