What is a keyword and how do I find the right ones?

Volume is the number everybody looks at first and it is the least useful on its own. A term searched ten thousand times a month is contested by established sites and attracts people who are learning rather than deciding. A term searched forty times a month, phrased as a specific problem in a specific place, attracts people ready to act. For a first year business the second category is where the entire opportunity sits, because it is winnable and it converts.

Intent is what actually separates them, and you can read it from the phrasing. Somebody typing what is a heat pump is learning. Heat pump versus furnace is comparing. Heat pump installation cost las vegas is buying. Those require different pages and produce entirely different results, and a business that ranks for the first and not the third has traffic and no enquiries.

Find them where they already exist rather than in a tool. The questions customers ask you, the phrasing they use when they ask, the terms in your search console that produced impressions, and the related searches shown at the bottom of a results page. Those sources cost nothing and produce phrasing that is real rather than suggested.

Then check two things before writing. Whether anybody actually searches it, using any free tool, because inventing a term nobody types is the most common wasted effort. And what currently ranks for it, because if the first page is entirely national brands and directories, a new local site will not displace them and a more specific variation will.

One phrase per page, and the page should answer that question directly. Trying to rank one page for six related terms produces a page that answers none of them well, and the alternative of a page each is both easier to write and easier to rank.

Record what you targeted for each page somewhere you will find it later, because this becomes impossible to reconstruct. A simple sheet listing the page, the phrase it was written for, and the date is what lets you check months later whether it worked, and it prevents the common problem of writing a second page for a phrase you already covered. Two of your own pages competing for the same term is a self inflicted problem and it is entirely avoidable with a record.