Keyword Research skill
The playbook Moonrank's SEO Agent uses to build a keyword list from the audience's intent and the offer — generating wide, then cutting, and never printing a volume it invented.
Download the methodology, see how the agent qualifies intent, or run it live inside the SEO Agent.
- Category
- SEO
- Agent
- SEO Agent
- Format
- keyword-research.md
- Price
- Free to download
The skill file
What is the Keyword Research skill?
The Keyword Research skill is how Moonrank's SEO Agent opens a topic. It frames the perimeter, expands to between 50 and 150 raw keywords through modifiers, questions, long tail and co-occurrences, then qualifies each one by intent and funnel stage before cutting anything that the business cannot actually serve.
Its firmest rule is about numbers. It never prints a search volume it did not receive from a real source, and difficulty stays a declared proxy rather than a figure dressed up as data. A keyword list that looks precise and isn't costs more than one that admits what it doesn't know.
It's written as a SKILL.md, a plain-language instruction format that people and AI agents can both follow. Read it to run your own research, hand it to a freelancer as a brief, or let the SEO Agent produce the list for your workspace.
See it in action
“We're opening a new product line. Where do I even start on keywords?”
One hundred and twelve raw keywords across seven modifier families, cut to 61. The 51 removed are listed with their reason — 22 are student-intent, 14 are for a segment you don't serve, 9 are competitor brand terms with no angle for you. Of the 61 kept, 12 are Do intent and those lead the plan: they are the ones where somebody is trying to buy something you sell.
From input to fix list
- 1
You name the theme
A topic or a few seed keywords, plus what the business actually sells.
- 2
Moonrank expands wide
Modifiers, questions, long tail, co-occurrences and synonyms — 50 to 150 raw keywords.
- 3
It qualifies each one
Intent, funnel stage and estimated difficulty, with no invented volume anywhere.
- 4
It cuts and prioritizes
The noise removed with a reason each, and the rest ordered by commercial fit.
Everything it checks
Explicit framing
The perimeter, and what is deliberately out of scope, before any expansion.
Semantic expansion
Modifiers, People-Also-Ask questions, long tail, co-occurrences and synonyms.
Intent qualification
Know-Simple, Know or Do on every keyword — no keyword survives without one.
Declared difficulty
A stated proxy rather than a precise-looking number nobody can source.
A documented cut list
Every removed keyword with its one-line reason, so it doesn't return next quarter.
Clean hand-off
A list shaped to feed clustering and decisional keyword work without rework.
When to reach for it
- Open a new topic or market from scratch.
- Replace a tool export nobody ever qualified.
- Build the input a content plan actually needs.
- Give a freelancer a brief instead of a spreadsheet.
- Document why a tempting keyword was rejected.