Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a free software tool webmasters use to learn about the popularity of keywords and keyword phrases, how Google search engine users are looking for certain keywords, the competition to buy Google Ads advertisements using those keywords, and the cost per click.

Paid advertising campaigns are conducted on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. On the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), both non-paid (also called “organic”) and paid search results appear. The estimation is that 70% of Internet users will click on organic search results, and 30% will click on a paid advertisement.

Even though the amount of clicks is fewer on the paid ads than the organic results, it is still possible to conduct PPC campaigns that produce a profit.

Keyword research is essential for any PPC or SEO strategy. Identifying keywords that attract qualified traffic to your website begins with utilising the appropriate tools. Google’s free Keyword Planner should be an integral component of your research efforts.

When used effectively, Keyword Planner offers valuable insights that go beyond merely suggesting keywords. You can examine data on search volume, competitive metrics, suggested bid amounts, and additional information.

This guide will walk through how to maximise your use of Keyword Planner to uncover the best keywords and inform your overall targeting approach. Follow these tips to get the most out of this invaluable research tool.

ALSO SEE: Understanding Google Algorithm Updates

Initiating Your Keyword Journey: Google Ads Planner Fundamentals

It is simple to learn the basics of Google Ads Keyword Planner.

If you already have an Ads account, skip this paragraph. A new user must establish a Google Ads account by visiting the Ads website. A YouTube video showing how easy it is to set up a Google As account in about ten minutes.

For those with an Ads account, just go to the Google Ads Keyword Planner webpage and sign in with your Ads account information.

Google describes the Ads Keyword Planner as a tool used by those launching a paid advertising campaign, expanding an existing campaign, or considering the launch of a paid advertising campaign to help them do the following:

• Conduct an extensive keyword search
• Get ideas for ad groupings, which are clusters of ads that create a greater overall response
• Review and historical research statistics
• Estimate how a list of potential keywords may perform
• Predict the outcome of the multiplier effect by combining many keyword lists.
• Helps to choose the amount to offer under the competitive bidding structure
• Helps to decide on the budgets for paid advertisement campaigns

The Google tips to make the best use of the Google Ads Keyword Planner has a video of how to organise your keywords and the suggestions of the Google Ads Keyword Planner Help, which include:

• Try to think as if you are your own best customer.
• What would you search for to find your own company, products, or services?
• What would you type in the Google search engine?
• Select keywords that are less generic and more likely to target your best customer.
• Use more general searches of keywords to get more people (more costly), but get very specific to find the best target customers.
• Choose the right balance of keywords in an ad group. Usually, this is five to no more than twenty. Google automatically includes misspellings and plural versions of keywords, so there is no need to add those to any ad group.

A Few Simple Tests to Perform:

1. Get the help of a young person (age 12 to 18) who is very used to using the Internet to find things. Ask them to find a company in your target market area that sells a certain type of product or service. Then, watch and record what they find.
2. Repeat the test of #1 above, but the second time, use an adult (19 to 34).
3. Repeat the test of #1 above, but the third time, use an older adult (35 to 65).

It’s important to recognise that if none of the three groups—youngsters, young adults, and older adults—see your company in the organic search results or as a paid advertisement on the SERP, it indicates an issue with your online marketing strategy that requires modification.

Advanced Techniques in AdWords Keyword Research

For those willing to give some simple registration information and an email address, Hubspot offers a free E-book to help beginners learn how to use Google Ads Keyword Planner effectively.

Google claims that the goal of every advertiser using Google Ads should be to make $2 in revenue for every $1 spent on Ads advertisements. According to a study conducted in 2009 by Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, this was the average performance taken from a large sample of advertisers using Ads.

There is a risk of financial loss when running advertising campaigns. One of the most common errors made by novice advertisers is selecting keywords that are overly broad. For instance, using the keyword “mechanic” will yield results for various types of mechanics, including auto mechanics and airplane mechanics. Furthermore, it will also retrieve all related content, such as mechanic job listings or parts utilised by mechanics.

Understanding this problem, paying for the keyword “mechanic” on Ads to advertise an auto repair shop in Glasgow would be a horrendous waste of advertising dollars. A better choice would be to pay for the keywords “auto mechanic Glasgow” or “Glasgow auto mechanic.”

The Significance of Keyword Research in Successful PPC Campaigns

Keyword research identifies and analyses relevant keywords people search for information or products online. In PPC advertising, keyword research is crucial in targeting the right audience, optimising ad spend, and maximising campaign effectiveness.

Unveiling the Power of Google AdWords Keyword Planner

Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a free tool that provides valuable insights into search terms, competition levels, and keyword performance metrics. It enables you to:

• Discover Relevant Keywords: Uncover hidden keywords that align with your target audience and business goals.
• Analyse Keyword Competition: Assess the competitiveness of your chosen keywords to optimise your bidding strategies.
• Estimate Search Volume: Gain insights into the search volume for potential keywords to prioritise high-performing ones.
• Identify Negative Keywords: Exclude irrelevant keywords to prevent ad spending on irrelevant searches.

A Comprehensive Keyword Research Walkthrough on Google AdWords Keyword Planner

1. Define Your Goals: Clearly define your advertising goals to narrow your keyword research focus.
2. Identify Target Audience: Understand your target audience’s demographics, interests, and online behaviour to identify relevant search terms.
3. Seed Keywords: Start with a few broad keywords related to your business or products to generate additional suggestions.
4. Refine Your Keyword List: Analyse the suggested keywords, filtering them based on relevance, search volume, and competition.
5. Organise Keywords into Ad Groups: Group related keywords into ad groups to create targeted and effective ads.

Actionable Tips for Selecting, Filtering, and Prioritising Keywords

• Consider Search Intent: Make sure the keywords you choose match the search intent of your intended audience.
• Prioritise High-Volume, Low-Competition Keywords: Target keywords that have a high search volume but moderate levels of competition to enhance your reach.
• Incorporate Long-Tail Keywords: Add long-tail keywords, which are more precise and typically face less competition, to draw in specific traffic.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Google AdWords Keyword Planner

• Overreliance on Automated Tools: While tools are valuable, conduct manual keyword research to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience’s search patterns.
• Neglecting Negative Keywords: Regularly review and update your negative keyword list to prevent irrelevant ad impressions and wasted ad spending.
• Ignoring Search Trends: Stay updated on industry trends and emerging keywords to adapt your campaigns accordingly.
• Failing to Track Keyword Performance: Monitor keyword performance metrics regularly to optimise bids, ad copy, and landing pages.

Case Studies of Keyword Research Success

To illustrate the power of effective keyword research, let’s examine a few real-world examples:

• Case Study 1: An e-commerce store specialising in organic skincare products utilised Google AdWords Keyword Planner to identify long-tail keywords related to specific skin concerns. By targeting these niche keywords, they attracted highly qualified traffic and significantly increased their sales.
• Case Study 2: A SaaS company providing project management software leveraged Google AdWords Keyword Planner to uncover industry-specific keywords. By targeting these keywords, they connected with their ideal audience and achieved a substantial boost in lead generation.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Steering clear of common mistakes can significantly enhance your keyword research efforts:

• Over-dependence on Branded Keywords: Although branded keywords can be beneficial, it’s important not to underestimate the value of non-branded keywords in expanding your audience reach.
• Disregarding Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords may have lower search volumes, but they typically draw in highly engaged searchers, resulting in increased conversion rates.
• Overlooking Search Intent: Make sure your keywords resonate with user search intent to prevent irrelevant traffic and ineffective budget expenditure.
• Neglecting Performance Monitoring: Consistently track your keyword performance to pinpoint underachievers and implement necessary adjustments.

Mastering the Art of Keyword Discovery: Strategies for AdWords Success

The Keyword Planner workflow involves everything from brainstorming new keyword ideas to analysing metrics:

• Start broad – Seed the tool with a core term or phrase related to your business to find wide variations.
• Filter and refine – Narrow keyword lists by metrics like volume, language, and location.
• Search for questions – Look for “how to” and other question-based search queries.
• Mine the keyword ideas tab – This shows additional long-tail variations.
• Study keyword metrics – Volume, competition, trends, and seasonality all help determine viability.
• Save keywords – Shortlist ones to target and optimise for. Export for PPC campaigns.
• Identify negatives – Exclude irrelevant or poor-performing keywords using the negative match option.
• Complement with other tools – Expand research using Übersuggest, SEMrush, Moz, etc.

Getting Competitive Intelligence:

Beyond keywords, dig into competitive data:

• Benchmark your site – See how you currently rank for target keywords to beat competitors.
• Analyse top-ranking domains – Learn what sites rank highest for your targets.
• Study paid vs. organic mix – See if competitors invest more in SEO or PPC for a term.
• Check search impression share – This reveals the % of searches your ads could have shown for.

Determining Keyword Value and Intent:

With robust Keyword Planner data, you can determine the potential value and dial in your strategy:

• Identify commercial intent – Higher-value transactional queries encompass terms like “buy”, “get”, and more.
• Assess searcher intent – Determine if users are looking for information, prepared to make a purchase, or evaluating options.
• Estimate click potential – Use Keyword Planner to view average CPC data for cost estimation.
• Check search volume trends – Analyse whether search volume is steady, increasing, or seasonal.
• Confirm relevance – Verify that keywords are directly connected to your products, services, and content.
• Evaluate difficulty – Assess whether ranking for a keyword is feasible based on various metrics.
• Segment keywords – Organise keywords into ad groups or categories for PPC campaigns.

By thoroughly researching keywords and mining the data, you gain insights to optimise your targeting and maximise ROI.

Ongoing Optimisation:

• Compare keywords to site analytics – See which drives conversions and high-value traffic.
• Shift budget to top performers – Double down on profitable keywords.
• Phase out poor performers – Stop targeting keywords that are not generating results.
• Refine negative keywords – Add any irrelevant queries triggering ads.
• Stay on top of trends – Revisit Keyword Planner to identify new, rising search terms.
• Build keyword-focused landing pages – Provide relevant content and messaging.

With regular use, Google’s Keyword Planner can transform your PPC and SEO targeting strategy by revealing high-potential keywords competitors may be missing.

Conversion is the Key

Unless the goal of a media campaign is only to create awareness, such as brand recognition, then conversion is the most important benchmark to track. Conversion is a process that comes from web traffic. Web traffic is the number of visitors to a website.

When an organisation engages in a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) online advertising campaign using Google Ads, they bid in an auction for keywords and keyword phrases. They manage and monitor the performance of their campaign through the AdWords dashboard. Every time an Internet user clicks on a paid advertisement (click-through rate) for a keyword or keyword phrase, the prepaid Google advertisement account receives a debit for a certain amount for each click until there are no longer any funds available in the account to pay for clicks.

Conversion happens after an Internet user clicks on something, depending on what they do next. Conversion can be that they give their email address, register for a new account on the website, ask for a sales call, or directly purchase a product or service from the website.

Return on Investment

Conversion refers to the process of turning web traffic into revenue. It serves as a quantifiable standard to evaluate whether investing in clicks is worthwhile.

To illustrate this, consider a straightforward return on investment (ROI) analysis for a pay-per-click advertising program. The example company is a plumbing business located in Dublin, Ireland, catering to both residential and commercial clients. Although the company has a significant number of residential customers, it is important to note that it generates greater profits by offering plumbing services to commercial clients.

Therefore, the company wants to target commercial plumbing customers in Dublin, Ireland.

Here is a checklist of the counter-intuitive things they should NOT do:

• Use generic keywords in a Google Ads campaign, such as plumbing, plumbers, or commercial plumbing.
• Fail to have a landing page for a click-through that specifically addresses the keyword or phrases they advertise on Google Ads.
• Have the mistaken idea that spending money (perhaps a lot of it) on a Google Ads campaign will produce a wonderful result. The expectation of this is always higher than the actual results, which can sometimes be abysmal.

The Supreme Effectiveness of Localised Results

This is the “Zen” of using Google Ads and the Google Ads Keyword Planner effectively, despite the oh-so-helpful, yet completely misleading, Google suggestions for using the Google Ads Keyword Planner.

Google’s official helpful suggestions are absurd. They use, as an example, a small shoe store that just opened with a brand new website, which uses the keyword “shoes” and other such generic keywords to attract attention.

This is COMPLETE nonsense, and this introductory stuff only makes the “newbies” waste a lot of money on paid advertising.

To prevent unnecessary expenses, utilise the Google Keyword Planner as a research tool to explore new keywords and analyse search volume data. Additionally, take great care and be precise when completing the information requested in the form for a Keyword Planner search.

In this example, we applied the Google Ads Keyword Planner for a Brighton plumbing company aiming to expand into more commercial business.

Here are the exact entries we made in the requested fields of the Google Ads Keyword Planner:

• Your product or service: commercial plumbing
• Your landing page: brioghtonplumber.com (Note: We are not affiliated with this real company, but we do hope they get lots of new business because we used them as a real example. That’s good karma.)
• Your product category: plumbing
• Targeting: Brighton, England, United Kingdom

Here are the suggested keywords that come up using the Google Ads Keyword Planner that specifically relate to commercial plumbing in Brighton, UK:

Keyword	Average Monthly Searches	Suggested Bid Per Click
Plumbing fittings	10	US$ 0.11
Plumbing snake	10	US$ 0.74
Leaky pipe	10	US$ 0.75
Plumbing pipe	10	US$ 0.83
Plumbing jobs	30	US$ 1.05
Plumbing and heating	10	US$ 1.05
City plumbers	10	US$ 1.20
Brighton plumbers	30	US$ 13.58
Plumbers Brighton	110	US$ 14.57
Emergency Plumber	30	US$ 14.64
Central heating Brighton	10	US$ 17.23
Blocked drain	20	US$ 18.24
Blocked toilet	30	US$ 20.78

From Keywords to Content: Crafting Compelling Copy with Keyword Planner Insights

Keyword research is just the first step in creating effective online content. The real magic happens when you transform those keywords into engaging, valuable content that resonates with your audience. Google AdWords Keyword Planner provides a wealth of data, but knowing how to use these insights to craft compelling copy is a skill that can significantly boost your content marketing efforts.

Start by using Keyword Planner to identify your primary keywords and related terms. These will form the backbone of your content strategy. However, don’t just stuff your content with keywords. Instead, use them as inspiration for topics and subtopics. For instance, if you’re targeting “organic skincare,” Keyword Planner might suggest related terms like “natural ingredients” or “sensitive skin solutions.” These can become sections in your article or even inspire entire blog posts.

When writing, focus on addressing the user intent behind the keywords. Are people looking for information, trying to solve a problem, or ready to make a purchase? Tailor your content accordingly. Use your primary keyword in key places like the title, first paragraph, and conclusion, but don’t force it. Instead, sprinkle in related terms and synonyms throughout your content to create a natural, comprehensive piece that covers the topic thoroughly.

Remember, while keyword optimisation is important for SEO, the ultimate goal is to create value for your readers. Use Keyword Planner insights as a guide, but let your expertise and understanding of your audience drive the content creation process.

Frequently Asked Questions About Keyword Planner:

What metrics should I look at in Keyword Planner?

• Focus on monthly searches, competition, CPC, trends, and search impression share data for insights.

How often should I use Keyword Planner for research?

• Ongoing research is ideal. Revisit at least quarterly to catch new trends and emerging keywords.

What is a good average CPC benchmark?

• Under $1 average, CPC is low competition, while $3+ indicates high competition for a term.

Should I export keywords to campaigns?

• Yes, shortlist viable keywords in Keyword Planner, then export to apply in paid ad groups.

How many keyword ideas should I aim for?

• Look for at least 50+ potential keyword variations, but vet thoroughly based on metrics.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner: Conclusion:

Google’s free Keyword Planner should be an essential part of your marketing toolkit for discovering the best keywords to target. It allows for extensive research and provides important metrics such as search volume, competition, and cost per click. To get a complete understanding, pair the Planner with additional keyword tools. Regularly analysing data with Keyword Planner will offer insights based on evidence, helping you optimise both your paid and organic marketing strategies for the best return on investment.

Our research indicates that while the Google Ads Keyword Planner is valuable for a general overview, a more thorough and detailed analysis is required to achieve successful outcomes in any online advertising campaign. Do you have any differing opinions on this?