Create the category universe
1-2 hours
1-2 hours
Start by defining your category, subcategories, use cases, personas, competitors, integrations, pain points, and jobs to be done. Use Ahrefs to pull seed keywords and competitor ranking keywords. Do not filter too aggressively yet. The first goal is breadth: understand the entire search landscape before prioritizing. Keep the work organized in Ahrefs with fields for asset, audience, angle, channel, owner, and review status so the next person can see how the decision was made.
A broad category keyword universe with competitors, personas, and topic seeds.
Include non-obvious modifiers like templates, checklist, examples, pricing, implementation, migration, best practices, integrations, and alternatives. These often reveal valuable mid- and bottom-funnel clusters.