SEO Keyword & Competitor Research

Keyword tools estimate; Search Console reports what actually happened. When the two disagree, first-party data wins. This skill governs how to pick terms for URLs, titles, H1s, and subheads — and how to read competitors without copying them.

First-party data first

1. In Search Console, filter to the specific page and export its queries with impressions and clicks. This is the ground truth for what Google already associates with the page.
2. Read the query shapes, not just the volumes:
   • Typed searches (short, keyword-like) tell you what to put in the URL, title, and H1.
   • Conversational queries (long, natural-language — increasingly from AI assistants) tell you what the subheads and FAQ answers should literally say.
3. Impressions without clicks on a term you don't serve = demand signal for something you haven't built. That's input for a demand-test page (below), never for adding the claim to an existing page.

Competitor teardowns

A competitor's title and H1 reveal their bet, not your answer. Before borrowing anything, map their page portfolio: a competitor with many use-case pages can afford a broad homepage title because other pages absorb the specific queries. If you have one page doing the work of their ten, your page must carry the specific terms itself.

Safe to adopt: URL slugs and title patterns for new pages, where you have no equity to lose. Not safe: replacing an H1 that already earns impressions with a competitor's phrasing.

Record any competitor-derived benchmark (like their pricing floor) with category framing in published copy — "Enterprise tools typically start around $X" — never naming the competitor as the source unless you can cite a public page.

URL naming and renames

• URL renames are near-free for brand-new pages (no backlinks, no rankings) — do them early, before equity accrues.
• For established URLs, a rename needs a 301 redirect and a reason worth the temporary ranking wobble. Default to keeping the URL and changing the title/H1 instead.
• After any rename: 301 in place, canonical updated, internal links updated, all social-card tags updated (including twitter:*), and the new URL submitted in Search Console.

Demand-test pages

When search data shows demand for a capability the product doesn't ship, a landing page can measure it — but it must read as something being built, not something shipped, or it books demos that can't be fulfilled. State the roadmap honestly, offer early access, and instrument the CTA with a distinct analytics event so signups are a countable demand signal.

The honesty constraint

Never put a capability in a title, H1, or schema because the keyword has volume. Rankings earned on false claims convert into churn and refund requests, not revenue.

Worked example

Input: a healthcare voice-AI page at /patient-voice-agent. Keyword tools recommended "medical answering service." Search Console told a different story: the page's real impressions concentrated on "AI voice agent for healthcare," plus long conversational queries about calling insurers to check claim status — a capability the product didn't ship. A competitor's homepage title used the broad category term, but a portfolio check showed they ran dozens of use-case pages absorbing the specific queries.

Decisions:

• URL renamed to /ai-voice-agent — safe because the page was brand new, with no backlinks or rankings to lose. 301, canonical, internal links, and all social tags updated; new URL queued for Search Console.
• Title adopted the high-impression term; the H1 stayed true to what the product does, with secondary terms carried by the subhead instead.
• The competitor's phrasing was NOT copied into the H1 — their portfolio bet wasn't transferable to a single page.
• The claim-status demand (impressions with nothing to click) was routed to a proposed demand-test page with its own CTA analytics event — not written into the live page as a capability claim.