SEOs have been finding ways to implement AI in their keyword research process to save time, generate new ideas and cluster keywords faster.
In this article, I’ll review how you can use AI for keyword research, going over use cases, benefits, and prompts that you can use.
TL;DR
- The best use cases for AI in keyword research are generating LSI keyword ideas, clustering keywords, and figuring out personal keyword difficulty.
- The main benefits of using AI for keyword research include saving time from manual cleaning of data and clustering, its scalability, and access to data-driven insights.
- Due to their ability to analyze large amounts of keyword data, Team-GPT, LowFruits, and Semrush are the best AI tools to kick off your keyword research process.
Table of contents
How Is AI Being Used For Keyword Research?
Artificial intelligence is capable of analyzing large quantities of keyword data and can generate unique insights about that data.
➡️ The technology is revolutionizing keyword research by making it faster, more accurate and more insightful with its machine learning capabilities.
With machine learning algorithms and deep learning, AI-powered SEO tools can extract patterns from data and get insights from unstructured data.
The SEO tools not only provide you with basic search volume data that they have extracted from Google Keyword Planner’s API, but they’re also capable of analyzing trends, keyword difficulty, and competition levels.
💡 Later in this guide, we’ll explore the different use cases, prompts, and SEO tools that you can use for keyword research.
Benefits of Using AI For Keyword Research
The main benefits of using AI for keyword research include saving time from manual keyword data cleaning, scalability of research, and the ability to generate data-driven insights.
Let’s go over each one of them 👇 in more detail.
#1: Scalability
The beauty of AI tools for keyword research for me has been how scalable they are.
Tools like LowFruits and generative AI platforms like Team-GPT (that’s us) are capable of analyzing tens of thousands of keywords by importing your files for analysis.
#2: Saving Time
Instead of manually grouping keywords or spending hours analyzing SERPs and competitors, you can hand out the dirty work to AI-powered SEO tools and generative AI models.
➡️ Later in the article, we will discuss how AI technology can help you with clustering keywords, building out a keyword strategy for you, and the tools you can use for that.
#3: Data-Driven Insights
Last but not least, AI can be used to enrich your keyword research process by providing you with additional information about each keyword.
This can be in the form of analyzing the SERPs on your behalf to find ‘’easy’’ keywords or providing you with a personalized keyword difficulty that takes into account your domain strength.
6 Use Cases of Using AI For Keyword Research
Here are the 6 best use cases of using AI for keyword research that I’ve seen work best in the SEO industry:
#1: Generating Keyword Ideas
The best AI use case for keyword research is its ability to generate keyword ideas for you.
For example, you can prompt a generative AI tool like Team-GPT (that’s us) to generate long-tail keywords related to sustainable fashion:
The downside of generative AI tools is that they wouldn’t have access to keyword volume data, but this is why we have tools like Semrush and LowFruits to help us out.
- With LowFruits, you can extract the keywords that your competitors are ranking in the top 10 position.
- With Semrush, you can see which keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not.
#2: Clustering Keywords
After generating keyword ideas for you, AI-driven SEO tools can then cluster them for you at scale.
Here’s an example of Team-GPT grouping 20 keywords into clusters based on their topical relevance:
AI tools like LowFruits can automatically cluster thousands of keywords into semantically relevant keyword clusters:
The tool will also give you additional access to the keywords’ volumes, total keywords, and cluster difficulty so you can prioritize.
#3: Generating LSI Keywords
One of my favourite use cases of AI for keyword research is the ability of these tools to generate LSI keyword ideas.
Short from Latent Semantic Indexing, LSI keywords are important for Google to make the connection between your different keywords and phrases.
Even though LSI keywords are not a direct ranking factor, they are important for clarifying the content intent and relevance of your articles, which is crucial for SEO.
For example, here’s the response from Perplexity that I received about LSI keywords for this article:
These are similar to the results that AI SEO tools like Surfer SEO would give you.
#4: Assist With Keyword Strategy
Even though artificial intelligence cannot fully build you a full keyword strategy from scratch, it can at least get you started.
For example, Semrush has an AI-powered Keyword Strategy Builder that helps you build out a keyword strategy based on a short-tail keyword.
Here’s the content strategy it helped me with for ‘’keyword research’’:
The tool grouped topically relevant keyword clusters and gave me their average keyword difficulty.
The tool then separates the topics into pillar pages and sub-pages to help me prioritize lower-difficulty topics.
Even though some of this data needs to be cleaned, it is a good starting point for SEOs when starting out with keyword research.
#5: Content & Competitor Gap Analysis
AI technology can help you identify content gaps in your website by analyzing what your competitors have been publishing that has demand (and you haven’t).
For example, here’s me comparing Team-GPT’s domain against Copy AI:
I’m able to spot some keywords that they’ve gone after that our brand has not yet.
Inside Semrush, you can filter out keyword difficulty, competitor position, and search intent.
#6: Personal Keyword Difficulty
Lastly, AI tools can offer you a personalized keyword difficulty of a keyword for your domain.
The technology takes into account:
- The competitor landscape for that keyword (i.e., how many other strong brands have gone after it).
- Your domain’s relative strength against the competition.
For example, if you type in a keyword that you are interested in Semrush’s keyword explorer and then insert your domain, the tool will calculate your personal keyword difficulty.
The platform also lets you know your potential position on the SERPs alongside the current position.
And for the SEOs feeling down, there’s an option to view high-potential keywords of those that have a lower personal keyword difficulty.
5 AI Prompts For Keyword Research
After we went over how you can use various AI-powered SEO tools for keyword research, I’d like to show you a few prompts that you can use to level up your keyword research process inside generative AI tools.
#1: Brainstorming Seed Keywords
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are a good starting point if you want to brainstorm short-tail keywords.
Prompt: Give me 30 semantically relevant but unique topics under the main category of ‘gym exercise. I want you to give me the result in a table with 5 columns.
Follow-up prompt: From the list of 30 seed keywords you provided, identify the top 5 you think are most important for immediate focus and explain why.
Team-GPT provided me with not only keyword ideas but also explained why my brand should be going after them.
#2: Identify Long-Tail Keywords
After we’re done analyzing short-tail keywords, we want to get a feeling of how the long-tail keywords look like.
Prompt: Using ‘sustainable fashion’ as the central seed keyword, identify 15 long-tail keywords that potential customers might use when they look for eco-friendly and affordable clothing options.
After the tool gave us long-tail keyword ideas, we are also interested in the search intent of these keywords so we can focus on creating high-intent product pages.
Follow-up prompt: Which three of the 15 long-tail keywords do you think have the most commercial intent, and why?
#3: Keyword Clustering
Here comes my favourite part of AI tools: the ability to cluster keywords for me quickly.
Keyword clustering helps your keyword research process by grouping keywords with similar search intent, topic, or semantic relevance.
Prompt: Group the following 20 keywords into clusters based on topic relevance:
[insert keyword list]
Now that we’ve got the clusters, we will prompt the tool to suggest article topics to write about with titles.
Follow-up prompt: From each keyword cluster you’ve created, suggest one blog topic I could write about. Also, provide me with an example title for each of them.
#4: Content Gap Analysis
You can use ChatGPT to analyze the content gap and then create content that fills these keyword gaps to outrank your competitors.
💡 For this exercise, you’ll need to use ChatGPT’s Web Requests plugin to analyze your competitor and find content gaps.
Prompt: My blog [insert blog link] primarily focuses on email marketing, similar to Postaga. Conduct a content gap analysis to identify topics and subtopics they’ve covered extensively, but I have not touched upon.
[insert competitor website link]
After that, you need to copy the answer that ChatGPT gives, paste it in, and then ask this: 👇
Follow-up prompt: Based on the identified gaps, could you prioritize these topics by search volume and user intent? What kind of content formats would be most effective for these high-priority topics?
#5: Competitor Content Analysis
Lastly, here is how you can analyze the content of your competitors:
You can ask ChatGPT to analyze the blog page of one of your competitors to give you:
- Its meta title and heading structure.
- Keywords that they are targeting.
- Vulnerabilities that the tool has identified.
- Keywords to target according to what the competitors have targeted.
💡 Similar to the previous prompt, you’ll need to use ChatGPT’s Web Requests plugin to analyze your competitors.
Prompt: I’m in the SaaS industry, and Postaga is one of my key competitors. They rank higher than me for most industry-specific keywords. Generate a list of keywords where Postaga outranks me [insert your website’s link] but has vulnerabilities, such as low-quality backlinks or thin content, that I could exploit to surpass them.
[insert Postaga’s blog page link]
After getting a quick overview of our competitor’s content, we want to get a sense of low-hanging fruit keywords as well as content formats to go after these keywords.
Follow-up prompt: [insert the keyword list you got from the prompt above]
After reading the guide, from the list of keywords above, give me a priority list with low-hanging keywords on top and other keywords on the bottom. Also, What content types or strategies would work best for these specific keywords?
Best Tools For AI-Powered Keyword Research
We’ve covered the main benefits and use cases of AI for keyword research, as well as some bonus prompts you can use.
Now it’s time to explore the best AI-powered SEO software to assist you in your keyword research process:
#1: Team-GPT
Team-GPT is the best place to start your keyword research process alongside your team, as you can collaborate with different AI models without ever leaving the platform.
Our platform lets you use generative AI tools for keyword research, such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, to:
- Brainstorm short-tail keyword ideas.
- Enrich your content with LSI keywords.
- Conduct content gap analysis on your competitors using ChatGPT’s web requests plugin.
- Cluster keywords at scale.
Customize a Better Version of ChatGPT For Keyword Research
You can build a custom version of ChatGPT alongside your team and bring it to Team-GPT’s platform to further customize it.
You can then use your version of ChatGPT for SEO tasks, such as:
- Conducting keyword research.
- Clustering keywords at scale.
- Editing and finalizing articles with Pages and Edit with AI.
You can speed up SEO work with our pre-made prompts, use cases, and editable AI Pages.
Your team can create custom instructions for ChatGPT so that it knows exactly how to research keywords.
These instructions relate to who your competitors are, what your brand is, and what your content strategy should look like.
Even though Team-GPT is not a traditional SEO tool that gives you detailed information, you can have a conversation with the tool where you can prompt about:
- Possible approaches to your keyword strategy.
- Inserting long-tail and LSI keywords inside your existing pages.
- Internal linking strategy to improve your topical authority.
- Clustering the keywords based on their search intent.
#2: Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one SEO platform that has recently added AI features on their platform to assist you with your keyword research process.
The platform lets you:
- Conduct keyword gap analysis on your competitors to identify topics that you haven’t covered on your website.
- Get personalized keyword difficulty by inserting your target keywords and domain.
- Build a keyword strategy from a seed keyword that lets you get the pillar topics and sub-topics to go after.
You can then go to their AI content assistant which will help you optimize your content with a keyword-driven heading structure and LSI keywords.
#3: Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO may not be a keyword research tool by default, you can use the platform to enrich your existing content with LSI and long-tail keywords.
Here’s why SEOs and content writers have been using Surfer SEO:
- Suggested heading structure (H2, H3, H4) to further optimize your article content.
- LSI keyword recommendations based on what competitors have added.
- AI-powered rewriting where the tool itself tries to insert the long-tail keywords into your content.
You can also audit your website to uncover keyword opportunities to stay ahead of your competitors.
#4: Perplexity
Perplexity is one of my favourite tools for keyword research, as the generative AI model helps you generate keyword ideas and enrich your existing content.
As we discussed earlier, the tool is a viable option for finding LSI keywords for your article content:
Apart from that, I’ve noticed Perplexity to be particularly useful for:
- Starting off your keyword research with short-tail keywords.
- Including long-tail keywords in your article drafts.
- Analyzing keyword search intent.
- Clustering keywords.
For example, here’s the output after I’ve asked the tool to cluster a keyword list for me:
#5: LowFruits
LowFruits is an SEO tool that lets you analyze keywords at scale, analyzing their SERPs to help you identify easy keywords and then cluster them based on their semantic relevance.
Here’s why some of the industry-leading SEOs have been using LowFruits for keyword research:
- Automatic keyword clustering, which can be based on the keywords’ SERP results (i.e., similar search results) or semantic clustering.
- Analyze keyword data at scale to get the tool’s SERP difficulty, search volume, and the amount of ‘’weak spots’’ there are (weak domains ranking on 1st page).
- Extract the rankings of your competitors: The tool lets you extract the keywords that your competitors are ranking for on the first page of Google.
Next Steps: Analyze & Cluster Keywords Alongside Your Team on Team-GPT
You can find keyword ideas, research competitors’ keyword strategies, and cluster your keywords alongside your team by building a customized version of ChatGPT on Team-GPT.
Our enterprise AI software lets your team analyze keyword data by utilizing various AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
Apart from that, you can access:
- A comprehensive pre-made prompt library to create efficient workflows.
- Detailed usage analytics to track employee engagement.
- Enterprise-grade security ensures data privacy and the ability to host the platform on your servers.
Sign up for a demo of the platform today!