How To Find Keywords For Blogging – 5 Ways To Find Keywords

Most new bloggers pick keywords by guessing. They write about what they find interesting, publish 20 posts, get almost no traffic, and then wonder what went wrong. The problem is not the writing. The problem is that nobody was searching for those topics in the first place.

Keyword research sounds technical, but it does not have to be. There are free tools sitting right inside Google that most bloggers walk past every single day. And once you know where to look, finding low-competition keywords you can actually rank for becomes a repeatable process rather than a guessing game. In this post, I am going to walk you through five proven methods, starting with the ones that require zero budget and finishing with a paid tool that gives you data no free tool can match.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A repeatable system for finding keywords inside Google for free
How to use the “People Also Ask” box to build months of content ideas
How to mine Reddit and niche forums for questions your audience is already asking
How to use Answer the Public and Answer Socrates to aggregate search intent
How to use Ahrefs to check keyword difficulty and spot green-light opportunities
The sub-niche strategy that makes your blog competitive from day one
A step-by-step process for building your first keyword list from scratch
How to find the right online income path for your specific skills at finder.platformproof.com

Method 1: Google Search and People Also Ask

The easiest place to start keyword research is the search engine your readers are already using. Open Google, type in your niche, and before you click into any results, pay attention to everything on the page that is not a sponsored ad.

The first thing you will see is the “People Also Ask” box. This is one of the most underrated keyword tools in existence, and it is completely free. Google built it to show questions that searchers commonly ask alongside a root topic. If you are in the woodworking niche and you type in “woodworking,” you will see questions like “What is the most popular type of woodworking?” and “What is the easiest woodworking project for beginners?”

Here is the part most bloggers miss. When you click the dropdown arrow on any of those questions, two things happen. First, Google shows you a brief answer. Second, it expands and adds four to six more related questions beneath the one you just opened. Click the dropdown on one of those new questions, and it adds more. You can keep doing this indefinitely. A single broad search on woodworking can generate dozens of specific, question-based keyword ideas in under ten minutes.

Each one of those questions is a potential blog post. Google is literally telling you what its users are asking and what answers it does not feel fully satisfied with yet. That is a direct invitation for you to create something better.

Why Questions Make the Best Blog Topics

Question-based keywords convert better than generic keywords because the searcher has high intent. Someone who types “woodworking” is browsing. Someone who types “how do I choose wood for a workbench?” is ready to learn and act. Writing posts that answer specific questions directly puts you in front of people who are already primed to engage with what you have to say.

Method 2: Related Searches at the Bottom of Google

Scroll all the way down to the bottom of any Google search results page. Below the last organic result you will find a section labeled “Related searches” or “Searches related to [your keyword].” These are not random. Google compiles them from the actual behavior of real searchers who looked up the same thing you did.

If you search “how to make a woodworking stool seat,” the related searches at the bottom might include “how to make a stool at home,” “how to build bar stools with a back,” and “DIY bar stool plans.” Each of those is another keyword idea. And because Google is pulling from real search behavior, you already know people are searching for them.

Click on any of those related searches and you will get a new results page with its own “People Also Ask” section and its own related searches at the bottom. You can use this to go three or four layers deep on a single topic, building a content map as you go. The whole process takes nothing but a browser and fifteen minutes of your time.

Method 3: Reddit and Niche Forum Sites

Reddit is a giant network of forums called subreddits. There is a subreddit for almost every topic imaginable, and within each one, real people ask real questions every day. That makes Reddit one of the best free keyword research tools most bloggers ignore entirely.

Go to Reddit and search your niche. For woodworking, you will find subreddits like r/woodworking with hundreds of thousands of members. Spend fifteen minutes scrolling through recent posts. You are not looking for viral content. You are looking for questions. Someone asking “what scroll saw should I buy for beginners?” has just handed you a keyword. Scroll deeper and you will see people asking about CNC machines, hand tools, finishing techniques, and wood carving. Each one of those is a sub-niche with its own audience.

The sub-niche insight matters a lot. “Woodworking” as a keyword is extremely competitive. A brand new blog has no realistic chance of ranking for it. But “woodworking hand tools for beginners” or “CNC woodworking machines for small shops” are far more specific, and your new blog actually has a shot at ranking for them. Reddit shows you exactly which sub-niches are active and which questions are being asked inside each one.

Beyond Reddit, search for “[your niche] forum” and find dedicated community sites. A woodworking discussion forum will have category headings for things like scroll sawing, CNC, finishing, machinery, tools, and safety. Those category headings are themselves sub-niches, and each sub-niche is a cluster of potential blog posts. The forum has already organized the content for you. Your job is to pick the questions that align with your site and create better answers than what exists.

Turning Forum Questions Into Blog Posts

When you find a question on Reddit or a forum that has a lot of replies, that is a signal that many people have the same problem. Take that exact question, paste it into Google, and see what comes up. If the top results are forums rather than well-structured blog posts, that is an opportunity. You can write a proper, detailed answer, optimize it for that keyword phrase, and outrank a thread that does not have any real SEO behind it.

Not sure which online income method fits your skills and schedule?

Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com and get a personalized recommendation in under two minutes.

Method 4: Answer the Public and Answer Socrates

Answer the Public is a search aggregation tool at answerthepublic.com. You type in a keyword and it pulls together questions, comparisons, and prepositions from searches across multiple search engines. Type in “woodworking” and it will return questions like “can woodworking be a career,” “what woodworking tools do I need to start,” and dozens of other variations organized by question word: who, what, where, when, why, how, can, are, which.

The free version of Answer the Public limits you to two searches per day. That is enough to get a batch of ideas without paying anything. Use your two daily searches strategically. Pick your top two priority sub-niches and run each one through the tool. Screenshot or export the results before your session ends, because that data does not save automatically in the free version.

Answer Socrates at answersocrates.com works the same way and does not have the two-search daily limit at the time of writing. Type in “woodworking” and it will immediately return questions that real searchers are asking about that topic, broken out into categories. It is a solid free alternative when you have burned through your Answer the Public searches for the day.

What both tools do well is surface the language your audience actually uses. Keyword research is not just about finding topics, it is about understanding how real people phrase their problems. If your audience asks “how do I make wood look weathered” rather than “wood distressing techniques,” you want to know that before you write the post title. These tools surface that language directly from search data.

Method 5: Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

The first four methods are free. Ahrefs is not, but it gives you data none of the free methods can match. There is a seven-day trial available for seven dollars, which is enough time to build a solid keyword list for a new blog.

Inside Ahrefs, go to the Keywords Explorer tool. Type in your niche keyword and you will see the search volume, the number of related keyword ideas, and the keyword difficulty score. Here is what the numbers looked like for woodworking when this video was recorded:

Woodworking: over 144,000 related keywords, 100,833,000 combined monthly searches, keyword difficulty extremely high (red)
CNC woodworking: 852 related keywords, 5,000+ monthly searches, much lower difficulty
Woodworking software: 539 related keywords, 4,200 monthly searches, most keywords in the green (easy) range

The keyword difficulty score runs from 0 to 100. Ahrefs visualizes this with color: green means easy to rank for, yellow means difficult, red means nearly impossible for a site without significant authority. A brand new blog should focus almost entirely on green keywords. Trying to rank for red keywords before your site has any backlinks is like entering a 100-meter sprint against professional athletes on your first day of running.

Inside the Matching Terms report in Ahrefs, you can filter the keyword difficulty down to zero. This shows you keywords that nobody has optimized content for yet. The caveat, as mentioned in the video, is to sanity-check these before writing. Just because the difficulty is zero does not mean the topic makes sense for your blog. “IRS auctions woodworking” had 4,300 monthly searches and zero difficulty, but it does not connect naturally to woodworking content. Use judgment alongside the data.

Ahrefs also shows you which competing blogs are already ranking for a given keyword. This is useful because it tells you the quality of content you are competing against. If the top results are thin, outdated forum posts rather than dedicated blog articles, that is a real opening for a well-written, properly structured post to come in and rank.

How to Build a Keyword List From Scratch

The five methods above work best when you use them together in sequence. Here is a practical workflow for building your first keyword list if you are starting a new blog today.

Step 1: Define your niche and two or three sub-niches. Start broad, then niche down. Woodworking is a niche. CNC woodworking, woodworking hand tools, and woodworking finishing are sub-niches. Pick two or three sub-niches where your interest and the audience’s questions overlap.

Step 2: Run each sub-niche through Google. For each sub-niche, do a Google search and collect every question from the “People Also Ask” box. Expand the box multiple times until you have at least twenty questions per sub-niche. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and collect all related searches too. Put everything in a spreadsheet.

Step 3: Check Reddit and one niche forum. Spend twenty minutes on Reddit searching your sub-niches. Note every question post that has more than ten comments. Visit one dedicated niche forum and write down all the category headings under each sub-niche. These become potential cluster topics for your blog.

Step 4: Run your top sub-niches through Answer the Public or Answer Socrates. Use your two free Answer the Public searches on your highest-priority sub-niches. Export the results. Then run the same terms through Answer Socrates and grab any additional questions you did not already have.

Step 5: Validate with Ahrefs or Google Search Console. If you have the seven-dollar Ahrefs trial, paste your top keyword candidates into Keywords Explorer and filter by difficulty. Keep everything green. If you do not have Ahrefs, paste each keyword into Google and look at the results manually. If the top results are forum threads or low-quality pages, you have a real shot.

Step 6: Prioritize your first ten posts. Take the ten keywords with the clearest questions, the most search intent, and the lowest apparent competition. These become your first ten posts. Write the best, most thorough answer you can for each one. That is your first content sprint.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

The free methods are genuinely useful, but they have real limitations worth acknowledging.

Google’s People Also Ask and related searches do not tell you search volume. A question appearing in the People Also Ask box could be searched 200 times a month or 200,000 times a month. You cannot tell from the box alone. You need a tool like Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, or even Ubersuggest to put actual numbers behind the ideas you collect.

Reddit and forum research is qualitative, not quantitative. People asking questions in forums proves that interest exists, but it does not tell you how many people are searching that exact phrase in Google. Always cross-reference forum-sourced keywords with a search tool before committing to writing a full post.

Answer the Public’s two-search daily limit gets frustrating quickly if you are doing serious research. Answer Socrates fills in some of the gap, but neither tool shows you competition data. They are idea generators, not keyword validators.

Ahrefs solves most of these problems, but it is not free. The seven-dollar trial gives you a week to download as many keyword ideas as possible. If you use that week well, you can build a six-month content calendar before the trial ends. After the trial, the monthly plans are priced for established businesses rather than beginner bloggers, so make the most of the trial window.

Find Your X

Keyword research is the foundation, but the bigger question is what kind of online income model makes sense for you specifically. Blogging is one path. There are others. If you are not sure which one fits your current skills, schedule, and goals, the quiz at finder.platformproof.com will give you a personalized recommendation in under two minutes. It is free, and it is built to point you at the method most likely to work for where you are right now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to pay for a keyword tool to start a blog?

No. The free methods in this post, including Google’s People Also Ask, related searches, Reddit, and Answer Socrates, are enough to get your first twenty to thirty posts planned without spending anything. Paid tools like Ahrefs become more useful once you are publishing consistently and need volume data to prioritize topics strategically.

How do I know if a keyword is too competitive for a new blog?

In Ahrefs, look at the keyword difficulty score. Green means achievable for a newer site, yellow is a stretch, and red is essentially off-limits until your domain has significant backlink authority. Without Ahrefs, check the top ten Google results for your keyword manually. If the top results are thin forum posts, outdated articles, or small sites, you can compete. If the top results are major publications like Forbes or Wikipedia, wait until you have more authority.

What is keyword difficulty in Ahrefs?

Keyword difficulty is a score from 0 to 100 that estimates how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for that keyword. Ahrefs calculates it based on the number and quality of backlinks pointing to the pages that already rank. A score of 0 to 20 is generally accessible for newer sites. Above 50, you need significant domain authority to have a realistic chance.

How often should I do keyword research?

Do a dedicated keyword research session when you are planning a new content sprint, typically every four to six weeks if you are publishing two to four posts per month. Do not research a new keyword for every individual post. Instead, batch your research: build a list of twenty to thirty validated keywords at once, then write from that list until it runs out.

Can I use YouTube as a keyword research tool for blogging?

Yes. YouTube’s search bar works the same way Google’s does. Type in a keyword and pay attention to the autocomplete suggestions. These are phrases real people are searching on YouTube, and they often overlap directly with what people search on Google. If a topic is getting video views, there is usually a corresponding search audience looking for written content on the same subject.

What is Answer the Public and is it free?

Answer the Public is a tool at answerthepublic.com that aggregates questions, comparisons, and related phrases from search engines around the world for any keyword you enter. The free version allows two searches per day. That is enough for exploratory research. Answer Socrates at answersocrates.com is a similar tool with no daily search limit on its free tier and is worth using as a complement.

Why should I target sub-niches instead of broad topics?

Broad topics have massive competition. “Woodworking” has over 144,000 related keywords and more than 100 million monthly searches, but the sites ranking for it have years of authority and thousands of backlinks. “Woodworking software” has 539 related keywords and 4,200 monthly searches, with most keywords showing green difficulty scores. A new blog can rank for sub-niche keywords and build traffic and authority before ever touching the broad head terms.

How many blog posts do I need to start seeing traffic from keyword research?

There is no universal number, but most new blogs start seeing meaningful organic traffic after publishing twenty to thirty well-optimized posts targeting low-competition keywords over three to six months. Google needs time to crawl, index, and assess your content. Consistency matters more than volume. Ten well-researched, properly optimized posts published consistently will outperform fifty thin posts rushed out in a single week.

Sources

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: ahrefs.com
Answer the Public: answerthepublic.com
Answer Socrates: answersocrates.com
Reddit: reddit.com
Google Search: google.com (People Also Ask, Related Searches)