How to Do Keyword Research for Free (No Ahrefs, No Semrush)
You do not need a $99-a-month subscription to figure out what to write about. The paid tools are faster and give you tidy volume and difficulty numbers, but the underlying data, what people type into Google, is something you can gather directly from Google's own free surfaces. The tradeoff is that you trade precise numbers for direction, and you do a little more manual reading.
Here is the whole free stack, in the order it is worth using it. The single best source is one most people skip: the queries you already rank for.
Google Search Console: the queries you already rank for
If your site has any traffic at all, start here. In Search Console, open the Performance report, and look at the Queries tab. This is the only free source that shows real Google search terms tied to your actual pages, with impressions, clicks, and average position.
The gold is in the queries where you rank on page two, positions 11 to 25. Those are terms Google already considers your site relevant for, you are just not high enough to get clicks. Sort by impressions, filter position to that range, and you have a list of pages that need a modest push (better title, more depth, an internal link or two) rather than a whole new article. It is far cheaper to move a page from position 14 to position 6 than to rank a brand-new page from nothing.
Also read the queries hitting a page you did not optimize for that term. If a post about "meta descriptions" is quietly getting impressions for "meta description length," that is Google telling you there is a specific sub-topic worth its own section or page. No paid tool surfaces intent-to-content mismatches as directly as your own Search Console data.
Google Autocomplete, related searches, and People Also Ask
For topics you do not rank for yet, Google's own search page is a keyword tool. Three surfaces, all free:
Autocomplete: start typing a seed phrase and read the suggestions. These are real, popular queries ordered roughly by frequency. Try the alphabet trick, type your seed plus each letter ("seo audit a," "seo audit b") to pull long-tail variants. Add question words ("how to," "why," "what is") and prepositions ("for," "vs," "without") to branch the topic.
People Also Ask: the expandable questions under the first few results. Each one is a real query, and clicking one loads more. This is the fastest way to map the questions around a topic, which is exactly what your H2s and FAQ section should answer.
Related searches: the block at the bottom of the results page. These are lateral topics Google associates with your query, useful for finding the next article in a cluster.
Google Keyword Planner: ranges, not exact numbers
Keyword Planner is free with any Google Ads account (you do not have to run a campaign). It gives you average monthly search volumes, but for non-advertisers it now shows broad ranges (like "1K–10K") rather than exact figures. That is coarse, but it is enough to tell a term that gets thousands of searches from one that gets ten. Use it to sanity-check whether a phrase you found in Autocomplete has meaningful demand, and to discover related terms via its "Discover new keywords" input.
Do not treat the ranges as precise. Treat them as order-of-magnitude.
Google Trends: direction and seasonality
Trends does not give volume, it gives relative interest over time. Its real uses are three specific things: telling whether a topic is rising or fading (compare two terms head to head), catching seasonality so you publish before the peak, and settling which of two phrasings people actually use ("SEO test" vs "SEO checker"). It also has a "related queries" panel with a "Rising" filter that surfaces terms gaining momentum, which is where early content opportunities live.
Question mining and forum language
The free stack has two more sources for the exact words your audience uses.
AnswerThePublic-style question mining: enter a seed term and get a wheel of who/what/why/how/when questions built from autocomplete data. The free version limits your daily searches, but a few queries give you a solid question list. You can reproduce most of it by hand with the Autocomplete question-word trick above.
Forums and Reddit: search site:reddit.com your topic in Google, and read how real people phrase their problems. This is where you find the messy, specific language that never shows up in a keyword tool, the actual question behind the polished search term. A Reddit thread titled "why won't my new site show up on Google" is worth more than a volume number, because it hands you the exact framing and the follow-up worries to address.
A worked example: one topic through the stack
Say you run a small site about home coffee and want a new article. Watch one seed move through the stack.
Seed: "pour over coffee." Autocomplete expands it to "pour over coffee ratio," "pour over coffee maker," "pour over coffee vs drip." People Also Ask adds "Is pour over coffee healthier?" and "What is the golden ratio for pour over?" Related searches at the bottom suggest "pour over coffee grind size."
Now filter by intent. "Pour over coffee maker" is commercial (people comparing products); "pour over coffee ratio" and "grind size" are informational, someone with the gear who wants to brew better. If you do not sell equipment, the ratio and grind-size cluster fits your site.
Check demand in Keyword Planner: "pour over coffee ratio" comes back in a healthy range, "pour over coffee grind size" a bit lower. Trends shows both steady year-round with a small January bump (resolutions). So you plan one solid guide, "pour over coffee ratio and grind size," publish in December to catch the January rise, and structure the H2s around the People Also Ask questions you collected: the golden ratio, grind size, water temperature, common mistakes.
That is a fully-scoped, intent-matched, demand-checked article plan built entirely from free tools. No subscription touched it.
The honest limits, and how to prioritize anyway
Free research has two real gaps. You do not get reliable search volume (Keyword Planner ranges are coarse and everything else is directional), and you get no keyword difficulty score, so you cannot see at a glance how hard a term is to rank for.
You can still prioritize sensibly without those numbers. Three proxies do most of the work:
Look at the results page yourself. Search the term. If page one is wall-to-wall big brands and the queries clearly expect a huge resource, that is your difficulty signal, harder than a term where page one is thin, old, or full of forum posts. Reading the SERP tells you more about rankability than a two-digit difficulty score does.
Weight specificity over raw size. A long-tail term with obvious intent ("how to fix redirect chains") is usually both easier to rank for and more likely to convert than a fat head term ("SEO"). For a small site, ten well-targeted long-tail articles beat one doomed attempt at a head term.
Start from Search Console. Terms where you already rank on page two are your highest-ROI targets by definition, Google has pre-qualified you. Exhaust those before chasing anything cold.
Keyword research is really content strategy with a search-data input, and the free stack gives you enough input to make good calls. If you are figuring out whether your existing pages are even set up to rank, our free SEO analyzer checks the on-page basics, and the piece on what an SEO test actually checks explains what those basics are. Once you have your target term, the on-page SEO checklist covers turning it into a page that can rank.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you really do keyword research without paid tools?
Yes. Google Search Console shows real queries you already rank for, and Autocomplete, People Also Ask, Keyword Planner, and Trends cover discovery and demand for topics you don't. You lose precise volume and difficulty numbers, but you keep the data that actually drives content decisions: the terms, the questions, and the intent behind them.
What's the single best free keyword source?
Google Search Console, if your site has any traffic. It's the only free tool that ties real Google search terms to your own pages with impressions and average position. The queries where you rank on page two are the highest-ROI targets, because Google already considers your site relevant and you only need a modest push to reach page one.
How do I find search volume for free?
Google Keyword Planner (free with any Google Ads account, no campaign required) shows average monthly volume as broad ranges like 1K–10K for non-advertisers. Google Trends adds relative interest and seasonality but not absolute numbers. Together they tell you a term's order of magnitude, which is enough to separate real demand from near-zero terms.
How do I judge keyword difficulty without a paid tool?
Read the results page yourself. Search the term and look at who ranks: if page one is dominated by large, authoritative sites with exhaustive content, it's hard; if it's thin, dated, or full of forum threads, it's more winnable. Favoring specific long-tail terms over broad head terms also sidesteps most difficulty problems for smaller sites.
Is People Also Ask good for keyword research?
Yes. Every question in the People Also Ask box is a real query, and expanding one loads more, so it maps the questions surrounding a topic quickly. Those questions make natural H2 headings and FAQ entries, which aligns your page structure with what searchers actually ask.