Keyword research tools work by expanding a single seed term into hundreds of variants, then showing you volume, difficulty, and SERP data so you can prioritize what to target. Enter your core topic—say "commercial roofing"—and the tool returns related phrases, questions, and competitor keywords. Your job is filtering that list down to terms you can realistically rank for and that align with what you sell or write about. Filter by monthly search volume first. For established sites, target 1,000+ searches in Canada or your market. For newer domains or local plays, 100–500 monthly searches often convert better because competition sits lower and intent runs higher. Next, check keyword difficulty scores: anything under 30 is accessible for a site with modest authority, while 50+ usually requires serious backlinks and time. Compare your Domain Rating or Domain Authority to the top 10 results—if you're 20 points behind, pick a different keyword. Intent matters more than volume. A term like "roof repair cost Ottawa" at 200 searches will drive more leads than "roofing" at 8,000 searches because the user is closer to hiring. Group keywords by intent: informational (blog posts), commercial investigation (comparison pages), and transactional (service pages). Most tools label this automatically or you can infer it from the SERPs—if the top results are all product pages, it's transactional. Ottawa SEO runs this process across our portfolio by exporting 50–100 keywords per content cluster, then mapping each to a specific URL. We ignore vanity metrics and focus on terms where we see weak content in positions 4–10, because that signals opportunity. One portfolio site jumped from 12,000 to 31,000 monthly visits in nine months by targeting difficulty scores between 15 and 25 exclusively, avoiding the temptation to chase high-volume terms we had no chance of winning. Build your keyword list in a spreadsheet with columns for volume, difficulty, intent, and assigned URL—that becomes your content roadmap.