Google Keyword Planner: How to use it to target the right audience

Google Keyword Planner or formerly Google Keyword Tool is a tool that provides keyword ideas and traffic estimates to help build a Search Network Campaign. It is a search for keyword and ad group ideas based on terms that describe a product or service, a website or a product category related to what is being advertised.

How to use the Google Keyword Planner

To use the Google Keyword Planner in the best possible way the following steps need to be followed:-

1.Access the Google Keyword Planner-The Google Keyword Planner is a free tool. But to use it you need to have a Google Ads account. To make an account you just need to follow prompts and enter some information about you and your business. You don't need to run an active campaign to use the Keyword Planner. Next login to your Google Ad words account. Click on the wrench icon in the toolbar section of the top page. Now choose ‘Keyword Planner'. Now you will see two different tools within Keyword Planner, one is ‘Discover New Keywords’ and ‘Get search volume and forecasts'. If it comes to SEO-focused keyword research, these two tools are enough to generate thousands of potential keywords.

2.Choose your tools-There are two main tools inside Google Keyword Planner. These two tools can help you create a big list of keywords for SEO campaigns:-

a.Discover new keywords---This tool is ideal for finding new keywords. You need to start with keywords. These are words and phrases that describe your business. It allows you to access Google’s internal database of keywords for different industries. You can enter multiple keywords in this field. Just put a comma after each keyword and press enter. For e.g, if you run an e-commerce site selling cookies, then you would want to enter terms like ‘gluten free desserts’ and ‘low carb cookies’ here.

Start with a website---This is designed for Ad word users. Once the information has been entered into one or all the three fields, click ‘Get Results'. Now you will see the Keyword Results Page.

b.Get search volume and forecasts for your keywords---This feature is useful only if you already have a long list of keywords and you just want to check their search volume. But this tool won’t help to generate new keyword ideas. To use it copy and paste a list of keywords in the search field and hit ‘get started'. You will also see the same Keyword Result Page you see when you use the ‘Find new keywords’ tool. The difference is only that:-

a.you only get data on the keywords you entered.

b.Google will tell how many clicks and impressions you will get from the keywords you entered.

3.Filter and sort the results-Filter the list of keywords down to a smaller list of terms best for you. The above mentioned tools will take you to the ‘Keyword Results Page'. At the top of the page you will notice four targeting options which are locations, language, search networks and data range.

Locations-It is the country or countries that you are marketing to.

Language-This is the language of the keywords you want to see information on. Locations and Language are automatically set to target English-speaking people in the United States. If that’s your target audience you can leave these options as it is. But if you are based in Germany you would want to change the location to Germany and choose ‘German’ as the language.

Search Networks-It is whether or not you want to advertise only on Google or their ‘search partners'. Search partner sites include other search engines and Google properties like You tube.

Date Range-Leave it to the default ‘12 months’ option.

4.Analyze the keyword ideas section-When you have filtered the results to keywords ideal for your business we can break down the left terms.

Keyword(by relevance)-It is the list of keywords that Google considers most relevant to the keyword or URL which you typed.

Average monthly searches-This range is not totally an accurate indicator of search volume.

Competition-Competition in the Google Keyword Planner has nothing to do with SEO. Instead ‘Competition is just the number of advertisers that are bidding on that keyword. But it is useful to see if a keyword has any commercial content.

Top of Page bid-It is another great way to size keyword’s monetization potential. The higher bids that are here, the more lucrative the traffic is.

5.Choose a keyword-Now it’s time to find awesome keywords which will optimize the site’s content around. This may be a bit tricky. Because there are lot of factors that go into choosing a keyword. For e.g, think of a keyword that describes your product, service or content idea. If say, you run an e-commerce site that sells organic food. If you wanted to write a blog post about the health benefits of organic coffee, you would not want to use the keyword ‘coffee’ or ‘health benefits of organic coffee’. The keyword like ‘organic coffee’ would be great. So put that keyword in the field and click ‘get started’. And take a look at the keywords that come up. And how will you know which keywords to choose? Three factors that can be useful here are---

a.Search Volume-The higher the average search volume, the more traffic that keyword can give you.

b.Commercial Intent-The higher the competition and suggested bids are, the easier it will be to convert that traffic into paying consumers landing on your website.

Organic SEO Competition-Like commercial intent evaluating a keyword’s competition in Google’s organic search results will take some more efforts. You need to look at the websites that are ranking on the first page and find out how difficult it will be to outrank them.