The paid keyword tools are built for agencies and big sites tracking thousands of terms. For a plumber in Ballina or a physio in Lismore, the numbers they show for local searches are often so small they’re close to guesswork anyway.
What a small business needs is a list of the words customers use, a rough sense of which matter most, and a decision about which page on the site answers each one. You can get there with free tools and a spreadsheet in an afternoon. This is the order we work in.
Step 1: Start with your customers and your inbox
This is the most overlooked source and the most accurate one.
Ask new customers what they typed into Google before they found you. Put it on your intake form or ask on the phone: “What did you search for?” It’s often not what you’d guess. Then read your last 30 enquiry emails and form submissions and write down, word for word, how people describe their problem. Ask whoever answers the phone what people want to know before they book.
A physio might call it lateral epicondylalgia. The customer types “tennis elbow treatment Lismore” or “sore elbow from gardening”. Keyword research is mostly about closing the gap between how you describe the work and how your customers do.
Step 2: Mine Google Search Console
If your site has been live for a few months with Search Console set up, this is the best free keyword tool you have, because it shows real searches that already put you in front of people.
Open Google Search Console, go to Performance, set the date range as far back as it goes and open the Queries tab. Sort by impressions. You’re looking for three things:
- Queries with plenty of impressions but few clicks. Google already thinks you’re relevant. A better title tag, or a page that matches the search more closely, could turn those into visits.
- Queries where your average position is roughly 8 to 20. You’re near the bottom of page one or on page two. These are usually the quickest wins.
- Queries you didn’t expect. Services or towns people associate with you that you haven’t written about.
Click any query, then the Pages tab, to see which page Google shows for it. If it’s the homepage or the wrong service page, that’s a strong hint you need a page built for that search. Our Search Console guide covers the rest of this report.
Step 3: Google autocomplete
Type the start of a search into Google and note the suggestions. Then try variations: the service plus your town (“blocked drain ballina”), the problem instead of the service (“toilet keeps running”, “hot water not working”), and question starters such as “how much does a”, “do I need a” and “can I”. For more ideas, type your main phrase followed by each letter of the alphabet (“concrete resurfacing a”, “concrete resurfacing b”) and see what fills in.
Autocomplete reflects real searches, but it’s shaped by your location and history. Use a private window, and remember suggestions will lean towards wherever you’re sitting.
Step 4: People Also Ask and related searches
Search your main service and scroll. The “People also ask” box shows questions Google links to the topic, and opening one loads more. The related searches at the bottom of the page show nearby phrasings.
These are the raw material for a service page. If “how long does a switchboard upgrade take” appears, that’s a heading and a paragraph on your switchboard page. If “do I need a referral to see an audiologist” appears, that belongs in a hearing clinic’s FAQ. You’re not stuffing keywords in. You’re answering the questions people really have, roughly in the order they have them.
Step 5: Google Keyword Planner, with caveats
Google Keyword Planner is free, but it sits inside Google Ads, so you need an Ads account. You can create one without running a campaign: when Ads pushes you to set up your first campaign, look for the option to skip it and create the account only. Google moves these screens around often, so expect a little clicking about.
Once you’re in, use “Discover new keywords”, enter a few seed phrases and set the location to your region rather than all of Australia.
Treat the numbers with care. On accounts that aren’t spending, volumes usually show as wide bands such as “10 to 100” or “100 to 1K”. That’s fine, because you’re comparing phrases against each other, not forecasting traffic. And low volume isn’t no volume. In regional areas plenty of searches that lead to real jobs show tiny numbers or nothing at all. A phrase with 10 to 100 searches a month that leads to a $5,000 job deserves a page.
Where Keyword Planner really helps is choosing between wordings. “Hot water system” or “hot water unit”? “Physio” or “physiotherapist”? It’ll usually show which is more common in your area.
Step 6: Build a spreadsheet and map phrases to pages
Now turn the pile of phrases into decisions. A sheet with five columns does the job. The rows below are a made-up plumbing example to show the idea.
| Phrase | Where it came from | Rough volume | What they want | Page that answers it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| blocked drain ballina | Autocomplete, Search Console | 10 to 100 | Ready to book | /blocked-drains/ |
| how to unblock a drain yourself | People Also Ask | 100 to 1K | DIY | Probably skip |
| plumber lennox head | Customer intake form | Not shown | Ready to book | Areas page |
| hot water system replacement cost | Keyword Planner | 100 to 1K | Researching | Section on /hot-water/ |
Then group closely related phrases. Each group should map to one page. If two groups want the same page, merge them. If a group has no page, you’ve found a gap: a new service page, or a new section on an existing one. If the gaps are mostly town names, read location pages that aren’t spam before you build anything.
Aim for one main phrase per page, with its close variations and questions answered in the body. Don’t build separate pages for “plumber Ballina” and “Ballina plumber”. Google knows they’re the same search.
Why the intent column matters more than volume
Searches that pair a service with a place, or include words like “emergency”, “quote”, “book” or “near me”, come from people ready to act. Those belong on your service and location pages, and they’re where a small business should put most of its effort.
Searches containing “cost”, “vs”, “how long” or “is it worth it” come from people still researching. They’re perfect for sections on a service page or for a helpful article, and they often turn into enquiries a few weeks later.
Then there’s DIY: “how to fix”, “can I do it myself”. A few are worth answering to build trust, but they rarely become jobs. If a paid tool shows you a big number on one of these, it’s a distraction, not an opportunity.
Mistakes that waste the effort
Choosing phrases by volume alone and targeting broad terms like “plumber” that you’ll never rank for. Using the industry word instead of the customer’s word. Building a page for every tiny variation instead of one strong page per topic. And doing all this once, then never looking at Search Console again.
Once you have your list, the next job is writing title tags that match it, which we cover in title tags and meta descriptions.
Your three-hour plan
Spend the first hour on your inbox and customer notes, the second on Search Console, autocomplete and People Also Ask, and the third on the spreadsheet. You’ll finish with a short list of pages to write or fix, which is more use than a 500-row export from a tool you pay for monthly.
Short on afternoons? Keyword research and the page plan that comes out of it are where our SEO service starts. The two things we need to begin are the services you want more of and the towns you’ll travel to, so tell us what you do and where.