How To Use Google Keyword Planner

Written by Ravi

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Google Ads | Search Engine Optimisation

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Nov 25, 2022

Benefits of Google Keyword Planner

Before we talk about how to use Google Keyword Planner, let’s talk about the benefits of doing so.

Building an effective marketing strategy

With the Google Keyword Planner, you can get a near-accurate analysis of numerous keywords, including your own. This makes it an extremely valuable tool to improve and work on your marketing strategies and plans, primarily in the world of Google Ads, of course.

Finding the right audience

With the help of the Google Keyword Planner, you can get an idea of what your audience wants and what they need. Plus, you’ll get an understanding of what they type down in their searches when they look for businesses like yours.

With this information, you can start to better target the right audience(s) as well as bring more organic traffic to your site.

Increase your ROI

The keyword planner tool is great because not only does it allow you to analyse keywords, but it also gives you an idea of performance forecasts based on your budget and bidding. This is beneficial because it’ll help you to effectively improve your budget and, as a result, increase your ROI.

Now that we’ve gone through the benefits, let’s talk about how to use Google Keyword Planner.

Step 1: Open Google Keyword Planner

Yes, the keyword planner tool is free. There’s a catch, though. You need a Google Ads account in order to use the Google Keyword Planner. You can create a Google Ads account quickly if you don’t already have one.

Follow the instructions, enter basic details about you and your company, and you’ll be in. To utilise the Keyword Planner, you don’t need to have an active campaign running. Nonetheless, you must, at the very least, launch a Google Ads campaign.

Go on to access your Google Adwords account next. In the taskbar at the top of the page, select the wrench icon.

Next, select Keyword Planner.

Within Keyword Planner, there are two main tools: “Discover new keywords” and “Get search volume and forecasts.”

These two tools are sufficient to produce hundreds of prospective keywords for SEO-related keyword research if that’s what you’re here for.

However, this tool was created with PPC advertisers in mind, mainly. As a result, many of the tool’s capabilities (such as the keyword bidding tools) won’t be helpful if you’re using it to find keywords for SEO.

Step 2: Select your tool

How to Use Google Keyword Planner: Select Your Tool

The Google Keyword Planner primarily consists of two tools. We’re going to demonstrate how to use these two tools to assist you in compiling a sizable keyword list for your PPC campaigns.

1. Discover new keywords

This tool, as its name implies, is great for discovering new keywords.

As you can see in the field above the tool, it says, “enter any items that are particularly related to your company”.

The data you enter here will have a significant impact on the value you receive from the Keyword-Planner. So, when you enter this industry, you need to be VERY strategic.

There are two main approaches that you can take here:

Start with keywords: These terms and expressions characterise your company. For example, “diet and exercise” or “tea”. This gives you access to Google’s proprietary keyword database for many sectors.

Bit of advice! You can use this field to input several keywords. Simply separate each keyword with a comma before pressing enter. You might enter terms like “sugar-free pastries” and “carb-free cupcakes” if you have an eCommerce site that offers baked goods.

Start with a website: This is mainly tailored towards users of Google Ads. It can help you determine a few good keywords here by using the homepage of your website or one of your website’s articles.

Click “Get Results” after entering your data into one (or all three) of the fields. It will then display the Keywords Results Page

Now, let’s delve deeper into the 2nd tool in the GKP: search volume and forecasts.

2. Receive search volume and forecasts for your keywords

Only if you already own a lengthy list of keywords and are simply looking to evaluate their search volume will this function be truly helpful. In other words, this tool won’t aid in the creation of fresh keyword suggestions.

Copy and paste a list of terms into the search box, then click “Get Started” to utilise it.

The Keywords Results Page that appears when you use the “Find new keywords” feature will also appear.

The only two differences are that (1) you only receive information about the keywords you provided, and (2) Google will forecast the number of clicks and impressions you will receive as a result of the keywords you entered.

The Keywords Result page is where you land, regardless of which tool you ultimately chose.

Step 3: Filter and arrange the results

It’s time to narrow the list of keywords to the ones that will work best for you.

You may access the “Keywords Results Page” using either of the two tools we just mentioned.

The page is divided as follows:

Four targeting options are listed at the top of the page: Locations, language, search networks, and date range. These 4 elements mean the following:

Locations: This is the nation (or nations) to which you are marketing
Language: The language of the search terms you’re interested in learning more about is this
Search networks: Whether you want to advertise on Google alone or on Google and their “search partners” depends on your preferences. Other search engines and Google properties are examples of search partner websites (like YouTube). It is advised to just use “Google” for this set
Date range: It’s normally okay to leave this set to “12 months” by default

The next crucial feature of the Keywords Results Page is “Add Filter”. You have a good selection of filtering choices with this function. So, allow us to briefly summarise some of your options for you.

Keyword Text: You can instruct the tool to only display keywords that contain a specific word or phrase. Why would you choose to use these keywords? Say you recently debuted a new line of green t-shirts. In that situation, you should make sure that the keyword “green t-shirt” occurs in each and every keyword that the Keyword Planner offers to you
Exclude Keywords from My Account: This means you exclude terms for which you are already placing bids in Google Ads
Exclude Adult Ideas: We’re hoping that’s self-explanatory

Step 4: Examine the keyword suggestions section

Let’s analyse the terms that are left after you’ve reduced the results to keywords that are best for your company.

We’ll demonstrate how to evaluate the terms that appear in the Keyword Planner’s “Keyword Ideas” section in particular.

Here is a description of each term used in this section:

Term (by relevance): This is a list of keywords that Google deems to be the most related to the keyword or URL you entered
Average monthly searches: Quite obvious. But remember that this is a range that’s not a very reliable measure of search volume
Competition: This refers to the number of advertisers who are placing bids on that keyword. It’s a great metric for determining if a keyword has any business intent in the market
Top of Page Bid: This is an additional excellent method for estimating the level of keyword monetisation. Here, the more you bid, the more profitable the traffic usually is

Step 5: How to use Google Keyword Planner: Select a keyword

The last stage is to use all of the above to uncover great keywords that you can use for your ads with all of the tools, features, and options inside the Google Keyword Planner.

This is difficult. Why? Numerous criteria are taken into consideration when selecting a keyword. Furthermore, it is more art than science. So, how do you choose the right keywords?

There are numerous variables to consider. But generally, We like to base our keyword selection on the following 3 factors:

Search Volume: This one is simple. The more traffic a keyword may provide you, the higher its average search volume should be
Commercial Intent: Generally speaking, the harder it will be to turn that traffic into paying consumers when they visit your website, the more competition there is and the higher the suggested bid
Organic SEO Competition: Just like commercial intent, determining a keyword’s competition in Google’s organic search results requires some further investigation. You should examine the websites that are shown first in the search results. Then assess how challenging it will be to surpass them

We can help with everything Google Ads

Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for advertisers and website owners alike. For starters, it allows users to put together an effective and promising list of keywords for their advertising campaigns. And we all know that at the heart of every successful advertising campaign are some well-researched keywords. It can also be used to assist you in your SEO endeavours.

That said, it does have a learning curve (as does every other SEM or SEO tool). If you’d rather focus on actually running your business, book a discovery call with us today, and we’ll show you how we can make Google Ads work for you.