How to do Keyword Research in Claude Code (Goodbye Semrush)

Key Takeaways

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to do keyword research inside Claude code that gets you high-quality keyword data and also prevents you from spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on keyword research tools. So, be sure to stick around for the full video. And if this is your first time to the channel, welcome. My name is Ryan. I appreciate you being here. And if you want to know my favorite AI tools, automations, and even some of my Claude code skills, be sure to get my free AI marketing essentials guide. You can find the link for this in the video description or pinned comment below. And if you want my complete stack of Claude code skills, I do offer this, which includes the keyword research skill that I'm going to show you in this video along with 20 plus other skills that I use daily for marketing and content workflows. And if you're interested in this, I'll leave this link in the description below as well. Now, when it comes to doing keyword research on Claude code, there are several methods for this. But for my purposes and what I care about, I want high-intent, highly relevant keywords for my YouTube channel to help with the strategy and direction of what videos to create to rank high on YouTube search or even my blog posts on my website at ryandozer.com to help me rank on Google search, you know, Gemini, ChatGPT, etc. for various keywords. And in order to do this, I think the very first step is you want to create a skill dedicated for keyword research. Now, if you haven't created a Claude skill before, I will leave that tutorial in the video description below. This is essentially an SOP for Claude code to perform a task at a high level depending on what context that you have in here. And again, you can get this exact keyword research skill that I use in my workflows in my Claude code skill stack, but I'd recommend you create your own skill first just to understand how this all works and you can provide your own context. So, before I move on here, a question that I've received before on keyword research that's very relevant to this is, "Well, Ryan, why wouldn't I just pull up the web app of Claude, Google Gemini, or ChatGPT and then ask it to perform keyword research right through this web app?" Or in a similar context on Claude code, you could ask, "Why wouldn't I just open up a new tab of Claude code and perform keyword research through here regardless if I have a skill file created or not?" And that is a great question here. And my answer to that is that these AI models don't have the, I would say, highest quality and most up-to-date information on keyword data as you would like an Ahrefs or an SEMrush or another platform that I'm going to show you in this video called DataForSEO. These platforms with their APIs and MCP connections just have more relevant, higher-quality keyword research data at their disposal than what you would get from just asking one of these generic models like Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, OpenAI's models, even Gemini's models. I'm not saying the outputs here are bad by any means. I'm just saying that they're not up-to-date 24/7. They don't have the highest-quality keyword research data that these other platforms have. And I'm going to talk about Ahrefs here later on as they just released their API for more of their lower-tier plans. And I do think that that's a very big deal in the realm of keyword research. But I want you guys to understand that part first as why I'm going to integrate another tool here versus just coming to the main chat and asking these AI models for keyword research data. And so, after you've created a skill for keyword research, the next step in this workflow is we need to connect an external provider like a DataForSEO or an Ahrefs via their MCP or API connection. And I would recommend that you start with DataForSEO just because it is free to get started via an API for keyword research data versus on Ahrefs, you must be on one of their plans here, which starts at $129 a month to get access to their API for keyword research data. And I do have an Ahrefs account, so I'm going to show you how to do that for those who are watching that do have Ahrefs account. But we're going to start with DataForSEO. And so, I'll leave all of these links in the video description below. And I actually showed how to connect this via MCP on my Claude code MCP tutorial, so I'll leave that in the video description below. But what you need to do here is you need to sign up for a free account with DataForSEO. And then once you do that, you'll get logged into the back end, you know, for free here. You can create a free account. You'll need to have an API login and an API password. I believe you can, yeah, you can reset it, so it'll send you an email with that API password and whatnot. And the nice part about DataForSEO is you'll notice here I have a balance of about 68 cents right now. So, you start with $1, which I know does not seem like a lot, which it is not. Um but when it comes to outputs, every time that I've run a query with DataForSEO, it's only taken about maybe 5 to 10 cents per output. So, it's very cheap to run this at scale. And so, you need to set this up first. And so, then what you need to do is once you have an account I would recommend setting this up via MCP or model context protocol. So, I think this is the official, yeah, so this is the official documentation right here. And again, I have a full other video showing you how to set this up, so I'm not going to do that in this video. But what you would do is you would copy this URL after you're done setting up an account with DataForSEO for free, you've logged into the back end, you have your API credentials here and whatnot. You would take this documentation, copy it, come into Claude code, and you would paste that in here and basically say, "Help me set up the MCP for search for everywhere." And then it will come back and ask for your API login credentials. You would paste those in here. I'm not going to do that in this video for obvious reasons. And then you would successfully get that set up. And so, once you get an MCP connection with DataForSEO set up here, then we can go ahead and start using our keyword research skill. So, I'm going to come in here from a previous chat that I did and just show you how this works in action. So, I'm going to open up a new tab of Claude code. I'm going to paste a prompt in here that says, "Use my keyword research skill to find me 15 relevant and intentful keyword ideas based on the root topic of Claude code marketing." Now, you can do any root topic that's obviously relevant to your niche or industry, but for me, a big area of focus on my YouTube channel and website lately is how to use Claude code for marketing. And what I would recommend that you do here is I would use Opus 4.6 for this. If you're on Claude Pro and you're not on a Claude Max plan like I am, you can try to get away with this with Sonnet 4.6. I would just recommend using Opus 4.6 to get higher-quality results for this prompt here. Now, I'm going to turn on bypass permission since I've run similar prompts like this before. But if this is your first time, maybe do ask before edits or I would probably use plan mode if this is your first time doing a query like this. I'm going to do bypass permissions. I'm going to click enter and then I'm going to skip ahead and wait till this part is complete. All right. So, after a minute or two, Claude code came back with this keyword research data, which was powered by DataForSEO. And you'll see here I just have some metrics like MSV, which stands for monthly search volume, KD, which stands for keyword difficulty, CPC, etc. And I could easily come back in here, and I'd recommend that you do this. Maybe there are some other metrics that you want to track like top of funnel, mid funnel, bottom of funnel. I know I have intent, but you could get more granular there. You could talk about maybe keywords on other areas like search engines, ChatGPT, etc., YouTube, and whatnot. I have an SEO title column to help me guide direction on if I want to write a blog post or create a YouTube video, things of that nature. And so, then it provides me with some key takeaways like it's quick wins. You know, then it talks about commercial intent is your edge, blah blah blah. And here's the beauty of using a keyword research skill like this. If I don't [snorts] like some of these results, like for instance, you know, how to use Claude code is fine. It's a little generic. You know, Claude code versus cursor, that's a little more on the coding technical side of things. Claude code examples, I don't really like that one. I could come in here and say, you know, I don't like the results for keywords 7, 8, 9, 10, etc., etc. And then also add this column and that column, and you would be telling it to update your keyword research skill in real time. But let's say for the purposes of this, there are some keywords that I do like here to help guide direction like Codex versus Claude code. That might be a pretty good YouTube video and blog post idea, although it's not necessarily geared towards marketing, although it could be in the future as Codex starts to maybe become more relevant for marketers and knowledge workers. Let's just use that as this example. So, now you can say something like, "Now use my SEO blog post writer skill to write a blog post on my website for the keyword Codex versus Claude code." And so, what this is going to do is it's going to call another skill in my Claude code system called my SEO blog post writer skill that is optimized for writing high-quality SEO blog posts on my website to help rank for certain keywords. And there's a ton of different, you know, examples and styles, and just it's a whole SOP to write the highest-quality blog post possible. And so, you can combine this keyword research skill with another skill like a blog post writer or, you know, maybe you have something to help with YouTube, or anything else marketing related that is valuable with keywords tied to it, you can definitely use those in tandem. Now, I'm not going to, you know, go ahead and create a full blog post. I just wanted to show you here the possibilities of what you can do in Claude Code after you get some of this keyword research data. So, while data for SEO is okay to get started with keyword research, it's undeniable in my opinion of the level of quality when you're comparing something like Data for SEO to an Ahrefs, that Ahrefs is one of the premier players in SEO, organic marketing in general, and they have a ton of highly quality, highly relevant keyword research data at their disposal. But, for a while, unfortunately, the API was only limited to enterprise plans, which started about $1,500 a month. But, recently, Ahrefs now allows you to use the API in their lowest tier plan, which costs $129 a month. And I understand, if you're not in the weeds of SEO and you're not doing a lot of keyword research, it doesn't make sense to invest in a tool like Ahrefs. But, anyone who's in the weeds of SEO and is doing this at a high level, most likely has an Ahrefs or SEMrush subscription. I'm more of an Ahrefs guy versus SEMrush personally, but that's a whole conversation for another day. So, I do have an Ahrefs account. I'm going to walk you through this. I'm actually going to do this for the very first time of syncing up an API from Ahrefs to Claude Code, where we can now pull in Ahrefs data right inside Claude Code. So, the first thing I'm going to try to do here is set up the Ahrefs MCP within Claude Code. And bear with me here, as this is the first time that I'm actually running through this. And so, here is the MCP Claude Code documentation setup. I'll leave a link to this in the video description below. And if you're using something like, you know, Claude Web App, or the Claude Desktop, Claude Mobile, ChatGPT, Lovable, N8N, Manis, Open Claw, Ahrefs provides help guides for those as well. But, what you want to do is essentially copy this. I'm going to open up Claude Code. I'm in a new tab, and I'm going to paste the following. Use my MCP setup skill to help set up the Ahrefs MCP using this documentation to help. I'm going to put on bypass permissions and click go. I do have an MCP setup skill that I've created to help set up any MCPs going forward, as there's a whole skill markdown file that helps, you know, orchestrate or better direct Claude Code, as not every MCP connection is the same. So, it's easy to to kind of comprehend that there. And so, you'll see it's calling that skill. I'm going to go ahead and skip ahead probably and wait till this is complete. All right. So, after about a minute, Claude Code is telling me the Ahrefs MCP is now added to my configuration and giving me instructions on what to do next. It's telling me to restart Claude Code, type MCP, select it, and choose authenticate, and then test it. So, I'm going to go ahead and open up a new tab of Claude Code. I'm going to click {forward slash} MCP. Here's my MCP servers. And then it's going to ask me to authenticate the Ahrefs MCP. Notice these other MCPs that are already authenticated. So, I'm going to click Ahrefs. Now, it's going to ask me to authenticate it. So, I'm going to click authenticate, and this should, yeah, redirect me. I'm going to click open. This is going to redirect me to Ahrefs' website to ensure that I'm actually logging in with a paid account. So, here's my workspace right here. I'm going to click that. And then it's going to ask me to allow this MCP. So, I'm going to click allow. And then let's see what happens next. And then it says authentication successful. You can close this window and return to Claude Code. So, I'm going to close this. Let's open up Claude Code, and you'll see my MCP connection is now established. So, now let's actually go ahead and test this new Ahrefs MCP connection. But, the first thing you need to do, and I almost forgot to do this, is you need to update your keyword research skill to run the Ahrefs MCP, and not the Data for SEO MCP going forward, or any other related MCPs that you had in that keyword research skill prior. Check my MCP config to verify this. So, going back and forth here, you know, with Claude Code, long story short, it made sure that the Ahrefs MCP was properly configured, and the skill markdown file for keyword research was updated. Very important that you take care of that. And so, I opened up a new tab of Claude Code, and I said, "Use my keyword research skill with the Ahrefs MCP to find 10 relevant keywords based on this root topic. Only use the Ahrefs MCP, and not Data for SEO, or any others." I probably didn't have to say that. Just wanted to double-check with Claude Code. And I know that the Ahrefs MCP is working correctly, because you'll see here it successfully fetched the Ahrefs MCP, the Keywords Explorer matching terms, and all these other things that it's doing with Ahrefs. And so, here are the keyword research results pulled straight from Ahrefs. Claude Code tutorial, Claude Code skills, Claude Code for marketing, Claude Code MCP. And I could ask for 10, 20, 50, 100 keyword ideas if I wanted to. I only did 10 and basic, you know, columns here, just for the purposes of this example to make sure that you can set this up properly, and then just take things and run with it. You can obviously come back and refine it like I did in the previous example. You know, I want more keywords like this, phrase match, exact match variations. I want more columns in my results. You can get as granular as you want to with this keyword research data. But, long story short, we've successfully set up the Ahrefs MCP within Claude Code, and we can now get access to higher quality keyword research data. Now, one other quick use case that I just used with the Ahrefs MCP that's not super related to keyword research, is I can evaluate backlink profiles straight from Claude Code. I'm asking it to use my Ahrefs MCP to find the best backlinks on my website based on domain rating and topic relevance, and it pulls straight from the Ahrefs MCP, and then it breaks down my top backlinks by DR, which stands for domain rating. So, it lists the backlinks here, monthly traffic, domain rating, do follow links, topic relevance. Then it provides me some key takeaways and whatnot. So, instead of me going actually into the Ahrefs website, copying and pasting in domains, scrolling through, you know, the web app interface, I can now do everything right inside Claude Code, and I don't even have to evaluate my own backlinks, right? I could evaluate competitors' backlinks, figure out strategies with Claude Code using other skill files to help maybe write cold email outreach to acquire some of those backlinks on competitors, right? The opportunities here are endless, as my brain is continuing to click now that I have this Ahrefs MCP right inside my Claude Code interface. The opportunities really seem endless here. But again, you do need a paid account with Ahrefs in order to get access to this MCP at all. So, that's my Claude Code keyword research tutorial. And if you've made it this far into the video, I truly appreciate you. Be sure to give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you found any value here. And remember, if you want my exact keyword research skill, you can get that in my Claude Code skill stack, along with 20-plus other skills I use for marketing and content creation, or you can obviously create your own skill for that. But, most importantly, I hope you all have a great day.