How To Use Google Keyword Planner

This step by step guide to using Google Keyword Planner.

I have used Google Keyword Planner to help increase my website's organic traffic to 282,762 visits per month: 

And in this guide, I will tell you how to get the most SEO value out of this amazing tool.

• Access the Google Keyword Planner
• Choose your tool 
• Filter and sort the results 
• Analyze the keyword ideas 
• Choose a keyword 

 

Access Google Keyword Planner

Yes, Keyword Planner is a free tool.

But there is a catch:

You need have a Google AdWords account to use Google Keyword Planner tool. 

If you don't already have an AdWords account, you can set it up in minutes: 

Enter some information about you and your business, and you are in. Note: You don’t have to run an ad campaign to use the Google Keyword Planner. But you do need to have a Google Adwords account.  

Next, log in to your Google AdWords account. Click on the page icon on the toolbar at the top of the page. 

Then, select “Keyword Planner”:

You'll see two different tools in Keyword Planner: "Find new keywords" and "Find search volume and guess". 

When it comes to SEO-friendly keyword research, these two Google AdWords tools are enough to generate thousands of potential keywords.

To be clear:

The tool is designed with PPC advertisers in mind. So the tool has a lot of features (like keyword bidding features) that will not be useful if you use this tool to find keywords for SEO. Also, it's time to show you how to find SEO keywords using every tool created in Google Keyword Planner.

Choose Your Tool  

There are two main tools within GKP.

And now I’m going to tell you how to use these two tools to help you build a massive list of keywords for your SEO campaign.

1. Find new keywords

As the name suggests, this tool is excellent for finding new keywords.

As you can see in your Google Keyword Planner tool, the fields above this tool say: "Enter products or services related to your business".

A quick tip: the value you get from Keyword Planner is based on the information you enter here. So you need to be very strategic about what you enter into this field.

So to help make the most of this tool, I will break down two main options.

"Start with keywords:" are words and phrases that describe your business (for example, "weight loss" or "coffee"). This allows you to enter Google's internal database of keywords for different industries.

Pro Tip: You can enter several keywords in this field. Put a comma after every keyword and press Enter. For example, if you're running an eCommerce site that sells cookies, you'll want to enter terms like "gluten-free dessert" and "low carb cookies."

"Get Started with Website": This is designed for Google AdWords users. But using the homepage of your site ... or the articles on your site, you can sometimes find some solid keywords here.

(More on that later)

Once you've entered your information in one (or all three) fields, click "Get Results."

Next, you'll see the Keyword Results page. I will show you how to use that part of Google Keyword Planner later in this article.

For now, go to another tool in GKP: Search Volume and Prediction.

2. Get search volume and estimates for your keywords

This feature is useful if you have a huge list of keywords ... and check their search volume.  In short, this tool will not help you create new keyword ideas.

To use it, copy and paste the list of keywords into the search field and press "Start".

You will see the same keyword results page as you see on the "Find New Keywords" tool. 

The only difference is that a) you only get data on the keywords you enter and b) Google estimates how many clicks and impressions you will get from the keywords you enter. 

No matter which tool you use in the end, you'll still be in the same place: the keyword results page. And now it’s time to take a deeper dive into how that page works and how to make the most of it.

Filter and sort results

Now it's time to filter the list of keywords to a shortlist of terms that are best for you.

Both of the tools I just described will take you to the "Keywords Results Page", which looks like this:

Here's the breakdown of this page: At the top of the page, you'll see 4 targeting options: Locations, languages, search network, and date range. 

These four things mean:

"Locations"

This is the country you are marketing to. Easy.

"English"

This information is the language of the keywords you want to view.

"Locations" and "languages" are automatically set to target English-speaking people in the United States. If they are your target audience (in most cases they are), you can leave this option as it is.

Let's say you're in Germany. You want to change the location to "Germany" and select "German" as the language.

"Search Network"

This is whether you want to advertise only on Google or you want to use “search partners”. Search partner sites include other search engines (like YouTube).

I recommend leaving this set on "Google" only.

"Date range"

It is always better do not change it and leave "12 months" as default.

The second important feature of the keyword results page is called "Add Filter":

These features give you a nice amount of filtering options. So let me quickly destroy every option for you.

Keyword text

This is where this tool shows you only words that contain a specific word of the phrase.

Why would you want to include specific keywords?

Say you just started a new line of blue t-shirts. In that case, you want the keyword planner to make sure that the keyword "blue t-shirt" appears in all the keywords you suggest.

Exclude keywords in my account

This excludes keywords you've already bid on AdWords.

Skip adult ideas

Self-explanatory (I hope).

Average monthly search

This is useful for filtering keywords with a large search volume (however, these terms are competitive). You can find keywords that don't have many searches.

For example, let's say you get a long list of keyword ideas:

You can click on "Average". Monthly search to sort results "

That way, you only see keywords with the search volume.

You can do the opposite. “On average every month search again and you will find a list of low-volume terms.

Competition

You have Google Keyword Planner showing you only keywords with “Low”, “Medium” or “High” competition. 

This feature takes a lot of people on trips.

Note: Google Keyword Planner is 100% designed for Google ads, not SEO.

So the "competition" score here is just a reference to the AdWords competition (how competitive it is to rank keywords in Google's organic search results). So I recommend leaving it blank.

Ads impression sharing

Again, this setting only applies to AdWords. So for the benefit of SEO, we can ignore this filter.

Top of page bid

How much do you expect to pay for your ad at the top of your page for that keyword?

(This was called "cost per click" or "CPC")

The page bid at the top is a business intended proxy indicator. So if you want to target keywords that potential buyers are looking for, you can set this to a certain dollar amount.

You will notice that there are two options, "high" and "low grade".

I set the “low range” to lower the CPC that way, I can filter keywords without any commercial intent.

Organic impression share

This is how your site appears in the organic results of each keyword. (Note: you must connect your Google Search Console account to Google AdWords to use this feature).

Organic average condition

Where you rank (average) for each keyword in Google organic. Again, you need to connect to GSC for this to work. The same is true for filtering.

The last feature of the Keyword Results page to search is called "Expand your search."

This is a new feature that shows keywords related to the terms you typed.

For example, when you search for the Paleo Diet, you get a list of suggestions: 

Analyze the Keyword Ideas section

Now that you've filtered results on keywords that are right for your business, let's break down the rest of the terms below.

Specifically, I'm telling you how to analyze the terms shown in the Keyword Planner's "Keyword Ideas" section.

Each of the terms in this section means:

Keywords (by relevance): This is a list of keywords that Google considers most relevant to the keyword or URL you typed.

Average Monthly Search: Very self-explanatory. However, keep in mind that this is a range ... and not a micro-accurate indicator of search volume.

Pro Tip: See seasonal keywords. This is because seasonal keywords (such as "Halloween costumes") can do 1,000,000 searches in October and 100 searches in May. But the GKP says the term gets "10,000 searches per month", which is kind of misleading.

Competition: As I mentioned earlier, “competition” in Google Keyword Planner has nothing to do with SEO. Instead, "competition" is the number of advertisers bidding on that keyword. But it is useful to see if the keyword has any business purpose (after all, the more people bid on the keyword, the more likely they are to lead or become a customer).

Page Top Bid: This is another great way to increase the size of a keyword's earning potential. The more bids here, the more attractive the traffic. 

Choose a keyword

Now that you know how to use all the tools, features, and options in Google Keyword Planner, it's time to get to the last step: find great keywords that you can customize to your site's content.

This is difficult.

Why? There are many factors involved in choosing a keyword. And this is art rather than science.

That said, I learn best from examples. So I'm going to help you choose a keyword from your list by following a quick example.

For this example, I'm going to use the "Find new keywords" tool because this is the best way to reveal new keywords in Google Keyword Planner. 

First, you want to think about deep keywords… but also describe your product, service, or content ideas.

For example, suppose you run an eCommerce site that sells organic food.

If you are writing a blog post about the benefits of organic coffee, you don't need to use the keywords "coffee" (too broad) or "the health benefits of organic coffee" (too narrow).

But keywords like "organic coffee" worked great.

So pop the keyword field and click "Start".

And take a look at the following keywords:

So: How do you know which keywords are perfect to choose?

There are dozens of different elements to look at here. But I like to choose keywords based on 3 main criteria:

Search Volume: Straightforward. The higher the average search volume, the more traffic keywords can send you.

Business Purpose: In general, the higher the competition and the higher the bid, the easier it will be to convert that traffic into paying customers once it lands on your website.

Organic SEO Competition: As for business purposes, evaluating keyword competition in Google's organic search results requires more digging. You need to look at the websites that are ranked on the first page… and find out how difficult it is to increase more than that. This guide to SEO Keyword Contest covers everything you need to know.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my guide to Google Keyword Planner.

Now I would like to hear from you:

Do you use Keyword Planner to help with keyword ideas?

Or do you mostly use other keyword research tools?

Let me know in the comments below.