You do not need a £99 a month subscription to work out what your customers search for. The best sources are free, and one of them is your own inbox.

Start with what people already ask you

Open your last thirty enquiries, emails and phone notes. Write down the actual words customers used. Not your industry's words — theirs. Businesses routinely optimise for "bespoke digital solutions" while customers type "cheap website for my shop". The mismatch is where your traffic goes to competitors.

Mine the search box

Type your core service into Google and note the autocomplete suggestions. Scroll to "People also ask" and "Related searches". Repeat with a letter appended — "web design a", "web design b" — and you will surface a long list of real phrases people type. Do the same on YouTube and, if relevant, Amazon and Reddit.

Free tools worth using

  • Google Search Console — the single best source once you have any traffic. Every query you already appear for, with impressions, clicks and average position.
  • Google Trends — direction of travel and seasonality, plus regional differences.
  • Google Keyword Planner — free with an Ads account, rough volumes, broad ranges but useful.
  • Answer-the-question style tools — free tiers give you plenty of question phrasing.

Sort by intent, not volume

Group everything you find into four buckets:

  • Commercial — "web designer near me", "hire X". Highest value. Needs a service or location page.
  • Comparison — "best X in Surrey", "X vs Y", "how much does X cost". Nearly ready to buy. Needs an honest comparison or pricing page.
  • Informational — "how do I X", "why does X happen". Builds trust and links. Needs a blog article.
  • Navigational — your own name. Make sure you own it.

A phrase with 40 searches a month and clear commercial intent is worth more to a small business than one with 4,000 searches from people who will never hire anyone.

Judge whether you can compete

Search the phrase and look at page one honestly. If it is ten national directories and Which?, skip it for now. If it is a couple of local competitors with thin pages, that is your opening. Longer, more specific phrases are almost always the way in for a smaller site.

Turn the list into a plan

Map one phrase family to one page. Never two pages targeting the same intent — they compete with each other and both lose. Write the page title around the primary phrase, cover the related questions inside as subheadings, and link it to your relevant service page.

Review quarterly

Every three months, open Search Console, sort by impressions with low click-through, and look for phrases you rank for on page two. Those are your quickest wins: you have already earned the relevance, and usually a better title and a stronger section is enough to move up.