Is keyword research in 2026 really so different compared to keyword research from previous years? What makes it different this year? Well, I’ve put this guide together to show why it does differ, and how you can follow the right steps to becoming a keyword research pro without missing anything.
If you don’t want to read this guide, you can also see the video breakdown:
How to do keyword research effectively in 2026
This is the type of process that needs to be refined and updated throughout the year, so that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. But, for now, here are the steps I recommend you focus on.
1. Assessing SERP Changes
This is such an important part of keyword research because it relates to how search engines and LLM’s shift query weightings, site preferences and even how the search results can change over time to accommodate or prioritise new types of results.
What do I mean by this? Well, by simply looking first at search results themselves for a given keyword, and then also using a tool like Ahrefs to see how the SERP’s have evolved over time in relation to that keyword.
Let’s take a keyword like ‘Oversized T-Shirt’. In Ahrefs, two years ago all we were really seeing were what we can define as commercial results. Products, collections pages or actual product pages were being preferred. But now, we can see that while this is still the preference, you have things like YouTube results, short-form videos, guides and even Reddit threads and forums showing in the ‘traditional’ SERP’s, and that’s without even looking into what LLM’s are preferring to quote as a source.
What this means for your keyword research and content planning is that it’s no longer just about the traditional SERP’s as we know it. It’s not a good thing to assume a type of content for one, and secondly, if you’re not looking at SERP shifts and manually assessing the live SERP’s as they are now, then you miss out on things like video and informational content opportunities that you can incorporate into your content planning for 2026. If you can visibly see whether SERP’s are shifting in relation to your target keywords, then you can plan accordingly and avoid having to duplicate efforts at a later stage or invest in content that simply isn’t fit for purpose within the current SERP’s.
This brings me nicely onto my second point….
2. Content opportunities outside of your website
Research keyword targeting and content development opportunities in 2026 isn’t just confined to your website. When you think of YouTube overtaking Reddit as a citations source, it’s hard to deny that there are clear opportunities to use your current keyword research processes and extend to things like video opportunities as part of broader brand organic visibility.
And, it can literally be as simple as:
- Researching your target keyword or cluster
- Looking at short and long-tail variants of a cluster
- Seeing how videos trigger in:
- The video segment of the SERP’s
- Video appearing in the ‘Videos’ tab
- The videos appearing from which specific platforms in the ‘Short Videos’ tab
- The actual view count averages and within YouTube, TikTok and Instagram for your target keywords
What this means is, when you’re doing your actual title selection and content briefing, you immediately know whether there are video opportunities that you can literally see are being favoured and used to support organic visibility. It’s not just about ticking a box, it’s about getting your brand seen by a broader audience organically who otherwise may not have seen your content through your website in a ‘standard’ format. So, follow this step and make sure you’re not missing out on these types of opportunities.
Going back to point one too, don’t just assume that videos only get shown for informational keywords. There’s a lot of opportunity at the commercial search level to integrate videos into your current content processes.
3. Minimum content requirements
This is a simple one, but I feel it’s massively overlooked. When you’re doing keyword research and planning out the content that you need, look at the types of content that your competitors have to understand the minimum content required for your website.
I don’t mean the amount of articles or service pages that they have either. Let’s take a local cleaning website for example. What would search engines, LLM’s and users want to see from a local cleaning website to prove that they’re legitimate? And, how does this work as averages across competitors? In this instance, we might be looking for things like:
- A transparent pricing page
- Case studies
- Reviews
- Terms & privacy
- Clear contact page
- Locations covered pages (based on searches being highly localised in this industry)
As you can see, this is phase one of understanding the content types that you need, before you then actually build-out the content plan based on your keyword research data. It just means that you’re not looking back at your content budget and seeing things you’ve missed, or that you’ve created the wrong type of content altogether that isn’t right for users or search engines.
Make a copy of this sheet to log these opportunities.
4. Topical clusters & query fan-outs
You want to make sure that you’re both a) covering a topic in enough depth to convey expertise, b) covering a topic to really provide true value to your audience and c) you have content that follows a logical query fan-out process for LLM’s (which can then also mirror how your target audience searches).
This comes back to first having a solid understanding of your target audience and how they search, before you then look to retrieve any research data.
I recommend doing this and breaking-up the searches into pre and post-purchase chunks. For example:
Pre-Purchase:
- Best oversized t-shirt brands
- How much bigger are oversized t-shirts compared to ‘normal’ sizes?
Post-Purchase:
- How to wash oversized t-shirts
- How to repair holes in oversized t-shirts
What this means then is that you’re able to ‘meet’ audiences and various stages of their research and purchase journeys, you’re creating new content to match how SERP’s actually change (not just duplicating efforts), and you’re matching potential query fan-outs as you start to cover topics in a greater depth.
For example, for a search like ‘what are the best oversized t-shirts brands?’ in an LLM, you could then look to cover things like:
- The history of various t-shirt brands and oversized ranges
- Versus brand guides
- Celebrity and events oversized t-shirts articles where LLM’s are looking for recent data to source
If you know this is how your audience is likely to search and that this content is valuable then, regardless of things like estimated volume, it’s logical for you to write about because it’s genuinely useful and could very well be cited as part of the query fan-out process.
5. Commercial Content
For me this comes down to commercial content gap opportunities (use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush for this to visually spot gap areas), and using keyword research to develop the commercial content across pages that you already have.
And, that’s a really good point of keyword research for starters. Is the content already on your collections pages under optimised? Do you even have content on important commercial pages? Are content opportunities being blocked entirely in the robots.txt file due to filters, so you’re missing out on all the volume opportunities that come with medium and long-tail searches?
It’s also critical that you use your internal data to justify commercial content opportunities, and align that to your keyword research. Below is a video on how you can do this for Shopify, using the Search and Discovery app. You can also setup and track search data internally with GA4.
There’s no clearer indication that content is required than seeing the same search queries show internally from your audience, and you not having a page ready to show them. Then, you’re not worrying about search volume, you have the clearest possible justification to prioritise a commercial page because the intent is already there from your audience.
@jamestaylorseo This is a must-have Shopify app for SEO and keyword research! #SEO #marketing #ecommercetips #searchengineoptimization
Don’t just think of commercial keyword research as an opportunity to add loads of products to similar categories and hope for the best. Use the previous points to get a real understanding and what your audience wants to see, where Search Console is guiding opportunities for existing content, and how you can make the buying process as easy as possible for audiences both organically when they don’t know about your brand (but can find your optimised commercial pages), and when they’re on the site to navigate with ease.
This ease of navigation also brings my point back around on things like category navigation elements, breadcrumbs and indexible menu items that could otherwise be blocked from indexing. Make it easy as possible for search engines to crawl and index critical commercial content, as well as making it as easy as possible for users to get to where they need to go.
6. Informational Content
Similarly to commercial content planning, it’s important to split opportunities across the informational content that you don’t have, and how you can optimise the content that you do already have.
So many times when doing an SEO audit of a website do I come across outdated content, or content that is simply not fit for purpose. When you’re doing keyword research, these are also the types of things that you need to be aware of in terms of how the current search results match opportunities for the content that you already have too. Look for things like:
- True competitor article gap areas
- Competitor video activity and how this relates to YouTube SEO and LLM visibility
- Content that is on your site and is outdated, with plenty of Search Console data to inform updates
- Content with the year in the URL, and you’ve got multiple year versions (combine these to create one big evergreen resource, and keep the year out of the URL!)
- Content that is thin, irrelevant or no longer related to the company that you can get rid of
- Content that is actually 404’ing and either needs to be reinstated or redirected to an alternative piece of content
As you can see, opportunities exist to match your keyword research work to both new and existing informational content, it’s not just about new content all of the time. In fact, you’ll likely see quicker wins by updating content that you do have, rather than just adding to the amount of content on your site just to meet a publishing target each month.
7. Using Search Console
My final point is on using Search Console as part of keyword research. Easily one of the best tools you can possible use, Search Console can allow you to find fantastic opportunities that third-party tools simply cannot.
I like to specifically use Search Console for keyword research when looking for the following:
- Queries that have high impressions, little to no clicks and show a SERP change when I manually look at them. This tells me that a new piece of content is needed for effective targeting, because I’m not seeing the same articles showing and I need to match what is being preferred in the SERP’s
- High impression, low click queries where the SERP does stay the same. I’m then looking at how I can add to existing content to properly optimise for the queries being missed that Search Console is showing
- Use filters to look for FAQ opportunities specifically. These are so good because you’re getting the data directly from Google itself, not just relying on estimated volumes from a tool
If you sign up to my SEO newsletter you’ll be emailed a resourced hub link. The ‘Search Console Content Analysis Sheet’ is something I’ve created to help you with your keyword research. In the first tab, add the URL that you’re wanting to optimise, or add a keyword that you’re wanting to target. In the next columns, paste your Search Console query data from as far back as you can get it.
The sheet then applies a score to match how close a query is to your URL or target keyword. This way, you can see how close a match the existing content is, so that you know whether it’s something you can add to an existing piece of content, or to justify creating new content for that page.
If you again paste that data into the second tab, you’ll also then be given a filtered list of FAQ opportunities based on the Search Console data (if they are present in the list).
It’s detailed in the keyword research video at the top of this guide, and here’s a TikTok on it too for reference:
@jamestaylorseo How to use Search Console to find content and internal link opportunities #seo #learnseo #searchengineoptimization #searchconsole #content
In Conclusion
Hopefully this guide shows you not only how much opportunity is out there when it comes to keyword research as a whole, but also how it can relate just as much to your existing content as much as it’s related to completely new content opportunities.
And, how keyword research isn’t just specific to your website. With so much opportunity across YouTube and social media platforms within the SERP’s, now has never been a better time to branch-out your keyword research to make the most of these opportunities.
