Seed keywords – the starting point for keyword research

Definition

Seed keywords are the 5–20 base terms that describe your business, product or service. They are used as the starting point in tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to find related keywords.

What are seed keywords?

Seed keywords are a short starting list of core terms that describe what a company sells, who it is for or what problem it solves. They are the seed that keyword research grows from – not the terms you ultimately optimise for, but the ones you feed into tools such as Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Semrush, Google Keyword Planner or AnswerThePublic to get hundreds or thousands of related suggestions.

For a web agency in Stockholm, seed keywords might look like this: web agency, web design, business website, webflow, seo. Five short terms, each of which can be expanded into hundreds of long-tail variants with different search intents.

How do you find your seed keywords?

There is no ready-made list to download – seed keywords come from the business itself. The sources, in order of priority:

• The sales team – which words do customers use when they describe the problem they want to solve?
• Existing customers – read quote requests, support tickets and reviews. Copy their wording.
• Competitors – run your competitors' domains through Ahrefs Site Explorer and look at their top-ranking pages and organic keywords.
• Google autocomplete and "People also ask" – type in a core product and see what Google itself suggests.
• Your own industry knowledge – synonyms, category names and product names that are not yet visible externally.

How do you expand seed keywords into a complete keyword list?

Seed keywords are the raw material. You expand them in a keyword tool by running three standard reports:

• Matching terms – all keywords that contain the seed term. Good for finding long-tail variants with clear purchase intent.
• Related terms – keywords that the top-ranking pages for the seed term also rank for. Good for discovering adjacent topics.
• Search suggestions – Google autocomplete in structured form. Good for question-based keywords and AEO content.

You then filter the results by search volume, keyword difficulty and search intent. A seed list of five terms can produce hundreds or thousands of candidate search terms, which need to be grouped into topic clusters before you start producing content.

How many seed keywords do you need?

Between 5 and 20 is the normal range. With fewer than five, you miss important ways into the topic.

For an online retailer with many product categories, the seed list can be longer, because each category needs its own seed term. For a specialised B2B service, 5–10 seeds are often enough.

Common mistakes when choosing seed keywords

• Terms that are too broad – "marketing" as a seed returns millions of results and drowns you in noise. Narrow it down to "b2b marketing" or "content marketing agency".
• Only industry jargon – if customers google "website" and your only seed is "web development", you miss most of the demand.
• Forgetting English terms – in the Swedish market, a lot of searching is done in English, especially in tech and SaaS. Include relevant English seeds.
• A static list – seed keywords should be reviewed at least once a year. New products, new customer segments and new AI-driven search patterns change what is relevant.