How to Do Keyword Research Without Paying for Ahrefs

A whiteboard, a browser, and one good question beat a $129/mo dashboard you never open.

This guide is for solo founders and small bootstrapped teams doing their own SEO, without an agency or an enterprise tool budget.

You can do real keyword research without Ahrefs by combining three free sources — Google itself (autocomplete, "People also ask", and Search Console), a free volume signal like Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends, and a quick manual check of who currently ranks. That covers the same three questions a paid tool answers: what are people searching, how often, and can I realistically rank for it. You don't need a $129/month subscription to answer those for a small site.

Key takeaways

• Keyword research is three questions: what do people search, how often, and can I rank for it. Free tools answer all three.
• Google's own surfaces (autocomplete, People also ask, related searches, Search Console) are the highest-signal free data you have.
• Use Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends for rough volume — exact numbers matter less than relative demand.
• Judge difficulty by eyeballing the top 10 results, not a made-up difficulty score.
• Pick long-tail, specific queries where the current top 10 is weak. That's where small sites actually win.

On this page

• Why you don't actually need Ahrefs
• The three questions keyword research answers
• Free tools that cover 90% of what paid tools do
• A repeatable free keyword research process
• How to judge if you can actually rank
• When a paid tool finally makes sense
• Frequently asked questions
• The bottom line

Why you don't actually need Ahrefs

Ahrefs and Semrush are excellent tools. They're also priced for agencies and in-house teams — entry plans sit around $129/mo and $139/mo respectively (see their public pricing pages, linked below). If you're a solo founder publishing two posts a month, you'll use maybe 5% of what those tools do.

The parts you actually need — a list of queries real people type, a rough sense of demand, and a read on the competition — are available for free. The trade-off is time and a little manual work. The upside is you stop paying for a dashboard you log into twice a month.

The rest of this post is the exact process I'd hand a founder who has zero budget and one afternoon.

The three questions keyword research answers

Strip away the dashboards and keyword research is just three questions:

1. What are people actually searching for? (the query itself)
2. How many people search it? (volume — even a rough range is enough)
3. Can a site like mine realistically rank for it? (difficulty)

A $129/mo tool gives you all three in one screen. Free tools give you all three across two or three tabs. That's the whole gap.

Free tools that cover 90% of what paid tools do

Here's the stack. None of these cost anything.

Keyword Planner won't give you the exact volume Ahrefs shows — it returns ranges like 100–1K. For a small site, ranges are fine. You're trying to decide "is this worth a blog post?", not optimise a $50K ad spend.

A repeatable free keyword research process

This is the part to save. It takes about an hour per topic the first time, less once you're used to it.

Step 1: Start with a seed topic, not a keyword

Pick one thing your customers actually ask about. Not "productivity" — too broad. Something like "writing a cold email that gets replies". A seed is a problem in plain English.

Step 2: Mine Google's own suggestions

Type your seed into Google and slowly add letters: "how to write a cold email a", "how to write a cold email b", and so on. Write down every autocomplete suggestion that looks like a real question. Then scroll the SERP and copy every "People also ask" and "Related searches" entry. You'll have 20–40 candidates in 10 minutes.

Step 3: Add question variants

Run the seed through AnswerThePublic's free tier or just brainstorm questions starting with what, why, how, when, vs, best, alternatives. These long-tail variants are where small sites win — the top 10 is usually weaker because big brands don't bother targeting them.

Step 4: Pull demand signals

Drop your candidate list into Google Keyword Planner (Tools → Keyword Planner → Get search volume). You'll get a volume range for each. Sort by that. Anything in the 100–1K range is often a sweet spot for new sites: enough demand to matter, not enough to attract heavyweights.

Use Google Trends to sanity-check — is interest growing, flat, or seasonal? A flat-low keyword can still be worth it if it's high-intent for your product.

Step 5: Check what you already rank for

Open Search Console → Performance → Queries. Sort by impressions. Any query getting impressions but no clicks is a keyword Google already thinks you're relevant for. Those are your easiest wins — often a single post or a rewrite is enough to move from position 18 to page one. Google's own documentation has a good primer on the Performance report.

Step 6: Sanity-check intent

Google each finalist and look at the top 10. Are they how-to guides? Product pages? Listicles? Whatever format dominates is the format Google thinks matches the query. If the top 10 are all how-tos and you want to rank a product page, you're fighting the SERP. Pick a different keyword or change your format.

How to judge if you can actually rank

This is where founders usually freeze without a "Keyword Difficulty" score. You don't need one. You need to look.

Google your candidate keyword and ask:

• Who's in the top 10? If it's all Forbes, HubSpot, and Wikipedia, walk away. If it's a mix of small blogs, Reddit threads, and one or two known brands, you have a real shot.
• How deep is the content? If the #1 result is a 600-word thin post, a thorough 1,500-word guide from you can beat it.
• Is the intent clear and narrow? Specific queries ("cold email template for SaaS founders") are easier than broad ones ("cold email").
• Are there obvious gaps? Out-of-date info, missing examples, no template, no screenshots — every gap is your opening.

This manual look-and-judge is genuinely how experienced SEOs evaluate keywords. The difficulty score in paid tools is a shortcut, not a truth.

Pro tip: Open the top 3 results in incognito and skim them. If you can immediately point to three things you'd do better, that's a green light. If you'd basically just rewrite the same post, skip it.

A copyable keyword research checklist

Paste this into your notes and run it for every new post.

KEYWORD RESEARCH — FREE STACK

Seed topic: ______________________________

[ ] Brainstormed 1 seed topic in plain English (a real customer problem)
[ ] Pulled 10+ autocomplete suggestions from Google
[ ] Copied every "People also ask" + "Related searches" entry
[ ] Added question variants (what / why / how / vs / best / alternatives)
[ ] Ran the full list through Google Keyword Planner for volume ranges
[ ] Checked Google Trends for direction (growing / flat / seasonal)
[ ] Checked Search Console for queries I already get impressions for
[ ] Picked 1 finalist with: clear intent, 100+ rough monthly volume,
    and a beatable top 10 (no all-Forbes/HubSpot wall)
[ ] Confirmed the dominant format in the top 10 matches what I plan to write
[ ] Wrote down 3 specific ways my post will be better than result #1

Finalist keyword: ______________________________
Why it's winnable: ______________________________

When a paid tool finally makes sense

Free research scales until it doesn't. Signs you've outgrown it:

• You're publishing more than 4 posts a month and the manual SERP-eyeballing is eating hours.
• You need to track rankings for dozens of keywords over time.
• You want competitor backlink data, which Google doesn't expose.

At that point, options open up. Ahrefs and Semrush are the heavyweights. There are also lighter, founder-priced tools — including Plainly, which is what we build. Plainly takes the same kind of research above and turns it into five specific moves to make this week, so you spend the time writing instead of staring at a dashboard. Pick whatever fits the stage you're in.

Frequently asked questions

Can I really do keyword research without Ahrefs or Semrush?

What's the best free keyword research tool for founders?

How do I find keywords I can actually rank for?

Is Google Keyword Planner accurate enough without running ads?

The bottom line

Keyword research without Ahrefs isn't a workaround — for a solo founder it's often the right tool. Free Google surfaces tell you what people search, Keyword Planner and Trends tell you roughly how often, and a careful look at the top 10 tells you whether you can win. Run the checklist above for your next post and you'll be ahead of most small sites.

When you're ready to turn the research into a weekly publishing plan instead of a one-off, start a free Plainly account and let it hand you five specific moves to make this week.