Alphabet Soup Keyword Research: What It Is and How to Do It
Updated
Alphabet soup keyword research adds each letter of the alphabet to a seed keyword so search engines suggest hundreds of long-tail phrases at once.
Try the free Keyword Shitter alternative
What is alphabet soup keyword research?
Alphabet soup is a way of collecting autocomplete ideas in bulk. You take a seed keyword and add each letter of the alphabet after it, one at a time: "protein powder a", "protein powder b", "protein powder c" and so on. Each query makes the search engine suggest the phrases people search for that start with that letter, so one seed turns into hundreds of long-tail ideas. It is also the idea behind the original Keyword Shitter tool.
How to do it by hand
- Type your seed followed by a space and the letter a. Write down the suggestions.
- Repeat for every letter from a to z. Add the digits 0 to 9 if the topic has numbers, such as models or years.
- Optionally repeat with the letter before the seed ("a protein powder").
- Combine everything into a spreadsheet and remove duplicates.
That is at least 26 searches for a single seed, so it is slow by hand.
How to do it in one click
Open the free Keyword Shitter alternative, enter the seed and turn on Alphabet soup (a to z). It sends all the letter queries to the engines you choose and gathers the suggestions in one list, with no account and no daily limit.
How to clean the results
- Remove duplicates: the same phrase comes back under several letters.
- Remove noise: delete phrases that are about something else, such as the same word in another language or industry.
- Keep the intent: read the phrases and keep the ones that match what your page can really answer.
- Group by meaning: put similar phrases together. See our guide on how to organize a keyword list.
When alphabet soup works best
It works best for broad seeds with plenty of searches. For a niche seed you may get few suggestions per letter, and combining several engines (Google, YouTube, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia and Amazon) gives more variety. For background on what long-tail keywords are and why these phrases matter, read what long-tail keywords are.
Frequently asked questions
What is alphabet soup in keyword research?
It is adding each letter of the alphabet to a seed keyword to make search engines suggest many long-tail phrases at once.
Is alphabet soup the same as Keyword Shitter?
Keyword Shitter popularized the method. LongTailLab offers the same alphabet soup mode, plus several engines, for free.
How many keywords does alphabet soup return?
It depends on the seed. Broad topics can return hundreds of raw phrases, many of them duplicates, so cleaning matters.
Do I need to add numbers as well as letters?
Only when the topic uses numbers, such as models, years or sizes.
Does alphabet soup show search volume?
No. It collects suggestions, which show that people search for a phrase but not how often.
Related tools and guides
- Keyword Shitter alternative
- Long-tail keyword research tool: back to the main LongTailLab tool
- Next guide: How to organize a keyword list
- All keyword research guides