One of the best things about AI is its ability to speed up repetitive, time-consuming tasks. 

In the SEO world, keyword research is one of the most mind numbing.   

Discovering relevant keywords with decent search volume that aren’t already flooded by your competitors can be like finding a needle in an internet-sized haystack. 

However, adding AI into the mix is the equivalent of using GPS technology to pinpoint the exact location of the needle, saving you countless hours of searching. AI-powered keyword research works the same way. Instead of hunting down keywords by yourself, you’ll have a powerful piece of technology to do it for you in seconds. 

SEOs quickly caught on to AI’s potential for speeding up keyword research, which is why 75% of businesses are already using it. They’re also using AI tools to speed up other SEO processes, like optimizing meta tags, creating content, and link prospecting. 

It’s no surprise why it caught on so fast, as AI-driven keyword discovery yields many benefits, such as:

  1. Finding lesser-known keywords that have enormous ranking potential 
  2. Speeding up the keyword research process while improving its efficiency 
  3. Catching on to emerging search trends before your competitors do 

Due to these perks, AI-powered keyword tools are slowly taking over.

Yet, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about using AI to power your keyword research. 

We’ll give you a hint; blindly following an AI SEO tool’s keyword suggestion without further vetting isn’t the way to go. 

Instead, you can and should vet the keywords you get from AI programs using other tools, which we’ll discuss in a bit. 

In this article, we’ll teach you the right way to conduct AI keyword research, and we’ll take a look at the top AI keyword research tools, so stick around! 

How AI Identifies Search Intent and Trends 

AI tools have humans beat in terms of analyzing data, and it’s not even close. 

They can analyze mammoth amounts of data in seconds, which comes in extremely handy for the keyword research process. 

Finding viable keyword targets involves combing through tons of data, and humans can only comprehend so much. As a result, most marketers wind up targeting the exact same keywords because they rely on the same traditional keyword research tools. 

The way it typically works goes something like this:

  1. A marketer types a common industry seed keyword into a research tool (like ‘digital marketing’). 
  2. The tool provides a list of related keywords along with their search volume and keyword difficulty (KD) scores. 
  3. The marketer selects the keywords with the highest search volume and lowest KD scores. 

The only problem is this is the same process nearly every other marketer in their industry goes through. 

That’s why there’s so much keyword overlap between SEO strategies in the same niches. 

The good news?

AI-powered tools can help you break this pattern. 

Since they can analyze vast amounts of data at the drop of a hat, you can significantly broaden your horizons in terms of the types of keywords you target.

With AI, you can uncover valuable keywords that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. This is because AI has the ability to predict trending keywords before they peak in popularity. In other words, you can use it to be the early bird for new keywords in your niche, heightening the chances that you will, in fact, get the worm (i.e., traffic, leads, and sales). 

Using AI to find keywords that are about to blow up 

Let’s use a tool like ChatGPT to illustrate what we mean. 

For this example, we’ll stick with the digital marketing niche. Here’s what happens when we ask ChatGPT to give us some lesser-known digital marketing keywords that are rising in popularity:

As you can see, that one simple prompt yielded lots of promising keywords:

Moreover, these are all trending, extremely relevant keywords for the digital marketing space. 

Concepts like micro-moments, artificial intelligence optimization (AIO), and hyper-personalization are all revolutionizing the industry, so they’re the exact types of keywords you’d want to target to stay on the cutting edge. 

Yet, you shouldn’t blindly trust an AI tool’s output. 

While these keywords are certainly promising, they require a little more vetting before you can use them in your SEO strategy. 

The best way to do this is to vet each keyword AI provides through a traditional research tool, like our free offering. 

It’ll let us peep crucial metrics like search volume, trend, and keyword difficulty, so let’s pop in one of the keywords ChatGPT just told us about (artificial intelligence optimization). 

Sure enough, we can see that the keyword (and two related keywords) has the right metrics we’re looking for, and they’re rising in popularity (evidenced by the trend line graph). 

Using AI tools to understand the search intent behind keywords 

Finding valuable keywords is only one part of the equation. You also need to properly identify each keyword’s search intent to ensure you create the right type of content for it. 

Search intent refers to the ‘why’ behind a keyword. For example, the keyword ‘buy shoes near me’ clearly shows an intention to purchase shoes at a local business.

As a quick refresher course, keywords typically have four types of search intent, which are:

  • Informational. Whenever a search user is trying to learn something by searching for a keyword, it has informational intent. This means the user wants to educate themselves on a new topic (or learn skills). These types of keywords are best for raising brand awareness and building trust with your customers. They’re called TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) keywords because they exist at the top of your sales funnel (when prospects are learning about your brand and products). 
  • Navigational. A keyword has navigational intent whenever a searcher uses it to find a specific web page online. Examples include ‘netflix’ and ‘amazon sign in.’ 
  • Commercial. Whenever a user is researching an eventual purchase, they use keywords that have commercial intent. Common commercial keywords include phrases like ‘buyer’s guide,’ ‘comparison’, and ‘best (blank) product.’
  • Transactional. Lastly, a keyword has transactional intent whenever the user wants to make an immediate purchase. This means they’ll buy something either before their online session is over or at a local business soon after. Common transactional keywords include phrases like ‘buy now,’ ‘discount,’ and ‘near me.’ 

Determining the intent behind keywords is a major aspect of the keyword research process, and it’s something that AI tools excel at. 

You can use AI-powered tools to remove the guessing game that’s sometimes involved with search intent. 

Not only that, but AI tools dive deeper than the aforementioned four categories of search intent. Since it can process huge volumes of data, AI can get extremely specific with identifying search intent, enabling you to create content that’s hyper-personalized for your users. 

Moreover, you can tell AI to tailor its search intent interpretations to specific target audiences:

As an example, let’s look at what ChatGPT has to say about the search intent behind the keyword ‘learn artificial intelligence optimization’:

At first, it gives us a pretty basic answer by letting us know that it’s an informational keyword. 

However, we can get more detailed insights by telling ChatGPT to refine its output for a specific target audience. In this case, we chose to tailor the response for advanced AI practitioners. 

Here’s what we got:

As you can see, we get a more in-depth analysis of the search intent this way. Instead of looking for generic information on AIO, these experts are after deeper technical knowledge. 

If you were creating content for this type of audience, you would want to create advanced guides on topics like meta-learning and stochastic optimization. 

While creating high-level content like this may take more time and effort than creating run-of-the-mill guides, it’s the type of content your audience is looking for the most – so you stand to gain the most from it. 

What are the Best AI-Powered Keyword Research Tools?

Next, let’s explore how you can start conducting AI-driven keyword research by examining the best tools on the market. 

We’ll examine, review, and compare:

  1. ChatGPT (free option) 
  2. Semrush 
  3. Surfer 

Let’s get started!

ChatGPT: Free AI-powered keyword research 

We’ve already shown a few examples of how you can use ChatGPT to aid in your keyword research process, but that’s only scratching the surface. 

There are countless ways you can prompt the program to give you viable keyword tips and opportunities, and you can do it all using ChatGPT’s free version. 

With it, you can:

  • Build extensive keyword lists 
  • Uncover keywords that are gaining popularity before they peak 
  • Ask for advice for forming keyword strategies 
  • Explore thousands of long-tail keywords 
  • Uncover a keyword’s search intent based on numerous factors (like target audience as we showed before)

To us, the best part about ChatGPT is being able to ask it questions like we’re talking to a person. 

Thanks to its natural language processing (NLP), it’s able to understand prompts with remarkable accuracy. 

However, ChatGPT’s outputs aren’t always 100% accurate. For this reason, fact-checking is necessary. We also recommend vetting the keywords it gives you by using traditional tools to check individual metrics (like search volume and CPC).  

Pros

  • Tons of applications and use cases 
  • The ability to ask normal questions 
  • Outputs are typically accurate and helpful 

Cons 

  • The need for fact-checking can put off some 
  • Outputs aren’t always 100% accurate 
  • It can be difficult to adjust to if you’re used to traditional keyword research tools 

Semrush: An all-inclusive SEO platform enhanced by AI 

Semrush is a leading SEO platform that’s been adding innovative AI features all the time.

One such example is its Keyword Magic tool, which has a new AI-powered twist. Instead of entering generic seed keywords as you would with a traditional research tool, you can add your domain to see personalized insights generated by AI. 

The tool works by combining Semrush’s existing keyword database (which is massive) with large language models (LLMs). This combination lets the tool determine the relevancy between a domain and specific keywords, enabling the following features:

This is useful for determining if certain keywords are worth pursuing, as you’ll get a personalized keyword difficulty score based on your domain’s current metrics. 

It’s also great for forming thematic keyword clusters that you can use for content creation. 

Pros 

  • The AI-powered feature adds more utility to an already useful keyword research tool 
  • It provides highly personalized data that makes it easier to make certain decisions (like if a keyword is too hard to pursue for your specific domain) 

Cons 

  • It’s a paid tool, and the subscription price may be a bit steep for smaller businesses 
  • It lacks the versatility of a chatbot where you can ask specific questions 

Surfer: Popular content creation tool that features AI

Surfer is one of the most popular choices among marketers for content creation due to its amazing editor. 

However, the tool also contains features for keyword research via its extension for Google Chrome. You’re able to generate relevant topic clusters for your niche. 

It contains datasets from 70 different countries, and it provides all the search metrics you’d expect from a keyword research tool (like search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC, among others). 

Since it’s a browser extension, you’re able to perform keyword research on the fly. This comes in handy for marketers who don’t like monotonous tab-switching and prefer to keep everything in one place. 

Pros 

  • Its browser extension makes conducting keyword research quick and easy 
  • The tool makes keyword clustering effortless 

Cons 

  • It lacks the utility of a tool like ChatGPT 
  • You can’t modify the keyword clusters you create 

How to Use AI-Driven Keyword Clustering 

Before we wrap up, let’s talk about another area where AI helps the keyword research process: keyword clustering. 

What’s that?

Keyword clustering is where you group similar keywords that have the same search intent together on the same page. 

It involves declaring one primary keyword and then backing it up with similar secondary keywords. 

For example, let’s consider ‘digital marketing services’ our primary keyword. Similar keywords that are after the same thing would include:

  • General digital marketing services
  • Online marketing services
  • Digital marketing agency 
  • Full-service digital marketing 
  • Best digital marketing agency 

All of these secondary keywords share the same search intent as the primary keyword (i.e., people looking to invest in digital marketing services). Therefore, it would make sense to include ALL of them on your digital marketing services landing page. 

This is keyword clustering in a nutshell, and it’s a crucial part of any successful SEO strategy. Clustering gives you the chance to rank for dozens of related keywords instead of sticking with one primary keyword for each post. 

Tools like Surfer and Semrush will generate keyword clusters for you based on seed keywords, target audience, and your specific domain. 

Here’s how you can use ChatGPT to create keyword clusters for you:

It arranges each cluster into bulleted lists for your convenience. This keeps your clusters organized, as you can easily copy and paste them into a document to work with later. 

Once again, you can also tweak the suggestions based on your audience. In this next example, we asked it to tailor the list for digital marketing agencies wanting to white-label SEO services:

Further refining the prompts like this will help you land on the picture-perfect keyword clusters for your content. 

Also, don’t forget to vet these clusters using other tools to ensure they’re actually viable. 

The Future of AI in Keyword Research 

Out of all the aspects of SEO that AI can impact, keyword research is arguably the most significant. It’s always been a data-heavy process, so it’s the perfect environment to unleash an AI tool. 

Moving forward, AI keyword research tools are bound to become even more prevalent, so your best bet is to get on board now so that you don’t get left behind. 

Do you need help putting together a winning SEO strategy for your business?

HOTH X, our fully managed SEO service, is the solution. Our team of experts will take the entire SEO process off your hands so that you can sit back and watch your business grow, so don’t wait to get in touch!