How to Use Google Keyword Planner: 6 Hacks Most SEO

How to Use Google Keyword Planner: 6 Hacks Most SEO

 In August 2016, Google began limiting thedata available in Keyword Planner to non-advertisers. So instead of search volumes like this: You'd see useless data like this. Or is it really useless? In this tutorial, you're about to find outhow to use Google Keyword Planner. Stay tuned. 

 What's up   Oh here the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors, and dominateyour niche. Now if you're new to Keyword Planner, let'sget a free account set up for you and run through Keyword Planner's two main searchfeatures in 45 seconds. First, go to ads.google.com and click the"sign in" button up here and log in to your Google account. After you sign in, you'll be asked to enterin your email and website. Just click "Skip the guided setup," or elseyou'll have to go through a long setup process. Confirm the settings here and you're done. Now, click on tools, and choose Keyword Planner. You'll have two choices: "find keywords,"or "get search volume and forecasts." These are pretty self-explanatory. Use the first option if you're looking for newkeyword ideas. Just enter a seed keyword and Keyword Planner will kick back hundreds or thousands of related suggestions, plus some metrics. 

If you already have a list of keywords thatyou want to analyze, use the second option. This won't suggest keywords but rather it'll tellyou estimated search ranges and CPC data for the keywords you entered. Got it? Good. Now, onto the hacks! The first hack is to unlock exact  volumes without spending a dime. Well... Kind of. When Google started restricting their data,most SEOs completely stopped using their tool. And a lot of us just weren't willing to spendthe money in advertising to unlock the search volumes since that money could be spent onbetter SEO tools. The good news is that you can still see theexact search volumes inside Keyword pranner without spending a penny. First, go to "find keywords" and search fora keyword phrase or add multiple seed keywords. And here, you can see that both "iphone charger"and "apple iPhone charger" fall into the same average monthly search volume range. But you and I both know that one of thesehas significantly more search volume, right? So, I'll select these two keyword phrases andselect "exact match" from this dropdown.

 Finally, I'll add these to our plan. Next, click on the "keywords" menu in thesidebar. And next, I'll edit the maximum CPC value to thehighest Google allows. And as you start to exceed the maximum value,Adwords will show you a limit. So I'll match that number to see the mostexposure we can get for these keywords. Now take a look at the impressions columnin the table below. This number tells you the estimated numberof impressions your ad would get over the next 30 days from your target keywords ifyou bid this amount. This number should be a workable representationof the total search volume for your keyword if you were to attain a top ranking organicposition. Boom. Unlocked. One thing worth noting here is that you shouldtake these numbers with a grain of salt. Adwords doesn't always show ads for everysearch query. And these impression figures are meant foradvertisers and not for SEOs. For more accurate estimations, try a toolmade for SEOs like Keywords Explorer. The next hack is to steal keyword ideas fromyour competitors. And Keyword Planner is the most useful forits ability to generate keyword ideas based on a seed keyword. But did you know that you can generate keywordideas from a page or from an entire domain? Let's say that you want to create a post onbroken link building. Go to Google and search for your target keyword and look at the top ranking pages. Then you can copy and paste the URL rightinto Google Keyword Planner. 

Just make sure to select the page URL andthen run the search. Keyword planner will then bring up a listof keyword ideas based on the page that you've entered so you can get a list of relevantkeywords on that topic. Something to note is that this list of keyword ideas do not necessarily represent the organic keywords that this page ranks for. For example, one of the keyword suggestionsis "link building company," but if you look through the top 100 results for this searchquery, our page is nowhere to be found. To get hyper-relevant keywords for a page,you'd have to use Ahrefs Site Explorer's organic keywords report, where you can see all ofthe keywords a page ranks for, the keyword metrics, and ranking positions. So, take these recommendations in Google KeywordPlanner with a grain of salt and consider topical relevance when filtering through theresults. Another cool thing you can do is enter inthe domain of one of your competitors and see if you can come up with topic ideas thatare relevant for your site. So, I could type in, hubspot.com and then searchtheir entire site for keyword ideas. Now, you'll see a bunch of branded queries,which aren't very helpful since you likely won't be able to serve the search intent forsomething like "Hubspot sales training." You can exclude their brand name by clickingon Filter, select Keyword Text, then choose "does not contain" from the dropdown. Now, just enter in their brand name and you'll see a much more relevant list of topics that you can target. You can also get creative with these filters. If you wanted to find question-like keywords,then you can add more keyword text filters. So, you can see here that I set up keywordtext filters that contain keywords like who, what, when, where, why, and how. 

And you'll see a solid list of questions youcan use in your blog posts or FAQ sections. And it looks like most of the questions arebased around the topic of CRMs. But this report only shows us around 50 orso results, which doesn't seem right. Compare that to Ahrefs' questions report withthe seed, CRM, and you'll see over 10,000 different questions that have search volume. But again, Keyword Planner is made for advertisers, so it's not surprising that SEO tools would outshine them. The next hack is to find lucrative keywordsby looking at suggested bids. And this tip is pretty simple but extremely powerful. And it's based on this logic: If advertisers are willing to pay top dollarfor an ad placement on a keyword, then that keyword likely holds commercial intent. So let's use furniture as our seed keyword. Then I'll sort the data by "Top of page bid"on the high range. And right away, you can see a whole bunchof great commercial keyword ideas. One thing I would recommend looking at is the disparity between the low range and high range bids. You'll see that "oriental furniture" has a low range of around $1, while the high range is over $20. On the other hand, office furniture has alow range bid of around $6 and a high range of $22, which suggests that advertisers areconsistently willing to pay top dollar on these ad placements. It's also worth looking for exact keywordvolumes on the keywords you're interested in targeting. For example, Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer showsthat "modern green couch" only has 20 monthly searches in the United States.

 Now, while advertisers are willing to payupwards of $50, you'd have to evaluate if targeting this phrase would be worth yourtime and effort. The next hack is one of my favorites and that'sto get targeted locational data. With most keyword research tools, you canonly see keyword data by country. For example, if you look up "cleaning services"using the impressions hack, then you'll see that there are nearly 150,000 impressionsper month in the US alone. But I highly doubt someone is going to flyacross the country to clean your house. So, click on the locations at the top and enterthe location that you serve. So, I'll set the location to Toronto, and you'llsee the number of impressions change. One last thing you should do is to make surethat the CPC is set to its maximum value since Adwords costs will vary based on location. And you should see a new updated version of theimpressions for the locations you've selected. Now, this example is for a pretty big city,so if you happen to live in a rural area, you may want to select all of the differentcities and locations that your customers will be willing to travel from or the locationsyou will be willing to travel to. Then you can get an extra layer of insightsby going to the plan overview. Just scroll to the bottom of the pageto see the percentage of impressions by the locations you entered. But using locational data isn't limited tojust local businesses, which you'll see in the next hack. And that's to find out which countries, cities,and regions need your products and services on a global or national scale. Just enter in a keyword phrase or phrasesthat your prospective customers might be looking for. So, I'll just type in SEO tools, keyword research,and backlink checker. Then add the keywords to your plan. Next, make sure that you clear any selectedlocations, which will search for data in all locations from around the world. The report that you want to look at is, the"Plan Overview". If we scroll down to the bottom of the page,you'll see the countries ranked in order of popularity based on the filter you choosehere. So, in our case as SEOs, impressions wouldmake the most sense.

 Seeing that the majority of