Good keyword research ends with a decision: which pages to write or improve, in what order. A list of 3,000 keywords in a spreadsheet isn’t a decision. RankThat’s keyword research tool is built to get you from a seed idea to a short, defensible plan, and then to hand that plan to the rank tracker and the content writer without exporting anything.
This article walks through the four places keyword work happens in RankThat (Keyword Magic, Keyword Lists with the Strategy Builder, the Keyword Research page, and the Domain Explorer), with a worked example for a local plumber. For the method behind it, the keyword research guide for small businesses covers the thinking without any tool.
Step 1: Keyword Magic, for finding searches
Open SEO › Keyword Magic. Type up to five seed terms separated by commas, pick a country, and choose how strictly results must match:
| Match type | What it returns | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Broad match | Searches containing all your words, in any order or form | You want everything around a topic |
| Phrase match | Your words together, in that order | The phrase itself matters (“water heater repair”) |
| Exact match | Exactly what you typed, inside longer searches | You want variations of one precise search |
| Related | Searches Google shows as related, and theirs | You want ideas you wouldn’t have typed |
Switch on Questions to see only how, what, why, can and is searches. These make good blog posts and FAQ sections, and they are what people type into AI assistants too.
The left sidebar groups results by shared words, sortable by count or volume. Clicking “tankless” in the groups instantly narrows 2,000 water heater searches to the 140 about tankless heaters. Filters cover volume, keyword difficulty, intent, cost per click, word count, SERP features, and words to include or exclude.
Results load a thousand at a time, up to 5,000 per seed, and you can export up to 10,000 rows as CSV. Results are kept for 30 days, so filtering and paging after the first search costs nothing.
Reading the columns
- Volume is average monthly Google searches. Estimates based on clickstream data alone are marked “est.” so you know which numbers are softer.
- KD % is keyword difficulty from 0 to 100: very easy up to 14, easy 15 to 29, possible 30 to 49, difficult 50 to 69, hard 70 to 84, very hard from 85. RankThat’s difficulty tends to run lower than some other tools’ for the same keyword, so compare keywords within RankThat rather than across tools.
- Intent is shown as a letter: I (informational), C (commercial), T (transactional), N (navigational). See search intent for why it decides what kind of page you need.
Select the keywords you want and send them to a list, to the Keyword Research page, to the Rank Tracker or to Topic Ideas.
Step 2: Keyword Lists and the Strategy Builder, for deciding pages
SEO › Keyword Lists holds named lists for each client, with tags, notes, a button to refresh the numbers, and CSV export. Lists fill up from Keyword Magic, from the Domain Explorer and from Claude if you use the Claude connector.
Open a list and go to the Strategy tab. This is where keywords become pages. The Strategy Builder looks at the actual Google results for each keyword and groups keywords whose top 10 results share pages. If Google already shows the same three pages for “tankless water heater cost” and “how much is a tankless water heater”, one page should target both. Writing two would split your effort and invite cannibalization.
You choose how strict the grouping is: loose (2 shared results), normal (3) or strict (4). Groups whose main keywords also overlap are gathered into pillar topics. Each proposed page then gets an action:
- New page: nothing on your site targets this group.
- Optimize: you have a page, but it isn’t ranking well enough.
- Improve: you rank, and there is room to climb.
- Merge: two of your pages compete for the same group.
A run handles up to 500 keywords and is kept for 30 days. Send the new pages to Topic Ideas and they appear in the content writer, ready for briefs.
Step 3: the Keyword Research page, for the keywords a site already owns
SEO › Keyword Research is the working set for a project. Import from Search Console pulls the searches the site already appears for over the last 28 days, with real clicks, impressions and position next to the market volume. From sitemap suggests keywords from your existing pages, and Research keywords expands up to 20 seeds using Google autocomplete, People also ask and related searches.
The top tiles show how many keywords you have, how many rank on page one, total monthly volume with average difficulty, and the intent mix. From a selection you can Analyze SERP, get volume and difficulty, cluster, or send keywords to Topic Ideas.
Step 4: the Domain Explorer, for looking at anyone
The Domain Explorer works on any domain or keyword, not just your projects. Type a keyword without a dot and it opens Keyword Overview: volume with a 24-month trend, difficulty, cost per click, intent, SERP features, Google’s top 10 with each result’s Authority Score, plus variations, questions and related searches.
Keyword Overview also shows a Personal KD. Standard difficulty assumes an average site. Personal KD adjusts it by comparing the authority of the top 10 with your own site’s, so a keyword that is “hard” for a new site can show as realistic for an established one, and the other way round.
Type a domain to see its organic keywords, top pages, competitors and backlinks. The Keyword Gap tab compares you with up to four competitors across each domain’s top 1,000 keywords and sorts the results into missing, weak, strong, untapped, unique and shared. “Missing” (every competitor ranks, you don’t) is usually where the plan starts. More on this in Competitor Analysis.
A worked example: Coastline Plumbing
Coastline Plumbing in Austin wants more water heater jobs. The agency:
- Runs Keyword Magic for “water heater” in the US with phrase match, then filters to volume 30+ and KD under 30. About 180 searches remain. The “tankless” and “repair” groups stand out.
- Adds Austin-specific searches from Search Console using Import from Search Console, where the site already gets impressions for “water heater repair austin” at position 14.
- Saves 90 keywords to a list called “Water heaters” and runs the Strategy Builder on normal.
- Gets seven page groups back: one Optimize (the existing water heater repair page, sitting on page two), one Merge (two old blog posts both about tank flushing), and five New page groups, including tankless installation cost and “water heater leaking from bottom”.
- Sends the five new pages to Topic Ideas and tracks the 25 most valuable keywords in the Rank Tracker.
The result is a plan anyone in the business can read: fix one page, combine two, write five. The whole thing took under an hour.
Choosing between keywords
When two keywords look similar, a simple order of questions settles most decisions:
| Question | If yes | If no |
|---|---|---|
| Does the searcher want something the business sells? | Keep it | Keep only if it builds trust for buyers later |
| Does the site already rank in the top 20? | Improve that page first | Plan a new page |
| Is personal difficulty realistic for this site? | Target it now | Park it in a list for later |
| Do the top results share pages with another keyword? | Target both on one page | Give it its own page |
Volume comes last on purpose. A search with 40 monthly visitors who all want a water heater installed is worth more to Coastline than one with 4,000 people looking for a do-it-yourself video.
What RankThat’s keyword research doesn’t do
- It isn’t the biggest keyword database. Semrush and Ahrefs are built to research the whole web. RankThat’s data comes from a commercial SEO data provider plus your own Search Console, and focuses on what client sites can win. If you need the largest possible index, see the Semrush comparison.
- Volumes are estimates. Every tool’s are. Search Console impressions are the truth for searches you already appear in.
- It doesn’t decide for you. The Strategy Builder proposes pages from Google’s results; somebody who knows the business should still check that each page makes sense to sell from.
Tip: start from Search Console, not from a blank seed. The searches a site already gets impressions for at positions 8 to 20 are usually the cheapest wins on the list.