Free Keyword Research for a Brand-New Website: A 7-Day Plan

By Idea to Traffic Editorial Team · Published October 18, 2026 · Last updated October 18, 2026

A brand-new site has no rankings, no Search Console data and no budget for paid tools. That is fine. The free tools below give you enough signal to pick your first 20 to 30 topics, and the plan is built around one rule: on a new domain, you win the questions that big sites answer badly or not at all, not the head terms they already own.

What a new site should target first

Search volume is the number most beginners chase, and it is the wrong first filter. A new domain has almost no authority, so a keyword with 50,000 monthly searches is usually owned by sites with thousands of linking domains. Your first pages should go after long questions with modest demand where the current results are weak.

A practical target profile for the first three months:

• Length: 4 or more words, ideally phrased as a question or a specific task ("how to reset a Brother printer to factory settings", not "printer reset").
• Demand: a Keyword Planner range of 10 to 100 or 100 to 1K per month, or clear evidence the question keeps coming up in forums.
• Weak page one: at least two of the top ten results are forum threads, Q&A pages, thin pages, or articles more than two years old.
• Fit: the topic belongs in a cluster you can cover with 5 or more related pages, so Google sees a site about one thing.

Keep this profile in mind as you go through the tools. Each one answers a different question: is there demand, how is it phrased, and can a new site realistically rank.

The free tools and what each one is for

Google autocomplete, People also ask and related searches

Type your seed topic into Google in a private window and stop before pressing enter. The suggestions are real queries people type. Add a letter after the seed ("budget camping a", "budget camping b") to pull more. Then search the seed and expand two or three People also ask boxes; each one you open loads more questions. Scroll to the bottom for related searches. This is the fastest way to learn the exact wording people use, which matters more than any volume number.

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is free inside a Google Ads account. Go to ads.google.com, and during setup look for the option to switch to Expert Mode and create the account without a campaign, so you are not pushed into paying for ads. Once in, open Tools > Planning > Keyword Planner and choose "Discover new keywords". Without active ad spend you see volume as ranges (for example "100 to 1K") rather than exact numbers. Ranges are enough for a new site: you only need to separate "nobody searches this" from "some people search this". Ignore the Competition column; it measures advertiser competition, not how hard it is to rank organically.

Bing Webmaster Tools Keyword Research

Sign in at bing.com/webmasters with any Microsoft account and add your site (you can import it straight from Google Search Console). The left menu has a Keyword Research tool that shows search volume from Bing, related keywords and question keywords, with filters for country, language and device. Bing traffic is a smaller pool than Google, but the relative numbers are a useful second opinion next to Keyword Planner's broad ranges, and the question keyword list is often a gold mine for article ideas.

Google Trends

Use trends.google.com to compare up to five terms at once and to check direction. If a topic has fallen steadily for five years, it is a poor foundation for a five-year site. If it spikes every November, schedule that content for September so it is indexed before the peak.

Forums and communities

Reddit, Quora and niche forums show questions in the words real people use, including the ones no tool has volume data for yet. Search site:reddit.com "your topic" how on Google, or sort a relevant subreddit by new. A question that gets asked every week and gets poor answers is a strong page idea even if Keyword Planner shows nothing.

A 7-day keyword research plan

Set aside about an hour a day. Keep everything in one free spreadsheet with these columns: keyword, source, volume range, page-one weakness (0 to 3), cluster, and priority.

1. Day 1, seeds: write 10 to 15 seed terms that describe what your site covers. Think in problems and tasks, not product names.
2. Day 2, harvest wording: run each seed through autocomplete, People also ask and related searches. Paste every question into the sheet. Aim for 100 or more rows.
3. Day 3, forums: add 20 to 30 questions from Reddit and niche forums. Note the thread URL in the source column so you can reread the context later.
4. Day 4, demand: paste the list into Keyword Planner (it accepts batches through "Get search volume and forecasts") and fill the volume range. Cross-check the top candidates in Bing's Keyword Research.
5. Day 5, page-one check: search each candidate that has any demand. Score page-one weakness from 0 to 3: one point each for forum or Q&A results in the top five, outdated articles, and results that do not answer the exact question. This is the most important column.
6. Day 6, cluster: group the survivors into 3 to 5 clusters. Each cluster gets one broader guide and several specific answer pages that link to it.
7. Day 7, prioritize: rank by weakness score first, then demand. Your first 10 pages come from the top of that list, spread across no more than two clusters so the site builds depth instead of scattering.

A simple scoring rule that works well in practice: priority = weakness score x 2 + 1 if the volume range is 100 to 1K or higher. A keyword scoring 6 or 7 goes in the first batch; 3 or below waits until the site has some authority.

After launch, let Search Console take over

Once pages are indexed and collecting impressions, usually a few weeks after publishing, Google Search Console becomes your best keyword tool because it shows queries you already appear for. Open Performance > Search results, set the date range to the last 3 months, tick Average position, and add a filter for Position greater than 10. These are queries where Google already sees you as relevant but you sit on page two or lower. Improving the matching page, or writing a dedicated page for a query that a broader page is ranking for by accident, is the cheapest traffic gain a young site can get.

Before you publish the first batch, it also pays to confirm the basics are in place, because good keywords cannot rank on a page Google cannot crawl. The free site checker runs 30 structural checks, including titles, indexing signals and sitemap, in about ten seconds.

Mistakes that waste the first months

• Chasing the head term. Writing "best running shoes" on a two-week-old domain is a page that will not be seen. Write "best running shoes for flat feet under 100 dollars" instead.
• Trusting one number. Volume figures from any free tool are estimates. Two sources agreeing on "some demand" beats one precise-looking number.
• One page per keyword variant. "How to fix X" and "X not working fix" are the same intent. Put them on one page, or the pages compete with each other.
• Skipping the page-one check. Volume without a weak page one is a trap for a new site. The manual check on Day 5 is what separates a plan from a wish list.
• Never revisiting. Redo Days 2 to 5 every quarter, and check Search Console monthly once data arrives.

The whole plan costs nothing but time. By the end of the first week you should have a ranked list of 20 to 30 pages you can realistically win, which is far more useful than a list of 500 keywords you cannot.

Where this question came from

• r/SEO: Best free tools and plan for keyword research for a brand-new website?
• Practical Ecommerce: Using Bing's keyword research tool

Questions about free keyword research for new sites