Most new sites are built backward. Founders write the homepage first, the about page second, a blog post or two after that, and then — three months in, when nothing is ranking — they finally ask what keywords the site should be targeting. By then the information architecture is set, the heading structure is half-baked, and every SEO fix is a renovation instead of a foundation pour.
The Keyword Inspection tool exists to flip that order. You run it before you write the page — with your target search term and the ten pages that currently rank — and you use the output as the skeleton for what you build. This is the angle covered in The $97 Launch playbook: do the research before you buy the domain, not after.
This post walks through how to use the tool at the launch stage specifically — before your URL exists, or right after, when you can still shape the page around the data instead of retrofitting it.
Why Pre-Launch Gap Analysis Works Better Than Post-Launch
Google doesn't owe you a ranking. It picks the ten pages that best answer a query, and when a new site enters the SERP it is measured against those ten whether the founder has read them or not. The pages that rank now are the rubric. If you write your homepage without reading the rubric, you are guessing at what Google wants.
When you run Keyword Inspection before launch, three things fall into place:
Your URL structure matches the intent. If the top-ranking pages all live at /services/equipment-financing/ and yours is going to be /offerings/funding/, you're starting at a disadvantage. The tool doesn't fix URL structure by itself, but reading ten competitor URLs side by side makes the naming pattern obvious.
Your H1 is the right length and specificity. You can see what the ranking pages use as their H1, measure word count and promise density, and write yours to match or exceed. An H1 that says "Equipment Financing" when every ranking page says "Equipment Financing for Laundromats: Rates, Terms, and Approval in 48 Hours" is giving up ground before anyone has even clicked through.
Your schema is planned, not patched. The Schema tab tells you which JSON-LD types the ranking pages use. You can bake them into your template on day one instead of adding them piecemeal later. For a launch site, this usually means committing to Organization + WebSite + BreadcrumbList + whatever content-type schema is dominant in the niche (Article, Product, Service, LocalBusiness).
How to Use It Before Your Site Exists
You don't need a live URL to run the tool — you just need a placeholder. Use any page you already control (a LinkedIn profile, a Notion page, a domain parking page). The tool will fetch it and report that it has very little content, which is the honest truth. The value is in the competitor data, not the comparison.
Go to /tools/keyword-inspection/ and fill in three things:
The search term. Write the exact phrase you want your future homepage or cornerstone page to rank for. If you don't know yet, this is a signal to do the keyword research step first — pick a term that real people search for, not a term you wish they did.
Your URL. A placeholder works. If you have a temporary landing page up during the build, use that. If you have absolutely nothing, use a competitor you admire; the tool will compare that competitor against the other nine and you'll still see the shape of the winning pattern.
The competitor URLs. Run your target search in an incognito Google window. Skip the sponsored results and features — AI Overview, People Also Ask, map pack. Paste the top ten organic URLs, one per line.
Click Run inspection. In about forty-five seconds you'll have the full gap analysis.
The Three Tabs That Matter Most Pre-Launch
The Overview tab gives you the competitor average word count. This is the single most important pre-launch number to see. If the top ten pages average 2,400 words and your plan was a 400-word landing page, you already know the plan needs to change. Not because longer is better for its own sake, but because the pages that currently rank have decided their audiences need that much context — and if your page offers less, Google reads it as thinner coverage of the same topic.
The Heading Topics tab is your content outline. Every H2 the tool surfaces from the competitor set is a candidate section for your page. Read them all, pull out the ones that fit your offering, and use them as the table of contents. Don't copy the wording. Copy the topics.
The Schema tab is your implementation checklist for the developer. Every type listed is one your template should support. BreadcrumbList and Organization are baseline for every site. FAQPage is a high-value add if three or more competitors have it. Article or BlogPosting matters if you plan to publish content. Product or LocalBusiness matters if you're selling. Take this list to whoever is building the site and make it part of the spec.
Turning the AI Rewrite Prompt Into a Content Brief
The AI Rewrite Prompt tab is designed to take your existing page and improve it, but at the launch stage it doubles as a content brief. The prompt already includes your target term, every keyword gap, every heading topic gap, and every schema type to implement. Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT and instead of asking for a rewrite, ask for a content brief: "Using the data above, write a content brief for a new page targeting this term. Include target H1, meta description, ordered H2 outline, word count target, schema blocks to include, and three opening paragraphs I can use as a starting point."
That's your launch brief. Hand it to whoever is writing the content — yourself, a freelancer, or an AI — and you've turned a blank page into a filled-in template with measurable targets.
Set the skill level at the top of the tool before you copy. Advanced skips the narrative and gives you deployable JSON-LD and rewritten title tags. Beginner produces more explanation and rationale, which is useful when you're briefing someone else who needs context. Intermediate is the default and works for most launch situations.
Pairing It With the Site Analyzer at Launch
Once your page is live, run the Site Analyzer to verify the implementation. The Analyzer checks eighty-plus items including the new Article-schema validation, mixed-content detection, duplicate ID detection, image CLS checks, viewport zoom, meta charset, AI crawler rules in robots.txt, and JSON-LD @context correctness. These are the things that quietly undermine a new site before it ever gets impressions — a fresh domain with broken schema and mixed-content warnings spends its first six months dragged down by signals the founder didn't even know were failing.
The Keyword Inspection tool tells you what to write. The Site Analyzer tells you whether your implementation is clean. Use both at launch and you are running the same playbook the ranking sites ran, except faster, because you already know the rubric.
Honest Expectations for New Domains
One thing the tool cannot do is shortcut domain authority. A new site will not rank against established competitors in week one, even with perfect on-page SEO. What Keyword Inspection does give you is the shortest path from "I launched a site" to "I am eligible to rank when Google decides to test me." Getting the page ready matters because Google does eventually test new pages, and when it does, the ones that match the existing winners' structure get promoted. The ones that don't, don't.
The full launch methodology — domain picking, hosting, email setup, schema, indexing, and the first 90 days of traffic — is in The $97 Launch.
The keyword analysis itself is free and runs in your browser. Start there before you start writing.