How to Use Google Keyword Planner for SEO and Ads
Google Keyword Planner helps advertisers and marketers find relevant keywords for their campaigns. It offers keyword suggestions, search volume estimates, and CPC data, making it useful for both paid ads and SEO.
Though built for Google Ads, it also helps identify valuable keywords for organic search. Understanding its features allows businesses to improve keyword strategies, target the right audience, and enhance content performance.
What is Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool designed primarily for advertisers. It generates keyword suggestions based on Google-suggested phrases, helping users identify relevant terms for their search campaigns.
Beyond keyword discovery, the tool provides estimated search volumes and cost-per-click (CPC) data, allowing advertisers to gauge competition and budget effectively. Businesses may use this information to optimize their tactics for reaching the proper audience and maximizing ad performance.
Key Advantages of Google Keyword Planner
- Find Relevant Keywords – Get keyword suggestions tailored to your products, services, or website;
- Check Search Volume – See estimated monthly searches to understand potential traffic;
- Estimate Ad Costs – View the average cost of running ads for specific keywords;
- Organize Keywords – Categorize keywords to match your marketing strategy;
- Create Targeted Campaigns – Use keyword insights to develop focused ad campaigns.
While Google Keyword Planner offers valuable keyword insights, campaign performance depends on factors like bid strategy, budget, industry competition, and customer behavior. To maximize results, it’s essential to integrate these insights into online marketing strategies that focus on audience targeting, content optimization, and ad performance tracking.
Step 1: Open Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is free to use, but there’s a requirement—you must have a Google Ads account. If you don’t have one yet, setting it up takes only a few minutes. Just follow the instructions, provide some basic details about your business, and complete the setup.
Important: To utilize Keyword Planner, you must first register a Google Ads account and set up a campaign. You do not need to be running an active ad campaign.
Once logged in, go to the “Tools” menu on the left and pick “Keyword Planner”. Google Keyword Planner provides two basic possibilities. The Discover New Keywords function helps customers develop keyword suggestions based on their company, goods, or website. It helps in the discovery of suitable search phrases for usage in SEO or advertising efforts. The Get Search Volume and Forecasts function offers insights into keyword search volume and trends, estimating how frequently certain keywords are searched and their potential influence in a campaign.
These capabilities provide valuable information into SEO keyword research. However, bear in mind that Google Keyword Planner is primarily intended for marketers, thus some aspects (such as bidding statistics) may not be helpful to SEO.
Now, let’s explore how to find the best SEO keywords using these tools.
Step 2: Select the Right Tool
Google Keyword Planner offers two primary tools for keyword research. Here’s how to use each to build a strong keyword list for SEO.
Discover New Keywords
As the name suggests, this tool helps identify new keyword opportunities. The input field prompts you to “Enter products or services closely related to your business.” The quality of the results depends on what you enter here, so be strategic.
Here’s a breakdown of the two options available:
- Start With Keywords –Enter keywords or phrases that describe your firm (such as “home workout” or “yoga mats”). This allows Google Term Planner to provide term suggestions from its industry-specific database.
- Pro Tip: Enter multiple keywords separated by commas. For example, an online skincare business could use “organic face cream, anti-aging serum” to get relevant keyword suggestions.
- Start With a Website – This option is primarily intended for Google Ads users and allows you to input your homepage or a specific URL. While not usually the most efficient for SEO, it can provide valuable keyword recommendations.
After entering your information, click “Get Results” to proceed to the keyword results page.
Get Search Volume and Forecasts
Before we explore how to analyze the results, let’s look at how this second tool helps refine your keyword strategy.
Step 3: Check Search Volume and Forecasts
This tool is useful if you already have a list of keywords and want to determine their search volume. Unlike the “Discover New Keywords” tool, it does not develop new keyword ideas but instead offers statistics on current ones.
To use it, simply enter your term list into the search window and click “Get Started”. After submitting your keywords, you will be directed to the Keywords Results Page, similar to when using the keyword discovery tool. However, there are two notable differences. First, this page only displays data for the keywords you entered rather than generating new keyword suggestions. Second, Google provides estimates on the expected number of clicks and impressions those keywords may receive, helping you assess their potential performance in a campaign.
No matter which tool you choose, you’ll end up on the Keywords Results Page. Let’s examine how to analyze the data and make the most of it for SEO.
Step 4: Refine and Organize Your Keyword List
After generating keyword ideas, it’s time to narrow them down to the most relevant ones. Both methods in Google Keyword Planner take you to the Keywords Results Page, where you may refine your keyword list with a variety of filters and sort choices.
Understanding the Keywords Results Page
At the top of the page, you’ll find four key settings:
- Locations – Select the country (or countries) where you want to target users;
- Language – Choose the language for keyword data. By default, it’s set to English in the United States, but adjust this if needed;
- Search Networks – Decide whether to include Google’s search partners. It’s best to keep this set to Google only for accuracy;
- Date Range – The default 12-month setting is usually fine for analyzing search trends.
Filtering Your Keywords
To refine your keyword list, use the Add Filter feature. Here’s how each option helps:
- Keyword Text – Show only keywords that include specific words or phrases. Useful if you’re focusing on a niche product, like “blue t-shirts”;
- Exclude Keywords in My Account – Removes keywords you’re already bidding on in Google Ads;
- Exclude Adult Ideas – Removes inappropriate terms;
- Average Monthly Searches – Helps filter out extremely competitive or low-volume keywords. Click on this column to sort results from high to low or low to high;
- Competition – Shows if a keyword has Low, Medium, or High competition in Google Ads. (This does NOT reflect SEO difficulty.;
- Ad Impression Share – This metric is only useful for advertisers, so you can ignore it for SEO;
- Top of Page Bid (Low & High Range) – Represents the estimated cost for ads to rank at the top. This can serve as an indicator of commercial intent. If you’re targeting buyer-focused keywords, filtering by bid amount can be useful;
- Organic Impression Share & Organic Average Position – Shows how often your site appears in search results and your average ranking for each keyword. (Requires Google Search Console integration.)
Expanding Keyword Ideas
A newer feature, “Broaden Your Search”, suggests related keywords beyond your original terms. This can help discover additional relevant opportunities for your SEO strategy.
Once you’ve refined your list, you’re ready for the next step: analyzing keyword performance and selecting the best ones for SEO.
Step 5: Evaluate the Keyword Ideas Section
After you’ve filtered your keyword list, use Google Keyword Planner’s Keyword Ideas area to evaluate the remaining phrases.
This section contains critical information about each keyword, allowing you to evaluate which ones are worth targeting.
Understanding Key Metrics
- Keyword (by relevance) – Google’s list of keywords most closely related to your input keyword or URL;
- Avg. Monthly Searches – Displays an estimated range of search volume rather than exact figures.
- Pro Tip: Some terms’ search traffic varies significantly depending on the time of year. For example, “Christmas decorations” can get 100,000 searches in December but just a few hundred in June. However, Google Keyword Planner may show an average of 8,000 searches per month, which may not reflect the genuine seasonal demand. Always monitor search patterns instead of relying on false averages.
- Competition – Reflects the number of advertisers bidding on a keyword, not its SEO difficulty. However, high competition often indicates strong commercial intent, meaning users searching for the term may be more likely to convert into customers.
- Top of Page Bid – Estimates the cost per click for an ad to appear at the top of search results.
Why does it matter? The higher the bid, the larger the opportunity for monetization, since firms are prepared to pay more for that traffic.
Analyzing these data allows you to uncover high-value keywords with high traffic potential and commercial significance. Next, learn how to select the ideal keywords for your SEO approach.
Step 6: Selecting the Right Keyword
After exploring Google Keyword Planner and its features, the final step is choosing the best keyword to optimize your content.
This process requires careful evaluation since multiple factors affect keyword selection. It’s not only about search volume but also about relevance, competition, and commercial potential.
Example: Choosing a Keyword
Let’s go through another example using the “Discover New Keywords” tool.
Suppose you run an online fitness store and want to create content about protein supplements.
- “Protein” is too broad and highly competitive;
- “Best protein supplement for muscle growth” is too specific and may have low search volume;
- “Protein supplements” is broad enough to generate traffic while remaining relevant to your niche.
Enter “protein supplements” into the tool and click “Get Started.”
How to Pick the Best Keyword
When reviewing results, consider these three key factors:
- Search Volume – A higher search volume means more potential traffic;
- Commercial Intent – Keywords with high ad competition and suggested bids indicate that businesses see them as profitable. These are often better for conversions;
- Organic SEO Competition – Analyze the first page of search results. If it’s dominated by high-authority sites, ranking for that keyword might be difficult.
Finding Less Competitive Keywords with Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a useful tool, but it has two major limitations:
- Limitation #1: It only provides closely related keywords. For example, if you enter “organic dog food”, the tool will suggest obvious terms like “natural dog food” or “dog food brands.” While useful, these are predictable and don’t uncover unique keyword opportunities;
- Limitation #2: Everyone gets the same keyword suggestions. Since Google Keyword Planner is widely used, many of its keyword suggestions are highly competitive, making it harder to rank for them.
Fortunately, there’s a workaround to find unique, untapped keywords: The GKP Hack.
How to Use the GKP Hack
- Open Google Keyword Planner and go to the “Discover New Keywords” section;
- Select “Start With a Website;
- Instead of entering a keyword, paste the URL of a competitor’s webpage.
For example, rather than searching for “organic dog food,” enter the URL of a well-known pet store’s dog food category page to uncover relevant keyword ideas.
The result? A list of keywords your competitors may have overlooked.
Where to Find More Hidden Keywords
You can use this method with various types of pages, including:
- Competitor blog posts;
- Industry news articles;
- Podcast transcripts;
- Conference agendas;
- Influencer bio pages.
Conclusion
Google Keyword Planner helps find relevant keywords, analyze search volume, and assess commercial intent for ads and SEO. Refining keyword lists, evaluating competition, and aligning terms with business goals improve results. Despite its limitations, using competitor URLs can reveal more keyword opportunities.
Businesses may enhance their keyword strategy and make informed choices about how to successfully target search phrases by taking the proper approach.
