Here’s a step by step guide on how to find the right keywords to increase your organic traffic on your website! Google has a free keyword research tool, Google Keyword Planner.
It is a very useful tool to identify possible keyword ideas, blog post topics to boost your search engine rankings. This blog will show you how to use the tool and get the most out of it to improve your SEO performance.
We’ll start with showing you how to set up a Google Ads Account. If you already have an Ads account, you can skip that part.
Set up Google Ads
You’ll need a Google account before you can use Google Keyword Planner. Then go to Google Ads home and click Start Now. Now select your Google account to sign in.
Google Ads will ask you to create a campaign. Because you don't want to spend any money on ads yet, it's best to skip this step by clicking Create an account without a campaign.
Google Keyword Planner
Once you’re in Google Ads, open Google Keyword Planner, click Tools & Settings on the right top corner. Then select Keyword Planner listed under Planning from the drop-down menu.
Then two options appear:
Discover new keywords – this option can show you keyword ideas that you can use to increase your website traffic.
Get search volume and forecasts –this option shows you how to find out the historical trend, search volume, and future forecast about a keyword.
Select Discover New Keywords Option
When you select Discover new keywords, you’ll see two tabs: Start with Keywords and Start with a Website.
Start with Keywords
Under start with keywords, you can enter words (example: Google Analytics, pink hoodies or evening gowns) or phrases (example: how to use Google Analytics, What colour goes with purple) to find keywords. You can enter up to 10 keywords/phrases, and if you want, you can enter a domain to use as a filter. After entering the search terms, click Get Results.
Start with a Website
If you go with the other tab, start with a website, you can enter a website URL to find keywords ideas. Google Keyword Planner uses the website you entered as a source and bring up search terms for you to use.
It even gives you a choice to search the entire website or a specific page. After entering the URL, click Get Results.
This option is the cheapest way to look at what your competitors are doing and stealing their keywords. Just enter their website URL and see the keywords they are working on.
How to Use Google Keyword Planner’s Results
Once you click get results, Google Keyword Planner will bring up results using the URL or the keywords you entered and suggest many keyword ideas.
For example, when we entered Google Analytics as our search term, the tool showed us 674 keyword ideas available.
For every keyword shown by Google Keyword Planner, you’ll see four metrics:
monthly searches – shows a range of how many searches the term receives every month, so you know which keyword can bring in the most traffic.
Competition – this represents how difficult is it to get an ad placement (usually described as low, medium, or high), but you also use it a basic metric to see the competition on the keyword.
Top of page bid (low range) – shows how lucrative are the keywords and the lowest advertisers would pay for a top of page bid.
Tope of page bid (high range) – shows how lucrative are the keywords and the highest advertisers would pay for a top page bid.
You can also use additional filters to find new keywords based on location, language, search network, and time period.
Select Get Search Volumes and Forecasts
If you remember back in step 2, Google Keyword Planner presented with you another option to get search volumes and forecasts.
Just enter the keywords or phrases in the box, separated by commas or in the next line, and click Get Started.
For the keywords you enter, Google Keyword Planner will forecast the total number of clicks, impressions (how many times your ad will be displayed), overall cost, average position, and cost-per-click (CPC) you could expect for the next 30 days.
Using this information, you can pick keywords that can help you boost your website’s performance. For instance, if you’re looking for quick results, you can select a keyword that has a monthly search volume between 1k – 10k and has low to medium competition.
Why Use Google Keyword Planner?
Google Keyword Planner is meant for advertisers, but it has a lot of SEO value. For starters, its 100% FREE! And it offers a good starting point to find keywords for your business.
You can look up individual search terms or enter a website address to see keywords. The bidding values and the competition level is great for understanding how lucrative the keywords are. It helps you select monetary keywords that can help you increase sales.
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