Are you acquainted with Keyword Planner? The AdWords Keyword Planner, housed within the AdWords interface, is an incredibly helpful and robust keyword research tool. It merges two popular Google Ads tools, the Google Keyword Tool and the AdWords Traffic Estimator, and enhances them with a user-friendly integrated workflow to guide users in discovering keywords for generating new Ad Groups and/or Campaigns.

The AdWords Keyword Planner can be found under “Tools and Analysis.” This article will provide a comprehensive overview of every feature within Keyword Planner, along with advice on utilizing it for keyword research in SEO, PPC, and other marketing initiatives. Let’s dive in!

Getting Started With AdWords Keyword Planner

The AdWords Keyword Planner facilitates three primary use cases:

• Discovering keyword and ad group concepts
• Inputting or uploading keywords to obtain estimations
• Combining keyword lists to acquire estimations These functionalities are presented through a wizard-like interface, as depicted below:

Functionality of the AdWords Keyword Planner.

Searching for Keyword and Ad Group Ideas Using Keyword Planner

The main use case is populating your account with keywords based on Google’s recommendations. The Keyword Planner, as illustrated below, offers a comprehensive keyword workbench for researching and selecting keywords to incorporate into your AdWords account.

User Interface of the AdWords Keyword Planner. With the Keyword Planner Tool, you have the ability to:

• Generate keyword and ad group ideas: Brainstorm keyword ideas from individual keywords, your landing page, a product category, or a combination of these.
• Review keyword statistics and performance projections: Define targeting parameters like country, language, and search network to refine your keyword estimations.
• Refine keywords: Narrow your keyword list based on criteria such as average CPC, average monthly search volume, inclusion or exclusion of specific terms, and exclusion of keywords already present in your AdWords account.

Remember that AdWord’s Keyword Planner provides exact match search traffic data. For phrase and broad match search traffic insights, explore these Google Keyword Planner tips.

List View vs. Grouped View and “Your Keyword Plan”

Keywords within the Keyword Planner are displayed in either list view or grouped view, resembling the concepts of keyword niches and keyword lists commonly found in keyword tools. You can add individual keywords or groups to “Your Plan,” a temporary holding area for saving promising keywords and groups for future use. The Keyword Planner retains its state throughout your session, preserving added keywords while you search. Once you’ve finished your keyword search, click the “Get Estimates and Review Plan” button.

Getting Estimates and Reviewing Your Keyword Plan

The next phase in the Keyword Plan process involves establishing a keyword bid and daily budget for your selected keywords and groups. Due to the significant fluctuations in keyword volume and CPC bid estimations based on budget, bid, location, and other factors, it’s crucial to provide Google with some information for tailored estimations. For instance, you could input a bid of $40 and a daily budget of $1,000.00. Based on these settings, the Keyword Planner will generate detailed daily estimations for clicks, impressions, average ad position, and costs, as shown below.

Daily estimations generated by the AdWords Keyword Planner.

Enter or Upload Your Own Keyword List in Keyword Planner

In search marketing, you might already possess valuable analytics data, like a list of top-performing keywords for your website. Leveraging these proven keywords instead of generic suggestions from the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool can be highly beneficial. Here’s how:

The Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. Pressing the Get Estimates button will take you to the familiar keyword workbench area, but instead of generic keywords, you’ll see your own list.

Multiplying Keyword Lists Using Keyword Planner

A novel feature in Keyword Planner, not found in the Google Keyword Tool or AdWords Traffic Estimator, is the ability to combine and multiply keyword lists. For instance, you can multiply a set of city and town names with action words to create various keyword permutations, as demonstrated below:

Using Keyword Planner to multiply keyword lists. You can combine up to 3 lists, and clicking Get Estimates will lead you to the keyword workbench.

5 Top Keyword Planner Tips

The Keyword Planner is a remarkably potent tool for marketers, but its effectiveness relies on skill and experience. Whether you’re new to keyword research or a seasoned PPC marketer, these tips will help you maximize this versatile tool.

1. Compare Keyword Volume Changes Over Time

Seasonality significantly impacts PPC and paid social advertising. Trending topics, news events, and seasonal keywords can fluctuate greatly in volume depending on the time of year. The Keyword Planner allows you to compare keyword search volume across two periods, such as the past two holiday seasons.

Comparing keyword sets across time periods with Keyword Planner. This information is invaluable for launching seasonal or time-sensitive campaigns, enabling you to assess the current popularity of last year’s trending keywords before bidding.

2. Use Competitive Intelligence to Identify Keyword Themes

Competitors can be a goldmine of valuable keyword research data. The Keyword Planner helps identify potential keyword topics by analyzing your competitors’ websites. Simply input the target website’s URL and observe the results:

Leveraging Keyword Planner for competitive research. In this case, “Social Strategy” is a strong keyword theme that Buffer effectively targets, as evident below:

Identifying themes with Keyword Planner. If your business is similar to Buffer’s, this would be a great starting point for discovering new PPC and paid social campaign areas or potential ad groups.

3. Use Wikipedia as a Starting Point for Keyword Research

You know your business best – except maybe Wikipedia. When researching keywords for a new campaign, utilize the Keyword Planner’s capabilities and Wikipedia’s vast information to uncover new ideas. Let’s say you’re in logistics management and need new AdWords keywords, but you’ve exhausted seemingly all relevant terms. To discover potentially missed keywords, input the relevant Wikipedia page into the Landing Page section of the Keyword Planner:

Wikipedia as a valuable keyword research resource. You’ll receive potential keyword ideas based on the page content. Given the accuracy of Google spiders, this list is extremely valuable, especially for niche businesses or those with specific products or services:

Keyword ideas within AdWords’ Keyword Planner. This technique can also reveal the intent behind keywords relevant to your business. For example, you might create educational content explaining “supply chain management” or write a blog post outlining the duties of a “supply chain manager.” Regardless of your approach, this tip can be incredibly beneficial for marketers across disciplines.

4. Visualize Mobile Traffic Trends

Device segmentation is crucial in today’s multi-device world. However, knowing your mobile traffic percentage isn’t enough – you need to understand which keywords resonate with mobile searchers to bid effectively. Consider the keyword “24 hour locksmith” below:

Visualizing traffic across months and devices using Keyword Planner. Mobile volume for this keyword nearly doubles its desktop counterpart, indicating strong search intent. The higher mobile volume suggests users are searching for locksmiths on their mobile devices, likely due to being locked out. Therefore, your bidding strategy should reflect this disparity between mobile and desktop search volume.

5. Go Beyond Competition Data by Exporting Keyword Planner CSV Files

The Keyword Planner offers guidance on keyword competitiveness (and potential cost) using Low, Medium, or High categories. While helpful for a quick overview, more accurate data requires a different approach. To determine the true competitiveness of a keyword, export the search data from Keyword Planner as a CSV file. When opened in a spreadsheet application, the Low, Medium, and High categories become numerical values between 0 and 1, as illustrated below:

Calculating keyword return by exporting data as a CSV file. This number helps calculate which keywords offer the highest potential return. In the example, “using social media for business” has a competitiveness score of 0.9 – quite high compared to other terms. Its average monthly search volume is 390, with a recommended bid of $26.85. Using these figures, we apply this formula: 390 x 26.85 / 0.9 = 11,635 The higher the result, the greater the potential return for that keyword. This is incredibly useful when bidding on similar terms or needing a more precise understanding of potential keyword performance.

Summary: The AdWords Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner tool supports various workflows for building ad groups and campaigns from scratch or based on existing lists. It provides a more cohesive user experience than previous AdWords keyword tools by integrating keyword selection, grouping, analysis, and filtering. I highly recommend it!