How to do keyword research for SEO ahrefs

Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer is designed around search volume, difficulty, and intent data, so your workflow should start with seed terms that represent your client's business, then expand systematically. Enter a primary keyword—say "web design services"—and Ahrefs immediately shows search volume, keyword difficulty (KD), click-through rate (CTR), and the top-ranking pages. The KD score is one of Ahrefs' most useful metrics; it estimates how hard it would be to rank on the first page by analyzing the referring domain strength of current top-ranking sites. For agencies, this is critical because you need realistic targets. A KD of 20-40 is typically much more achievable for newer domains than a KD of 60+. Pay attention to CTR data too—sometimes keywords have decent volume but low CTR, meaning most searchers click ads instead of organic results, so you're fighting for visibility that won't drive much traffic anyway.

Once you've identified your primary target, expand using Ahrefs' keyword suggestions. The "Keyword Ideas" section shows related terms, variations, and questions people are actually searching. Sort by volume, filter by difficulty, and look for clustering opportunities. For example, if you're optimizing for "web design," you'll likely find "web design agency," "custom web design," and "responsive web design" all have reasonable volume with varying difficulty levels. The "Parent Topic" feature shows you what broader topic these keywords belong to, which helps you understand the content opportunity better. You can also use the "Matching terms" filter to see exact vs. phrase vs. broad variations, which is helpful for determining how many semantically similar searches you can capture with one piece of content.

A practical workflow many agencies use is building a filtered list of keywords that meet specific criteria—say, volume above 100, KD below 40, and CTR above 2%—then organizing them into content clusters. Export these into a spreadsheet and map them to existing pages or plan new content around them. The "SERP Analysis" feature in Ahrefs lets you click directly into any top-ranking result to see what type of content ranks, word count, and backlink count. This is invaluable for competitive analysis before you brief your content team. Don't just chase volume; use Ahrefs to understand search intent by examining what's actually ranking and why your client should target specific keywords ahead of others with higher volume but stronger competition.