Intro to Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is the most widely used tool for keyword analysis. It helps you get the search volume of keywords, forecasts a future search volume that you can expect, and at the same time helps you discover new keywords. In this article, we will be discussing each of these features in detail.

Overview of Google Keyword Planner

In order to access Google Keyword Planner, click here.

Once you navigate to Google Keyword Planner, you will be presented with two options:

• Discover new keywords
• Get Search Volume and Forecasts

We will be discussing about each of this in detail in the following article.

Get Keyword Search Volume and Forecasts on Google Keyword Planner

The Search Volume and Forecasts feature lets you get details on the keyword that you are interested in. This feature helps you get an estimate on the amount of traffic you are going to get for a particular keyword and other metrics associated with it.

While searching for keywords using Get Search Volume and Forecasts in Google Keyword Planner, you will encounter the following options:

1. Historical Metrics – Google Keyword Planner

The Historical metrics in Keyword Planner would provide you with historic data related to the keyword that you searched for. Under historical metrics, you’ll find the following columns:

a) Avg. monthly searches

The average number of times that the keyword specified, or its close variants, has been searched on a monthly basis. The value specified here is normally in a specific range.

For example – ‘keyword planner’ as a keyword has 10K – 100K average monthly searches as value.

b) Competition

Gives you an indication of the amount of competition involved or the number of competitors around the keyword. It has 3 distinct values – Low, Medium, and High. Competition as High means that there are a lot of competitors bidding around that keyword and would be really difficult to range higher up the rankings.

For example – ‘keyword planner’ has competition value as ‘Low’.

c) Ad Impression Share

This metric gives you an indication of the number of times your ad would be displayed against a particular search query.

Ad impression share = (No. of impressions you’ve received / no. of searches)

d) Top of page bid (low range)

The lowest bid that an advertiser has historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid.

For example – ‘keyword planner’ as a keyword has ₹14.39 as the top of page bid (low range).

e) Top of page bid (high range)

As opposed to the previous metric, this metric provides the max an advertiser has historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid. For example – ‘keyword planner’ as a keyword has ₹1184.53 as the top of page bid (high range).

f) Account status

It shows if a keyword is already in your account or plan, or that it has been added as a negative keyword.

g) Competition (Indexed Value)

It assigns a score to a keyword-based on its competition. The score ranges from 0 – 100, 100 is the one with very high competition. Normally, a keyword with competition index under 30 is considered to be of low competition, 30 – 50 as a medium, and 50+ to be high.

For example – ‘keyword planner’ as a keyword has a competition indexed value of 13.

h) Organic Average Position

Shows a comparison on how listings from your website would stand against those from other sites. To check this, you need to link your Ads account with Google Search Console.

i) Organic Impression Share

It shows the percentage of times a listing from your keyword showed up in Google’s search result. To check this, you need to link your Ads account with Google Search Console.

2. Forecasts search data – Google Keyword Planner

The forecasts tab is going to provide you with forecasts on the how much traffic a particular keyword is going to drive for your account. The forecasted information is calculated based on your bid, seasonality, budget, and historical ad quality. Here is what a forecast for ‘keyword planner’ for my account looks like:

What do these forecasts metrics indicate?

• Clicks – The number of clicks your ad could receive each day.
• Impressions – Indicates how often your ad would be shown, or how many users would be presented with your ad.
• Cost – The average amount you would end up spending to receive the indicated outcome.
• CTR (Clickthrough rate) – Is a ratio of the number of clicks that your ad might receive divided by the number of impressions.
• Avg’ CPC (Average cost-per-click) – Indicates the average amount you would end up paying for a click.
• Avg’ Position (Average Position) – Is basically the position of your ad in the SERP page. Value as 1 indicates that your ad is going to be the first result on Google search.

3. Plan Overview – Google Keyword Planner

The plan overview page gives more detailed information on the keyword of your choice. The information includes keyword information, future forecasts, device performance, and location-specific details.

a) Keyword specific information

This table allows you to cross-verify your selected keyword against conversion metrics like Conversions, Avg’ CPA, ROAS, and others.

b) Forecasts over next year

This tab gives you a line graph spanning over the next 1 year depicting your keyword performance. The graph would be determined based on the metric you select.

c) Device Performance

This is an interesting tab which allows you to judge your keyword’s performance cross-device. Google provides you with predicted placement-based data across Mobile phones, Tablets, and Computers.

d) Location stats

The final tab is a pie chart which gives an indication about how a particular location is going to fare in terms of bringing in traffic.

Discover New Keywords using Google Keyword Planner

Apart from getting historic data on the keywords that you are interested in, Keyword Planner also helps you to find newer keywords. In this section, we will be discussing about how Keywords Planner helps you with discovering new keywords.

How do I access the ‘Search for new Keywords’ tab?

In order to access this, just navigate to Google Keywords tool. You’ll be presented with the option along with the previous one.

Once you navigate to ‘Discover New Keywords’, you’ll find the following two tabs:

• Start with Keywords
• Start with a Website

Both of these options serve distinct purposes, but with the same intent. Let us check each of these in detail.

1. Start with Keywords – Keyword Research with Keyword Planner

Use this option if you already have a keyword, or a set of keywords, and you just want to find other related keywords around it.

How does it work?

For instance, let’s say your primary keyword is ‘keyword planner’ and you want to find other related keywords around it.

Enter your keyword ‘keyword planner’ in the text box ‘Enter products or services closely related to your business’ and click on ‘Get Results’.

Keyword Planner will give you stats related to your keyword, which is ‘keyword planner’ along with various other keywords that are closely related to it.

Against each keyword, you can find metrics associated with it, like Avg’ monthly searches, Competition, Ad Impression Share, Clicks, and others.

Google Keyword Planner will also give you other suggestions so as to improve or broaden your search. You can find it just below the search menu.

However, it is always a good practice to make use of match types of improving your conversion rates. If you want to learn more about match types, click here.

2. Enter domain to use as a filter:

While using the ‘Start with keywords’ option, you’ll encounter another option ‘Enter domain to use as a filter’. Use this option along with keyword if you just want to know your keyword stats for this page.

How does it work?

For instance, lets consider the keyword to be ‘keyword planner’, and what to know what other keywords are being used by Google Support Site related to this.

So, enter ‘keyword planner’ in Discover new keywords tab and enter the Google Help URL in domain filter.

Click on ‘Get Results’. You will find all the related keywords that Google is making use of, along with their stats.

3. Start with a Website – Keyword Research with Keyword Planner

This is the second technique that would help you with your keyword research. This would come in handy when you’re not sure of the keywords that you want to target but have a list of competitors competing with you.

There are two different way of using this section of Keyword Planner.

• Use the entire site – Use this option when you want to get details of keywords from the entire website of your liking.
• Use only this page – Use this if you just want to understand the keywords a particular page within a website ranks for.

How does it work?

Let’s say you are trying to compete against Google for ranking an article around ‘keyword planner’. But you’re not so certain of the focus keyword that you want to use. First thing you do is go and find your competitor’s page where this article is listed and which is ranking the highest in SERP. Once you find it, enter the URL in the text box, and select ‘use only this page’.

Click on Get Results. You’ll get the details of all the keywords that Google makes use of, in this particular article along with their stats.

Summary

In this article, we learnt about the basics of how to go about keyword research, and intro into Google Keyword Planner. We also leant the various metrics that are associated with the keywords and how each of those matters. And finally, about using the tool to help you with your keyword research.