keyword-research
Conduct comprehensive keyword research to identify high-value search terms, map search intent, and uncover content gaps for SEO and content marketing. Use when the user requests keyword research or provides relevant inputs for this workflow.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/seb1n/awesome-ai-agent-skills /tmp/keyword-research && cp -r /tmp/keyword-research/marketing-and-seo/keyword-research ~/.claude/skills/keyword-researchSKILL.md
# Keyword Research
This skill enables an AI agent to perform end-to-end keyword research for any niche, product, or content initiative. The agent starts from seed keywords, expands into long-tail variations, classifies search intent, analyzes competitor keyword portfolios, and delivers a prioritized keyword strategy. The output helps content teams, SEO specialists, and product marketers target the right search terms to drive qualified organic traffic.
## Workflow
1. **Collect seed keywords and define scope.** Gather initial seed keywords from the user's product description, existing content, and business goals. Identify the target market, geographic region, and language. Clarify whether the research is for blog content, landing pages, product pages, or paid campaigns, as this affects intent priorities.
2. **Expand into long-tail and related keywords.** Use autocomplete patterns, "People Also Ask" queries, and semantic variations to build a broad keyword list. Generate question-based keywords (who, what, how, why), comparison keywords ("X vs Y"), and modifier keywords (best, top, free, cheap, review). Aim for 50–200 candidate keywords per seed term depending on niche competitiveness.
3. **Gather search metrics for each keyword.** Estimate monthly search volume, keyword difficulty (0–100 scale), cost-per-click for paid reference, and trend direction (rising, stable, declining). Pull click-through rate estimates where available. Note seasonal patterns — for example, "tax software" peaks in January–April while "sunscreen" peaks in May–July.
4. **Classify search intent for every keyword.** Categorize each keyword as informational (learn), navigational (find a specific site), commercial investigation (compare options), or transactional (buy/sign up). This mapping determines the correct content format: blog posts for informational, comparison pages for commercial, and product/landing pages for transactional.
5. **Perform competitor keyword gap analysis.** Identify 3–5 organic competitors and compare their ranking keywords against the user's current keyword portfolio. Highlight keywords where competitors rank but the user does not — these are content gap opportunities. Also flag keywords where the user ranks on page 2 (positions 11–20) that could move to page 1 with targeted optimization.
6. **Deliver a structured keyword strategy report.** Organize keywords into thematic clusters mapped to content pillars. Prioritize clusters by a composite score of volume, difficulty, intent alignment, and business value. Include specific content recommendations for each cluster — suggested titles, target word counts, and internal linking opportunities.
## Usage
Provide the agent with a seed keyword or topic, your website URL (optional, for gap analysis), and your target audience. The agent returns a full keyword research report with prioritized clusters and content recommendations.
**Prompt:** `Perform keyword research for the topic "AI-powered customer support" targeting SaaS companies in the US market. My site is https://supportbot.io.`
## Examples
### Example 1: SaaS Product Keyword Research
**Request:** Research keywords for a project management SaaS product targeting remote teams.
**Keyword Table:**
| Keyword | Monthly Volume | Difficulty | CPC | Intent | Priority |
|---------|---------------|------------|-----|--------|----------|
| project management software | 40,500 | 78 | $12.40 | Commercial | Medium |
| best project management tools for remote teams | 3,600 | 45 | $8.20 | Commercial | High |
| how to manage remote team projects | 2,900 | 32 | $3.10 | Informational | High |
| free project management app | 8,100 | 62 | $6.50 | Transactional | Medium |
| asana vs monday vs trello | 5,400 | 55 | $9.80 | Commercial | Medium |
| remote team collaboration tools | 4,200 | 48 | $7.30 | Commercial | High |
| project management for startups | 1,800 | 28 | $5.60 | Commercial | High |
| kanban board software | 6,700 | 58 | $7.90 | Transactional | Medium |
| how to create a project timeline | 3,100 | 22 | $2.40 | Informational | High |
| project management best practices 2025 | 1,200 | 18 | $1.80 | Informational | High |
**Cluster Recommendation:** Group "best project management tools for remote teams," "remote team collaboration tools," and "project management for startups" into a **Remote Work Tools** content pillar. Create a comprehensive comparison guide (2,500+ words) as the pillar page, with supporting blog posts for each long-tail variation.
### Example 2: Content Gap Analysis
**Request:** Compare keyword portfolio of `supportbot.io` against competitors `intercom.com` and `zendesk.com`.
**Gap Analysis:**
| Keyword | supportbot.io Rank | intercom.com Rank | zendesk.com Rank | Opportunity |
|---------|-------------------|-------------------|------------------|-------------|
| ai chatbot for customer service | Not ranking | #4 | #7 | **Create new pillar page** |
| automated ticket routing | Not ranking | #8 | #3 | **Create feature page + blog post** |
| customer support metrics | #18 | #5 | #2 | **Optimize existing page — page 2 → page 1** |
| help desk software comparison | Not ranking | #6 | #1 | **Create comparison landing page** |
| reduce support ticket volume | #15 | #11 | #9 | **Update and expand existing content** |
| chatbot vs live chat | Not ranking | #3 | #12 | **Create informational blog post** |
**Recommendations:**
- Highest-impact opportunity: Create a pillar page targeting "ai chatbot for customer service" (3,600 vol, difficulty 42). Both competitors rank but neither holds position #1.
- Quick win: The page ranking #18 for "customer support metrics" needs updated statistics, expanded sections on CSAT and NPS, and 3–5 internal links from related content.
## Best Practices
- **Start with commercial and transactional intent keywords.** These drive revenue directly. Layer in informational keywords to build topical authority and capture top-of-funnel traffic over time.
-Design reproducible evaluations for AI agents with representative task sets, explicit rubrics, appropriate graders, baselines, regression gates, and failure analysis. Use when defining agent quality, comparing prompts or models, validating a release, measuring tool-use reliability, investigating regressions, or deciding whether an agent is ready for production.
Design privacy-aware observability for AI agents using traces, spans, structured events, metrics, cost attribution, dashboards, alerts, and investigation workflows. Use when instrumenting an agent, debugging intermittent tool or model failures, defining service-level objectives, analyzing latency or spend, auditing agent decisions, or preparing production monitoring.
Design and verify auditable human oversight, approval gates, escalation paths, and safe state transitions for AI agent workflows. Use when deciding which agent actions require review, adding approve/reject or dual-control flows, preventing unauthorized autonomous effects, creating decision records, reducing rubber-stamping, or recovering safely from rejected, expired, or failed actions.
Design, implement, harden, and verify Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers with precise tool contracts, least-privilege authorization, safe transports, structured errors, and interoperability tests. Use when creating a new MCP server, exposing an API or data source through MCP, reviewing an MCP server design, adding or revising MCP tools, or preparing an MCP server for production.
Design and operate bounded multi-agent workflows with task decomposition, dependency graphs, ownership, handoff contracts, shared-state controls, approvals, recovery, and synthesis. Use when a task contains genuinely independent workstreams, specialized roles, parallel research or implementation, reviewer-worker loops, or coordination problems that one agent should not execute sequentially.
Design and validate model-facing tool definitions with clear names, action-oriented descriptions, bounded JSON Schema parameters, explicit side effects, safe defaults, idempotency, errors, and realistic tests. Use when creating function-calling tools, MCP tools, agent actions, structured tool inputs, or when a model selects the wrong tool, invents arguments, or causes unsafe side effects.
Plan, execute, document, and retest authorized security assessments of AI agents and multi-agent workflows using safe adversarial cases, synthetic identities, canaries, and evidence-based findings. Use when defining red-team rules of engagement, assessing prompt injection or excessive agency, testing tool and identity boundaries, evaluating memory or cross-agent attacks, scoring a campaign, or verifying remediation in an approved environment.
Threat-model and harden AI agents, RAG systems, assistants, and tool-using workflows against direct, indirect, stored, cross-agent, and multimodal prompt injection. Use when reviewing an agent architecture, isolating untrusted content, constraining tools and egress, protecting secrets, adding injection-focused tests, investigating a suspected injection incident, or documenting residual prompt-injection risk.