You find your keywords by watching what Google itself suggests back to you: autocomplete when you start typing, the People Also Ask box, the related searches at the bottom of the results page, and the actual phrases your customers use when they message you. You do not need a paid tool or a marketing degree to do this well. You need twenty minutes and your own phone.
Most owners either skip this entirely and guess, or they get stuck thinking keyword research requires expensive software. Neither is true. The words your customers actually search are sitting right there in Google, for free, if you know where to look. Getting that language right is what makes the rest of our SEO & AI visibility work land.
Why guessing gets this wrong
The words you use for your own business are often not the words a customer searches. You might call it a "spa," they might search "massage near me." You might call it "legal services," they might search "abogado for tenant problem." If your website and your Google profile only use your internal language, you can be invisible for the exact searches your future customers are actually typing.
Step 1: Start with what you already know
Before opening Google, write down every way a customer has ever actually described what you do, in their own words, from real conversations, real Messenger threads, real walk-in questions. This is often more valuable than anything a tool will give you, because it is real language from real people who already wanted what you sell.
Step 2: Use Google autocomplete
Open Google, and start typing the basic version of what you offer plus your city, but do not press enter. Watch what autocomplete suggests underneath. Try a few variations:
- "[your service] near me"
- "[your service] in [your city]"
- "best [your service] [your city]"
- "[your service] price philippines"
The suggestions that appear are phrases enough real people have searched recently for Google to consider them worth suggesting. That is free, real demand data, no tool required.
Step 3: Search it, then scroll to the bottom
Once you actually run the search, scroll to the very bottom of the results page and look at "Related searches." These are other real queries Google associates with what you just searched, often phrased differently than you would have guessed, worth noting down as potential secondary phrases for your Google profile description and your website.
Step 4: Check the People Also Ask box
Most searches now show a "People also ask" section partway down the results, a set of expandable questions. These are genuine questions real searchers ask around this topic, and they are extremely useful for two things: understanding what your potential customers are actually confused or curious about, and giving you ready-made FAQ content for your website or Google posts, which itself helps your visibility.
Step 5: Look at what your competitors already rank for
Search your main service plus your city and look at who shows up in the top results and the local pack. Open a couple of their websites and Google profiles. What service names do they use? What do they emphasize in their descriptions? This is not about copying them, it is about noticing the language patterns that Google is already rewarding in your specific market.
Step 6: Check what's already working for you
If your Google Business Profile has been live for a while, its dashboard shows some data on what people typed to find you. Even without a paid tool, this is a genuine window into which of your guesses were right and which were not. If you haven't set your profile up yet, start with our guide to setting up your Google Business Profile.
Free tools worth knowing about
Beyond Google's own results page, a few free options are worth a look:
- Google Keyword Planner, free with a Google Ads account even if you never run ads, gives rough volume ranges when set to the Philippines.
- AnswerThePublic and similar free question-generator tools turn a keyword into a visual map of the questions people ask around it, useful for content ideas beyond just the immediate search phrase.
None of these replace the first five steps above. They add polish, not the core insight.
Local versus general keywords, and why the difference matters
"Wedding photographer" and "wedding photographer in Batangas" are not the same keyword, and they do not deserve the same amount of effort. The general version is enormous competition, often global. The local version is smaller, more winnable, and far closer to someone ready to actually book. For a small business without a big budget, chasing the local, specific version almost always beats chasing the big generic one. This is exactly the mindset behind how we help local businesses get found.
Turning what you found into something useful
Once you have a real list, three places to put it, in order of impact:
- Your Google Business Profile description and services list. The exact language you found, worked in naturally.
- Your website's headings and page copy, written for a human first, using the real phrases rather than the internal terms you use around your own staff.
- A running list for content ideas, especially the questions from the People Also Ask box, since answering a real question your customers already have is one of the most direct paths to being found.
What we would tell you if you were sitting across from us
This step gets skipped constantly because it feels like it should be hard, so people avoid it or pay for a tool they do not know how to read. It is not hard. It is closer to detective work than to marketing. Twenty focused minutes here, done honestly with your own customers' language, beats a paid keyword report that nobody ever opens again. Our one-weekend local SEO checklist builds this into a repeatable routine.