I remember when keyword research meant a notebook and a highlighter

Back in 2010, I used to sit in my office in Columbus and print out search volume reports from the Google Keyword Tool. I'd highlight the good terms and write down long tail phrases by hand in a spiral notebook. Now I just pull up Ahrefs or SEMrush and get everything in seconds with search intent and difficulty scores included. The tools are faster but I sometimes miss that slower process where you really thought about each word. I feel like I knew my content better when I had to wrestle with the data on paper. Does anyone else still do any research by hand or is that just a waste of time now?

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ben4362mo ago

I mean, "wrestle with the data on paper"? It's keyword research, not solving world hunger.

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reese1772mo ago

Nah @ben436, you're missing the point - wrestling with data means actually finding patterns, not just typing into a search bar.

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