Hi @natejoens, this a great question (and hope more people chime in on their process!).
I would say your process is very similar to mine! I used to do more keyword research in my previous role working with a marketing agency, but I used Ahrefs for my research as well. I would also enter high-level keywords then filter through similar keywords that had a certain search volume and keyword difficulty.
There’s also a tool in Ahrefs that pulls the top ranking sites for a keyword, and I remember using that feature a lot. Since those sites/blogs were ranking high, I assumed they were doing something right. I would identify common keywords or topics that were mentioned throughout those sites, and consider them for my own content.
Ahrefs has a ton of great features and tools like this, and I highly recommend watching their YouTube videos to learn how to make the most of their different tools!