Keyword Research on a Budget: How Founders Can Compete Without Ahrefs

Every SEO guide tells you to “do keyword research.” Then they recommend tools that cost $100-$200 per month. For a founder burning through runway, that’s a hard sell — especially when you’re only publishing 2-4 posts a month.

Here’s the thing: you don’t need Ahrefs or Semrush to do effective keyword research. You need the right data at the right level of accuracy for your stage. Let’s break down your real options.

What You Actually Need from Keyword Research

Strip away the fancy dashboards and you need four things:

1. Search volume — how many people search for this term monthly
2. Difficulty — how hard it is to rank for this term
3. Intent — what the searcher is trying to do (informational, commercial, transactional)
4. Related terms — what else to target in the same content cluster

That’s it. You don’t need backlink analysis, rank tracking, site audits, or competitor gap analysis — at least not yet. Those are scale tools. You need launch tools.

Option 1: Google’s Free Tools (The Minimum)

Google Keyword Planner is free with a Google Ads account (you don’t need to run ads). It gives you search volume ranges and competition levels. The data is directionally correct but intentionally vague — Google shows ranges like “1K-10K” instead of exact numbers unless you’re spending on ads.

Google Trends shows relative interest over time. It won’t tell you absolute volume, but it’s excellent for comparing keywords against each other and spotting seasonal patterns.

Google Autocomplete (just start typing in the search bar) reveals what people actually search for. It’s free, real-time, and often surfaces long-tail gems the paid tools miss.

Limitation: You’ll spend 30-60 minutes per keyword doing this manually. It works for 5-10 keywords. It doesn’t scale to 50.

Option 2: DataForSEO (The Power User Option)

DataForSEO is the API that powers many SEO tools behind the scenes. Instead of paying $100/month for a GUI wrapper, you can access the raw data directly via API for a fraction of the cost.

Typical costs:

• Keyword data: $0.05-$0.10 per keyword batch
• Related keywords: $0.10-$0.20 per search
• Monthly spend for a founder publishing 4 posts: $5-$15

That’s roughly 95% cheaper than Ahrefs. The data is the same quality — exact search volumes, keyword difficulty scores, CPC data, and intent classification.

The catch: DataForSEO is an API, not a GUI. You need a tool that wraps it into something usable. That’s one of the reasons Growink integrates DataForSEO directly — you plug in your API key and get full keyword research in a visual interface for a fraction of what Ahrefs charges.

Option 3: AI-Estimated Metrics (The Free Path)

Here’s a controversial take: for a founder publishing their first 20 blog posts, you don’t need exact keyword metrics. You need directionally correct estimates.

AI models trained on search data can estimate relative popularity (low/medium/high), approximate difficulty, and classify intent with reasonable accuracy. It’s not as precise as DataForSEO, but it’s:

• Free
• Instant
• Good enough to avoid the obvious mistakes (targeting keywords with zero volume or impossible difficulty)

At Growink, we offer both paths. Start with AI-estimated metrics for free, upgrade to DataForSEO when you want precision. No judgment either way.

The Keyword Research Process That Works

Regardless of which tool you use, here’s the process:

1. Start with seed keywords from your content pillar. What’s the core topic?
2. Expand to long-tail variations. “Content marketing” becomes “content marketing for SaaS,” “content marketing strategy for startups,” “how to start content marketing.”
3. Filter by intent. Prioritize informational keywords for blog posts. Save commercial and transactional keywords for landing pages.
4. Check difficulty. Target keywords where you have a realistic chance of reaching page one. For new sites, that usually means difficulty scores below 40.
5. Group by pillar. Each keyword should map to a content pillar. If it doesn’t fit any pillar, either create a new pillar or skip the keyword.

Stop Overthinking, Start Publishing

The biggest keyword research mistake isn’t using the wrong tool. It’s spending so long researching that you never write anything. A published post targeting a “pretty good” keyword will always outperform a perfect keyword sitting in a spreadsheet.

Pick your research approach based on your budget and technical comfort. Then use it to pick your first 5 keywords and start writing. You can always refine later.

Try Growink’s keyword research for free — AI-estimated metrics, no API key required. Upgrade to DataForSEO when you’re ready for precision.