Keyword Research for a Small Business, Without Paid Tools

Before opening any tool, write down the questions you hear on calls, WhatsApp and at the counter for one week. “Do you do home visits?”, “How much for a root canal?”, “Are you open on Sunday?” Those are keywords in the customer's own words — and usually the ones competitors miss.

Type your main service into Google and stop before pressing Enter. The suggestions are what people commonly search. Then add a space and each letter of the alphabet — “dentist in surat a”, “dentist in surat b” — to see more. For this site's own research I collected thousands of suggestions this way.

Search your main terms and open the “People also ask” box and the related searches at the bottom. Each question is a section — or a whole page — you can answer better than anyone else.

The Performance report shows the exact queries that already bring impressions. Sort by impressions and look for queries where you appear but rarely get clicks: those pages need a clearer title or a better answer.

Put each phrase into one of three buckets: ready to buy (“dentist near me open now”), comparing (“clear aligners vs braces cost”), and learning (“why do gums bleed”). Buying phrases belong on service pages; comparing and learning phrases suit articles and FAQs that link back to the service.

Once grouped, each buying-intent group usually becomes one service page, each comparison group one guide, and the learning questions become FAQs or short articles that link to the service. If two phrases would lead to the same page, they belong to the same group. Don't create separate pages for “dentist in Surat” and “dental clinic Surat” — they're one intent.

A spreadsheet with four columns is enough: the phrase, its intent, the page that should answer it, and whether that page exists yet. Review it every month with fresh Search Console data — new queries will appear that you never thought of, often in Hindi or Gujarati spelled in English letters.