Keyword Research Service

How Our Keyword Research Service Works -- Step by Step

Our keyword research framework relies on a metric we call Opportunity. It’s a blend of monthly search Volume, keyword Difficulty (i.e. the authority of sites that rank well for it), and Relevance to your business. It tells you—at a glance—which terms are worth the chase and which ones are costly distractions.

Step 1 | Assemble the Master Keyword List

• We start with a seed keyword list consisting of terms commonly used on your site, every organic term your site currently ranks for, and terms your competitors rank for. Then we run this list through Ahrefs to come up with a comprehensive list of matching & related keywords.
• Result: a comprehensive starting list that’s often 5–10× larger than what an in-house team uncovers.

Step 2 | AI-Driven Clusters, Relevance, and Opportunity Scoring

• Our ai-driven keyword research engine groups thousands of terms into logical Clusters and assigns a Relevance % based on search intent and ICP fit.
• A keyword research specialist sanity-checks the output—overriding edge cases so you’re never at the mercy of a spreadsheet gone rogue. (When you receive the final deliverable, you’ll also have the ability to edit these Cluster and Relevance inputs, which will adjust the outputs.)
• Blending Volume, Difficulty, and the refined Relevance %, we calculate every keyword’s Opportunity. Now you have a single metric to measure each keyword’s potential value to your business. Quick wins float to the top; unwinnable, low-intent, or off-brand terms sink—saving you hours and dollars.

Step 3 | Traffic Opportunity Report

• Next we pull from Ahrefs and/or Google Search Console the actual traffic you get per term. By comparing actual traffic with Opportunity, we can see which terms have the greatest untapped potential.
• Now we can generate insights per Cluster. A pivot table rolls up the keyword data by Cluster and gives each Cluster a total Opportunity score. Again, we can compare actual traffic with Opportunity. Your content strategy is starting to take shape as topic priorities emerge from the data.
• GRAPHIC: S2S CLUSTER LIST
• At this point we have completed what we call a Traffic Opportunity Report. It captures the size of your market in search, breaks the market into Clusters, and shows how much untapped potential you have per term and per topic.

Step 4 | Keyword-to-Page Mapping

• It’s great to have a ranked keyword list and a ranked Cluster list. But a single Cluster can still contain many different distinct concepts. Consider this example from our own business:
  • Part of Search to Sale’s go-to-market strategy is selling to marketing agencies. Those agencies often want to include our services and/or software in their contracts under their own brand. So we have about 200 keywords categorized into the “white label” bucket.
  • But there are too many different ideas in this keyword list to cover the cluster with one page (duh, that’s the idea of a cluster). E.g. “white label seo services” is obviously different from “white label seo software”.
  • In fact, we’ve identified 8 different page concepts within the white label Cluster.
• So the next step is to break apart your Master Keyword List into distinct page concepts.
• What we’ll do:
  • A keyword research specialist combs through your top 500 terms (ranked by Opportunity).
  • They will come up with up to 10 different page concepts through a combination of looking at existing content and envisioning new content.
  • Then they’ll map each keyword to one of these page concepts.
  • We guarantee we’ll cover at least 80% of your top 500 terms.
  • Then… you guessed it… we use a pivot table to roll that up and calculate a total Opportunity score for each page concept.
  • You can also now filter the whole keyword list by page to see just the keyword list per page.
  • GRAPHIC: S2S WHITE LABEL CLUSTER PAGE LIST
• Now you’ve got a Keyword-Page Map – mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive.

Existing URLs get expansion recommendations; future pages receive their target keyword list. Can you see how you can easily turn this into a content roadmap? Agencies love it for scoping retainers; internal teams use it to defend budgets.

What You Receive

1. Comprehensive Master Keyword List
2. Cluster, Volume, Difficulty, Relevance, Opportunity, and Actual Monthly Traffic for every keyword
3. Roll-up showing the total Opportunity and Actual Traffic per Cluster
4. At least 80% of the top 500 terms by Opportunity mapped to a page concept
5. Keyword-Page map roll-up showing the total Opportunity and Actual Traffic per page

B2B Keyword Research

B2B keyword research isn’t about chasing vanity traffic—it’s about pinpointing the handful of queries senior decision-makers type the week they shortlist vendors.

Volumes are smaller, but intent is off the charts: a SaaS buyer googling “SOC-2 compliant payroll API” is worth way more than “best payroll software” clicks.

Our Opportunity metric spots these high-leverage terms, then clusters them so your content team can build a narrative that moves enterprise prospects from first touch to contract signature. The payoff: fewer blog posts, better-qualified leads, and content your sales team actually wants to share.