Keyword Research Trends You Need to Know in 2025
Gabriela Jhean
The search landscape is evolving rapidly, and staying ahead of the curve is crucial for businesses to succeed online. One of the most fundamental aspects of SEO success is understanding the latest keyword research trends.
Keyword research is foundational to your online visibility and ability to drive organic traffic to your site.
In this article, we’ll explore the top 7 keyword research trends shaping the digital landscape in 2025. Plus, you’ll learn how to leverage them to boost your website’s search engine rankings.
7 Keyword Research Trends to Use Now
The top keyword research trends for 2025 are:
- AI-Powered Keyword Research
- Leveraging Long-Tail Keywords
- User-Intent Research
- Keyword Clustering
- Voice Search Optimization
- Competitive Intelligence
- Position Tracking
Let’s explore each of these trends in detail.
1. AI-Powered Keyword Research
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way businesses approach keyword research.
As AI technology continues to advance, keyword research tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated. This advancement translates to faster keyword research with greater insights into search intent.
Considering how AI can process thousands of data points at incredible speed, it’s streamlining the keyword research process in the following ways:
- Data Analysis: AI can process large datasets to identify patterns, correlations, and insights that would be difficult or time-consuming for humans to uncover.
- Predictive Analytics: AI-powered tools can analyze historical data and identify emerging trends to help you anticipate future search queries and optimize your content strategy accordingly.
- Semantic Understanding: AI algorithms can better understand the context and nuances of search queries, allowing you to target more specific and relevant keywords.
AI also plays a significant role in competitive analysis.
SEO tools are able to identify competitor domains for specific websites and extract their top keywords.
Take LowFruits, for example. This keyword research tool empowers users to find competitor websites based on shared niche keywords.
After entering your niche keyword into the Domain Explorer, you’ll see a list of competitors ranking for your keyword.
You can use the Signals column to refine this list further, curating it to only competitors within your same category (for example, eCommerce sites.)
From here, you can add websites to your extract list, where LowFruits will pull the top ranking keywords for these domains.
LowFruits will automatically populate the Extract tool, as shown below.
You can download a report of your competitors’ ranking keywords or get keyword ideas.
Ultimately, this AI-powered process is much faster than manually investigating competitors’ rankings one by one. LowFruits gives you a list of competitors and makes extracting their keywords easy, saving you valuable time.
Note: Both the Domain Explorer and Extract tools require a LowFruits subscription.
2. Leveraging Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords.
They typically consist of 3 or more words and have high conversion rates due to their specificity.
And while it can be tempting to target high-volume keywords instead of long-tail ones, that’s typically considered an SEO mistake for small business owners.
That’s because high-volume keywords are extremely difficult to rank for.
Instead, focusing your research on long-tail keywords is more effective to win higher rankings on the SERP.
Luckily, it’s easy to find low-competition keywords using LowFruits.
Start by selecting the pre-analysis filter from the top menu bar of your KWFinder report.
Then, expand the # Words filter and set the min to 3. Click Apply.
Your report will now only show long-tail keyphrases with 3 or more words.
You can use these keywords to optimize your content and increase the likelihood of ranking high in search results.
3. User-Intent Research
Beyond identifying keywords, understanding search intent is crucial for creating effective content.
Search intent is the reason why a user performs a search. It’s the main motivator behind them entering a query into a search engine.
In 2025, understanding search intent is one of the most important Google ranking factors. Because of this, it’s necessarily also a critical component of performing keyword research this year.
By understanding what users are truly looking for, you can tailor your content to their needs.
Here are some key considerations for user-intent keyword research:
- Who is your target audience? Understanding your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points will help you identify the keywords they are most likely to search for.
- What are their goals? Determine what users are trying to achieve when they search for specific keywords. Are they looking for information, products, or services?
- What are their questions? Identify the questions users are asking and create content that directly answers their needs.
In addition to these questions, SEO tools are making it easier than ever to decipher the search intent behind keywords.
In LowFruits, you can apply a filter by clicking the pre-analysis filter, as we saw earlier.
From here, you’ll expand the Intent filter and select the desired intent for your keyword research.
After making your selection, LowFruits will refine your report to show only keywords with that specific intent.
Ultimately, understanding user intent can help you create a content strategy that aligns with your business goals.
For example, an eCommerce website could improve organic clickthrough-rates and conversion rates by focusing on high-intent keywords. These keywords have buying intent, meaning users are ready to make a purchase.
Another example would be for the same eCommerce site to support its blog strategy by filtering keywords by Comparison. This filter reflects informational intent, which would align with the purpose of blog posts.
Writers could use these keywords to create comparison guides and position their product as the preferres solution. This would support the informational needs of the audience and the revenue goals of the business.
4. Keyword Clustering
Keyword clustering is a strategic approach to creating a keyword strategy for your content. It groups similar keywords together so you can optimize for more than one keyword in a single article.
This strategy ensures maximum visibility in search results for terms related to your primary keyword.
It also supports comprehensive coverage of a topic.
Now, here’s the thing about keyword clustering: When you do it manually, it can take a long time.
That’s because, before keyword clustering tools existed, you had to perform it manually in a spreadsheet. It consisted of separating and organizing keywords into various tabs and repeating the process for each topic.
Many SEO professionals still use this process due to its comprehensiveness, but for small business owners, it’s faster to use tools that streamline the process.
LowFruits does keyword clustering automatically for you.
When you’re in the KWFinder, simply navigate to the Clusters tab.
You’ll see how LowFruits grouped similar keywords. You can open any of these clusters to see the individual keywords within each group.
For example, the cluster below is for keywords related to “los angeles best florist.”
Ultimately, keyword clustering is an efficient way to ensure maximum visibility in search results for your SEO keyword and its related terms.
It informs your content optimizations and the overall SEO strategy of your website.
5. Voice Search Optimization
The rise of voice assistants, like Siri and Google Assistant, has significantly changed the way people search for information. Voice search queries are often more conversational and longer than traditional text-based searches.
To optimize your content for voice search:
- Use natural language. Write content that mimics how people speak, using conversational phrases and complete sentences.
- Answer questions. Create content that answers common questions related to your topic.
- Optimize for local search. If your business has a local presence, optimize your content for local search terms.
- Consider voice search devices. Think about how people might search for your content using voice commands.
By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your content is more likely to appear in voice search results and reach a wider audience.
6. Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is essential for understanding your industry and identifying opportunities. It also informs your own growth strategies to keep you ahead of the competition.
By researching competitors’ keywords, you can gain valuable insights and make informed decisions.
Some key areas to focus on include:
- Keyword usage: Track your competitors’ use of keywords and identify any trends or changes.
- Search engine rankings: Monitor your competitors’ search engine rankings for relevant keywords.
- Content strategy: Analyze your competitors’ content strategy, including topics, formats, and publishing frequency.
As for how to acquire these competitor insights, LowFruits allows you to investigate your competitors’ keywords.
As we saw in the earlier AI keyword research trend, you can discover competitors and extract their top keywords using the Domain Explorer and Extract tool.
Furthermore, you can create keyword reports from these extracted keywords.
To get started, navigate to the Extract tool.
Then, select the report you’d like to generate for your competitor. (For their Top 10 keyword rankings, click the purple Top 10 button. For their Top 100 rankings, select the yellow Top 100 button.)
After making your selection, you’ll get a competitor keyword report that looks like this:
I recommend paying special attention to the Weak Spots column. Each Weak Spot icon represents a domain with low authority ranking on the first page of Google.
The more Weak Spots there are, the easier it will be to rank high for that keyword.
This LowFruits-exclusive metric can help you identify and prioritize which competitor keywords to target.
7. Position Tracking
Position tracking is a timeless keyword research trend. It belongs in every SEO’s arsenal — every year.
This SEO strategy involves identifying and tracking your website’s most important keywords.
By monitoring their positions on the SERP, you can measure the effectiveness of your SEO and identify areas for improvement.
It’s fast and easy to get started tracking keywords with the LowFruits Rank Tracker.
Just add the keywords you want to track to the Tracker tool. (You can add up to 100 for Standard subscriptions and 500 for Premium plans.)
You’ll set some fetching details, like the country, language, and frequency. Then, click Track.
Rank Tracker will fetch your current keyword positions and automate their future retrieval.
After the initial setup, you’ll see all these data points in a user-friendly dashboard when you visit the Tracker tool.
The best rank tracker tools make viewing and understanding your organic keyword performance easy, and that’s exactly what LowFruit does.
Next Steps: Turn These Trends Into a Reality
The landscape of keyword research is constantly evolving, but staying ahead is crucial for businesses to thrive. By implementing the keyword research trends outlined in this article, you can:
- Focus your content efforts on keywords with the greatest ROI.
- Inform your SEO strategy with keyword and competitor insights.
- Improve your website’s visibility in organic search results.
These insights and optimizations will elevate your SEO strategy, ultimately supporting your business goals and ensuring your success in 2025 and beyond.
