Google Keyword Planner is an excellent utility for enhancing your search engine optimization, also known as SEO. It's tremendously easy to use, and it's free for everyone. If you understand how and why you should use Google Keyword Planner, you will help your content reach the most people and get the most interaction that it can.
What Is Google Keyword Planner?
Google Keyword Planner provides users with the best SEO keywords for their online content topics. SEO keywords are important because they demonstrate the relevancy of your online content to particular search queries. If your content contains the right keywords, it's more likely to be a higher "hit" in a Google search. A higher hit means that it will display before other similar articles, perhaps ones that don't use strong SEO content.
Remember, software programs don't have critical thinking skills. Instead, they rely on algorithms data to make them smarter. SEO keywords tell search engine software like Google that a particular website is relevant to a specific search.
Why Is Google Keyword Planner Effective?
Software programs like search engines rely on programmable information to make them intelligent. They "learn" by acquiring more and more data, which is essential to understanding how keywords and Google Keyword Planner work. When someone performs an internet search for any given topic, the search engine reads the words in that query and then scours the internet for web pages with closely associated keywords.
An example may help illustrate this: suppose you want to create a webpage about organic dog food. When you enter the phrase "organic dog food" into Google Keyword Planner, it suggests that you also include some of the following terms in your content:
Best organic dog food
Organic puppy food
Bone meal for dogs
Organic dog food brands
Organic raw dog food
By including as many of those phrases as possible without sounding robotic or forced, you optimize your content and the likelihood that your website will rank higher in a search for "organic dog food."
How To Use Google Keyword Planner
First, you should set up a Google account. If you have a personal account, you can use that, although you may want to establish a separate account for professional purposes, even if you don't plan to use the email address. It's worth noting that all Google products perform best on Google Chrome, but you can use any browser. Once you sign in to Google in your browser, navigate to the Google Ads homepage. Click "Start Now," a button that usually displays at the top right corner of the window. On the pop-up window that follows, click "Create an account without a campaign" since you're not yet launching a media campaign.
It will then prompt you to enter some basic information for your business, such as your time zone, billing country, and currency. It's essential to enter this accurately, as it may impact your later results. After you hit Submit to enter that information, you should get a screen notifying you that your account is set up. Click "Explore Your Account" to continue.
Click "Tools and Settings" in the window's top right corner. From the menu, select "Keyword Planner." From there, you have two options, "Discover new keywords" and "Get search volume and forecasts." Both are important, but let's start with "Discover new keywords." Starting with keywords or a website, you will receive a prompt to enter up to ten words and phrases to generate keywords. You can also filter using a domain. The "start with keywords" function works best if you have a topic to write or are building a site.
Alternatively, you can let Google SEO "read" your webpage and suggest keywords for you. This method works best to optimize existing content or when adding a page or content to an existing site. Enter the URL and click "Get Results."
Understanding the Results
Google doesn't just suggest keywords; they also provide analytics in four categories for each keyword: average monthly searches, competition, and top-of-page bids (low and high). The average monthly searches metric tells you how often users search for this term, indicating its importance. The competition metric contains the number of other sites that utilize this keyword. The top-of-page bids low and high columns tell you how much an advertiser would bid for a top-of-page ad with this keyword.
The "Get Search Volumes and Forecast" option gives you data on keywords you already have rather than suggesting new keywords based on your content. Add the keywords or phrases into the search bar, separated by a line break or comma. From there, you can see three categories of data: forecasts, negative keywords, and historical metrics. It can be helpful to run this report once you've selected the keywords for your content.
Forecasts predict how successful your keyword will be using a variety of metrics. Negative keywords are words and phrases to avoid because they will negate or offset your keyword or phrase. Historical metrics will tell you the number of searches conducted for your keyword every month based on actual data, as well as the level of competition for each of them. If the level of competition is high, it means a lot of other sites utilize this phrase.
Using Google Keyword Planner Effectively
Google Keyword Planner is a tremendous tool for Google SEO and directing more traffic to your website. The biggest downfall of this tool is overuse and hyper-focus. Sometimes, content writers can become consumed with packing their content so full of keywords and phrases that it hardly makes sense or becomes awkward and difficult to read. Beware of this pitfall as you utilize this tool.
It's also important to remember that keyword searches are constantly changing, so updating your keyword utilization is crucial for the long-term success of your site. Don't forget to periodically revisit the analytics for updated data, especially for your most important web pages. If you need professional assistance, please reach out to Wordsmyth Creative Content Marketing today.