How to Use Google Keyword Planner
In fact, content marketer and bloggers used Google Keyword Planner (previously known as Google Keyword Tool) to help increase there site's organic traffic to visits per month to there site:
And in this guide, I’ll show you how to get the most SEO value out of this awesome tool.
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Step #1: Access the Google Keyword Planner
Step #2: Choose Your Tool
Step #3: Filter and Sort the Results
Step #4: Analyze the Keyword Ideas Section
Step #5: Choose a Keyword
Bonus Step #1: Get Exact Keyword Search Volume Data
Bonus Step #2: The GKP Hack
Step #1: Access Google Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner is, indeed, a free tool.
However, there is a catch:
You MUST have a Google Ads account in order to use the Google Keyword Planner.
If you don't already have an Adwords account, you can create one in a matter of minutes:
(Follow the prompts, enter some information about yourself and your company, and you're in.) It is important to note that you do not need to be running an active campaign to use the Keyword Planner. However, you must at the very least set up a Google Adwords campaign.)
Log in to your Google Adwords account next. In the toolbar at the top of the page, select the wrench icon.
Then, choose “Keyword Planner”:
Within Keyword Planner, you'll find two tools: "Discover New Keywords" and "Get Search Volume and Forecasts."
To be specific:
This tool is intended for PPC advertisers. As a result, there are many features in the tool (such as keyword bidding features) that will be useless if you're using it to find keywords for SEO.
After that, I'll show you how to find SEO keywords using each of the tools included in the Google Keyword Planner.
Step #2: Choose Your Tool
The GKP contains two primary tools.
And now I'll show you how to use these two tools to generate a massive list of keywords for your SEO campaigns.
1. Find New Keywords
This tool is ideal for discovering new keywords, as the name implies.
As you can see, the field above this tool instructs you to "Enter products or services closely related to your business."
Quick Tip: The value you receive from the Keyword Planner is largely determined by the information you enter here. As a result, you must be VERY strategic about what you enter into this field.
So, in order to help you get the most out of this tool, I'll go over each of the two main options in detail.
"Begin With Keywords": These are words or phrases that describe your company (for example, "weight loss" or "coffee"). This gives you access to Google's internal database of keywords for various industries.
PRo Tips You can enter multiple keywords in this field. Simply put a comma after each keyword and hit enter. For example, if you own an eCommerce site that sells cookies, you should include terms like "gluten free desserts" and "low carb cookies" here.
"Begin With a Website": This is for Adwords users. However, you can occasionally find a few solid keywords here by using your site's homepage... or a piece from your website
(We'll get to that later.)
After you've filled out one (or all three) of the fields, click "Get Results."
The Keywords Results Page will appear next. Later in the guide, I'll show you how to use that section of the Keyword Planner.
For the time being, let's look at the GKP's second tool: search volume and forecasts.
2. Obtain keyword search volume and forecasts.
This feature is only really useful if you already have a long list of keywords... and just want to see how many people are searching for them. In other words, this tool will not assist you in coming up with new keyword ideas.
To use it, enter a list of keywords into the search field and click "Get Started."
You'll also see the Keywords Results Page that appears when you use the "Find new keywords" tool.
The only difference is that a) you only get data on the keywords you entered, and b) Google predicts how many clicks and impressions you'll get from those keywords:
Whatever tool you end up using, you'll end up on the same page: the Keywords Result page.
And now it's time for me to delve deep into how that page works... and how to make the most of it.
Step #3: Filter and Sort the Results
It's now time to narrow down the list of keywords to a smaller set of terms that are most relevant to you.
Both of the tools I just mentioned will direct you to the "Keywords Results Page," which looks like this:
The following is a breakdown of the page:
You'll notice four targeting options at the top of the page: Locations, Language, Search networks, and Date range.
Here's what these four terms imply:
“Locations”
This is the country (or countries) to which you will be marketing. Simple.
“Language”
This is the language of the keywords about which you want to learn more.
"Locations" and "Language" are pre-configured to target English-speaking people in the United States. If that's your intended audience (which it almost always is), you can leave these options alone.
But suppose you live in Germany. You should change the Location to "Germany" and the Language to "German."
"Networks for searching"
This determines whether you want to advertise solely on Google... or on Google and their "search partners." Other search engines and Google properties are examples of search partner sites (like YouTube).
I recommend that you leave this set to "Google."
"Time span"
It's usually fine to leave this as the default "12 months."
The next significant feature of the Keywords Results Page is "Add Filter":
This feature provides a good number of filtering options. So, let me quickly go over each of your options.
Text for Keywords
This is where you can instruct the tool to only display keywords that contain a specific word or phrase.
Why would you include specific keywords?
Assume you've just launched a new line of blue t-shirts. In that case, make sure the keyword "blue t-shirt" appears in all of the keywords suggested by the Keyword Planner.
Keywords in My Account Are Excluded
This excludes keywords for which you already have a bid in Adwords.
Adult Concepts Should Be Avoided
It is self-explanatory .
Monthly Searches on Average
This is useful for removing keywords with a high search volume (after all, these terms tend to be really competitive). You may also want to exclude keywords that do not receive a high volume of searches.
Assume you receive a large list of keyword suggestions.
You can click on “Avg. Monthly Searches” to sort the results.
This way, you will only see keywords with a high search volume.
You can also do the inverse. Click "Avg. Monthly Searches" once more to see a list of low-volume terms:
Competition
You can instruct Google Keyword Planner to only display keywords with "Low," "Medium," or "High" competition.
This feature irritates a lot of people.
Remember that the Google Keyword Planner is intended solely for Google Ads, not SEO.
So the "Competition" score here ONLY refers to Adwords competition (not how difficult it is to rank for a keyword in Google's organic search results). As a result, I recommend leaving this field empty.
Share Your Ad Impression
This setting, once again, only applies to Adwords. As a result, for the sake of SEO, we can disregard this filter.
Bid at the Page's Top
This is the amount you should expect to pay to have your ad appear at the top of the page for that keyword.
(This was previously known as "Cost Per Click" or "CPC.")
The top of the page bid is a proxy for commercial intent. You can set this to a specific dollar amount if you only want to target keywords that potential buyers search for.
As can be seen, there are two choices: "high range" and "low range."
Organic Impression Share
This is the frequency with which your site appears in organic search results for each keyword. (Please keep in mind that in order to use this feature, you must first link your Google Search Console account to your Google Adwords account.)
Organic Average Position
Where you rank (on average) in Google organic for each keyword. Again, you must be connected to the GSC in order for this to work.
So that's all there is to filtering.
The last feature of the Keywords Results Page to look out for is called “Broaden Your Search”.
This is a new feature that displays keywords that are related to the terms you entered.
For example, if you search for "Paleo Diet," you'll get the following results:
Step #4: Analyze the Keyword Ideas Section
Let's break down the terms that remain now that you've narrowed the results down to keywords that are ideal for your business.
I'll specifically show you how to analyze the terms that appear in the Keyword Planner's "Keyword Ideas" section.
Keyword (by relevance): This is a list of keywords that Google considers to be the most relevant to the keyword or URL you entered.
Avg. monthly searches: It's fairly self-explanatory. Keep in mind, however, that this is a range... and not a particularly reliable predictor of search volume.
(In a moment, I'll show you how to get more accurate search volume data.)
Pro Tip: Keep an eye out for seasonal keywords. Because seasonal keywords (such as "Halloween costumes") may receive 50,000 searches in October but only 100 searches in May. However, the GKP will claim that the term receives "10,000 searches per month," which is somewhat misleading.
Competition: As I previously stated, "Competition" in Google Keyword Planner has nothing to do with SEO. Instead, "Competition" simply refers to the number of advertisers bidding on that keyword. However, it IS useful to determine whether a keyword has any commercial intent (after all, the more people bid on a keyword, the more potential there is for them to become a lead or customer).
Top of Page Bid: This is another excellent method for estimating a keyword's monetization potential. The higher the bid, the more profitable the traffic.
Step #5: Choose a Keyword
Now that you've learned how to use all of the tools, features, and options available in the Google Keyword Planner, it's time to move on to the final step: identifying excellent keywords to optimize your site's content around.
This is difficult.
Why? There are numerous aspects to consider while selecting a keyword. And it's more of an art than a science.
Having said that, I learn best from examples. So let me walk you through a simple example to assist you choose a keyword from your list.
(In this example, I'll utilize the "Discover new keywords" option because it's the easiest approach to find new keywords in Google Keyword Planner.)
First, consider a term that is broad...but also describes your product, service, or content idea.
Assume you manage an eCommerce business that sells organic products.
If you wanted to publish a blog post about the health advantages of organic coffee, you wouldn't want to include the term "coffee" (which is too broad) or "health benefits of organic coffee" (which is too specific) (too narrow).
However, a term like "organic coffee" would be ideal.
So enter that keyword into the field and press the "Get Started" button.
And take a look at the keywords that come up:
So, how do you decide which keywords to use?
There are dozens of variables to consider. However, in general, I like to select keywords based on three basic criteria:
Search Volume: Simple and straightforward. The more traffic a keyword can provide you, the higher the average search volume.
Commercial Intent: In general, the higher the level of competition and suggested bid, the easier it will be to convert that traffic into paying consumers when they arrive at your website.
Organic SEO Competition: Evaluating a keyword's competition in Google's organic search results, like commercial intent, requires a little more investigation. Look at the websites that are ranking on the first page... then calculate how difficult it will be to outrank them. This SEO keyword competition guide will teach you everything you need to know.
Bonus Step #1: Get Exact Keyword Search Volume Data
If you have an active Adwords campaign, the Google Keyword Planner will only offer you actual search volume data. Otherwise, you'll see a range, such as this:
To be honest, I don't mind the range at all. In any case, keyword volume fluctuates. So even the "precise" average monthly search volume displayed in the GKP was an approximate estimate.
To put it another way, there's nothing wrong with selecting terms based on search traffic ranges.
However, there is a clever approach you can apply to extract accurate search volume from the GKP... without having to run advertising in a Google Adwords account.
Here's how you do it...
To begin, select a term from the list of options that you want to target:
Then click “add to plan”:
And look at the number of “impressions” you’d get if you bid on that term:
That figure represents the amount of persons who search for that term each month.
(In this scenario, 2.1k monthly searches.)
And there you have it: exact search volume data for your keyword. Nice!
Bonus Step #2: The GKP Hack
As you can see, the Google Keyword Planner is quite useful.
Having said that, the Google keyword tool has two fundamental problems...
The first flaw is that it only suggests terms that are VERY closely connected to what you enter in.
Assume you run a firm that offers organic pet food.
So you enter "organic dog food" into the search tool. What you receive is as follows:
As you can see, they are VERY similar varieties of "organic dog food," such as:
"organic dog food"
"dog food manufacturers"
"canine food"
I'm not sure about you, but I don't need a complex program to generate a term like "dog food."
The same may be said for the majority of terms. The GKP excels at generating long tail variations of your term. However, it is not very good at coming up with out-of-the-box keyword suggestions.
Flaw #2: You receive the same list of keywords as everyone else.
Needless to say, Google Keyword Planner is a wildly popular keyword tool.
This means that the keywords found in the GKP are usually extremely competitive.
Fortunately, there is a straightforward solution to both of these vexing problems: the GKP Hack.
This is how it works:
First, navigate to the GKP's Discover New Keywords section. Then select "Begin With a Website."
Instead of a keyword, you input the URL of another website in your niche.
For example, instead of typing "organic dog food," go to PetSmart's dog food category page.
Boom!
You get a laundry list of keywords that most of your competitors will NEVER see.
It improves...
There are a TON of other pages you may use for the GKP Hack, such as:
Blog entries
Publications in the press
Agendas for conferences
Influencer bio pages in your sector
Stories from the news
Transcripts of podcasts
Essentially, every page with text is fair game for this strategy.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed my Google Keyword Planner tutorial.
I'd like to hear from you now:
Do you use the Keyword Planner to generate keyword ideas?
Or do you like to use other keyword research tools (such as SEMRush)?
Please let me know right now by writing a comment below.
