The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a free tool provided as an aid to help build out your Search Network keyword lists.
Here are five ways you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner and have a healthy account:
1. Get keyword ideas
Are you struggling to build a keyword list that is relevant to your business, products, and/or services? The Keyword Planner has a couple of solutions to help you find what people are searching for when looking for your products or services.
In the Planner you can click on “Search for new keywords and ad group ideas” in order to simply tell Google what your product or service is, or by providing a URL for a page on your site that is highly relevant to your business, or selecting your product from a large list of predetermined categories.
The Planner also has an option to refine suggested keywords by adding targeting for specific locations, languages, search networks and even adding negative keywords.
Fill out the information and let Google suggest new ideas that you hadn’t thought of.
2. Discover search volumes
The Keyword Planner can also help you find potential impression volume for a list of keywords you already have. To learn how much volume your keywords will have, use the “Get search volume for a list of keywords” feature.
Insert your keyword list and the tool can provide a search volume average breakdown for each keyword.
3. Learn how competitive your keywords are
Competition for ad rank can inflate your ad costs substantially. To get a better feel for what your competitors are bidding on, upload your keywords and Google will give you a ranking for each. The ranking will be either low, medium, or high, based on how many other people are bidding on a particular keyword. This can help you decide what types of keywords are high priorities for your competition as well as give you an idea about potential cost.
4. Get traffic estimates on a given bid
Want to know how much traffic your keywords could generate depending on your keyword bid? Use the “Get traffic estimates for a list of keywords” feature. Provide a list of keywords to the tool and it will produce a nice graph and table that show you what to expect based on your desired max CPC bid.
In the “Enter a bid” field you can put in a potential bid and the tool will show you daily estimates for clicks, impressions, and ad spend. This is particularly useful when launching new campaigns and trying to decide where to start your bidding.
5. Build new keyword lists by merging other lists together
If you are looking to expand your existing keyword list there is an easy way to find new keyword combinations. In the Keyword Planner, you can insert different keyword lists and it will merge them together to make new combinations.
The Keyword Planner has many great features that can help you think outside the box and strengthen your keyword lists. There are other third-party keyword research tools out there you can try too. Perhaps the best feature about the Google AdWords Keyword Planner is that it is completely free. It’s hard to beat that.