Using Google Keyword Planner

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Using Google Keyword Planner

- As you'll hear me say time and time again choosing and organizing your keywords is one of the most important things that you'll do when setting up a paid search account. What we need to do now is brainstorm a list of keywords and then look at how to evaluate their search volume, relevance, and competition. We're going to be using the Google Keyword Planner to get that data. First we'll brainstorm on our own, and then we'll use the tool to collect more ideas, and finally we'll review the data associated with each keyword. To get an initial list of keywords we'll start by thinking about our target audience.

Let's put ourselves in their shoes and visualize them sitting in front of their computer. What are they thinking? What are they looking for? And how would they search for it? Now I wanna show you a really great way of how you can start getting some ideas. What you wanna do is head over to google.com. So here on the Google homepage we have the opportunity to start typing in search queries into the box in the center of the screen. In this movie we're going to focus on creating a keyword list for the Landon Hotel. And so for us, this hotel happens to be in San Francisco, so I'm trying to think about some keywords that might be associated with this hotel.

And as I type into Google, let's start typing hotels, you'll notice that Google provides a drop down, and this drop down is suggested search queries, these are very popular terms related to the word that I'm beginning to type. And you'll notice that Google suggests hotels in santa barbara, which is where I'm located, hotel california, which would be a song, and hotels in san luis obispo, which is a city near Santa Barbara. But I'm interested in San Francisco, so I'll keep typing, hotels san francisco. And immediately the first thing we see is that these modifiers after the word san francisco are very location-based.

Here I see union square, followed by airport, followed by ca. That indicates to me that people that are looking for hotels in San Francisco are very particular about where they are. Now another thing I might do is start with the word San Francisco. So I'll start typing san francisco, followed by hotels, and what do you see? Well I see the second most popular term after hotels is hotel deals. And therefore I might consider making an ad group around hotel deals and providing some for the Landon Hotel. Next I notice that free parking is a very popular term, and this might be something that I want to include in the language on my ad, if people are worried about parking prices in San Francisco, free parking might be just what it takes to get them to click on my advertisement.

And the last one here has a downtown modifier. And this again, reinforces the idea that the location of hotels within San Francisco is important to people, so when we go to create our ad I'll keep that in mind. So I'm going to write these ideas down and what I also recommend you do is click on a few. If I click on san francisco hotels downtown I'm going to see my competitors, so I see who's advertising, and I can also write down the language that they're using in their ads. Perhaps I wanna make sure that I do something different, I point out my unique selling proposition as to why my hotel is better than any other hotel that's going to be advertising along this keyword.

I also recommend that you look to see if the results are relevant. Now hotels is very specific, but if you had a broader term and you notice that the organic search results were completely unrelated to your query, that might give you an indication that you need to get more specific. Once you have some initial ideas it's time to turn to Google and continue your research. You'll be using the Keyword Planner for this, so I'm going to switch over and then I'll show you how to get there. So I'm here on the Keyword Planner homepage and to get here from anywhere within your Google AdWords account simply select Tools from the navigation at the top, and then choose Keyword Planner from the drop down below.

The tool has four components. The first component here under Find new keywords allows us to do some research. This is where we'll be spending the bulk of our time and this is where we'll be generating new ideas for things that we can advertise against. Here in the Multiply keyword lists option we can a tool to multiply two or more lists together to generate all sorts of new keywords. Below that is where we'll begin to plan out our keywords, we can get some ideas about how much to spend, as well as some of that competitive insights we talked about earlier.

Now you can get that using the Tools at the top, but this would be great if you already had a list of keywords and you wanted to do some research. The first is to Get search volume data and trends, and this is very helpful if you're doing some organic research and coming up with content that you wanna be creating. The option below will allow you to Get click and cost performance forecasts. So as you enter in your keyword list you can determine if you spend a certain amount how many clicks you'll get, what will it cost? Who's competing with you? And so on. But I wanna start by choosing the option at the top, Search for new keywords using a phrase, website, or category.

As soon as you select this Google's going to open it up and provide you with a window that has some fields that you can fill out. We can get ideas three ways. We can enter in some information about our product or service in the box at top, we can provide Google with our actual landing page and allow it to view that landing page and make some recommendations, or we can search by a category, choosing the drop down menus here. What I'm gonna do is start by going to the top and adding in a couple of the terms that we saw earlier. Now down below you have some option for Targeting, and it's preselected to the United States, All languages, Google, you're not going to be adding any Negative keywords, and more on that later, and you can add some filters here on the right hand side.

I'm going to talk more on this in a little bit, so I'm just gonna choose Get Ideas here in the bottom left hand corner. So what happens is Google's going to provide us with a graph at the top of the screen with the Average monthly searches for the total keyword ideas its created down below. So this isn't just the keywords you entered in the query at the top, it's an aggregate of all of their ideas, which I'll show you down below. As I scroll down the page you'll notice two tabs. One says Ad group ideas and the one to the right says Keyword ideas. So what Google has done is its already created some ideas for you, its said, "Hey, I'm going to create this ad group "and I'm going to associate keywords with that ad group." And if you wanted to, on the far right side of the screen, you can select this little double arrow and that'll add it to your plan.

So you can create an ad group right here from the tool, which is really helpful. Let's say we wanted to see the keywords in each ad group. So here under Ca Hotels, if I click on that link it's going to show me the keywords within that list. And here on the right hand side we can choose to sort that by Avg. monthly searches, Competition, and the Suggested bid. So if I choose Avg. monthly searches it's going to sort that and I can see the number one average monthly search in this suggested ad group is hotels in san francisco ca.

It gets searched 2,900 times, and the Competition is very High. You'll also notice if I hover over this graph icon it shows me the trend of that search over time. And this really helps to determine seasonality. So you can see that those summer months are very popular, and things like of dwindle down in October through April. I'm going to choose the back arrow. And let's go to the Keyword ideas menu. Here this is a total aggregate of all of the keyword ideas. And you'll see the search terms I entered, and Google's going to say, "Here's what the volume is "on the terms that you gave me." But down below it's going to say, "Here's keywords "that are related to those search terms "and here's the volume from there." So let's say we wanted to look at Low Competition search terms.

I would choose the Competition link, in this case it's now sorting by High, I'll select it again, and now it's sorted by Low Competition. And you'll notice that some of these Low competitive terms are very, very generic. San francisco weather, for example, it's not really related to what we're going to be advertising, so it's not of interest to me. So I might scroll down and see if I find anything that is in Low Competition that I can take advantage of. Here I see restaurant near san francisco airport. Now it has a low monthly search volume, but if my hotel offered a restaurant and it was near the San Francisco airport I might take advantage of it, because I can get that term for very cheap.

It'd be worth at least throwing a couple dollars at to see if I can get a few bits of traffic. Now if you'd like, what you can do on the left hand side is add some Keyword filters. So if I choose the pencil icon next to Keyword filters we could say, "You know what? "I'm really only interested in seeing things "that are searched more than 500 times." So I could add the 500 here at the top and you can choose the drop down to choose whether you want less than or equal to, or greater than or equal to. You could also choose if you want to see things that are competitive High to competitive Low.

And I'll just click out of the box here to start that search. So now Google's only going to show me things that have a greater than or equal to monthly search volume of 500, which is cool because now that I'm sorted by Competition Low I can see a little bit better where some of that opportunity is. If you see a keyword that you like you can add it to your plan with the double arrow here on the right hand side, and then you can then create an ad group from all of the keywords that you select. So as you can see this tool is helpful in suggesting some ideas, and you can go back to Ad group ideas and continue to get more and more perspective on all the things that Google suggests around your related product or service.

Now I'm going to go back to the Keyword Planner and you can do that either by clicking Tools and going back to Keyword Planner, or if you'd like you can choose the Modify search here towards the upper right hand of the screen. And here I could remove the product or service from the menu, and instead I can add in our landing page, www.landonhotel.com. Now without providing any other information I'll choose Get ideas. And we'll see what Google comes up with for us. So here you can see some Ad groups, Francisco Motels, Hostel San, York Hotel, they're sort of just creating an Ad group name for you, and then again, like we saw earlier, we could click in to see what they've recommended.

Now in this case Google suggests, "Well, you might be a hostel, so I'm going to add in those terms in for you." Again, it's not always perfect, but it's a great way for just doing some brainstorming. Now I'm gonna go back to Tools, and select Keyword Planner. And I wanna talk about another section of this tool, and that's getting click and cost performance forecasts. So I'll select on that option, and we can either Enter in Keywords, or we can choose a file to Upload. So if you had these in a spreadsheet, for example, you could upload that by selecting the Choose file option.

Let's go ahead and enter in some of those terms that we saw earlier. And you can also use modifiers in this search. We're going to talk about keyword modifiers in the next movie, so as you come back and do these forecasts later you'll be able to use those as well. I'll choose Get forecasts. So what we can see is this chart here that shows me based on what I'm going to be spending, the amount of Clicks and Impressions I'll be receiving. So you can see some options here at the top, Daily forecasts, Clicks 0-18.5, and that's because I haven't provided Google with any information yet.

So at the top of the screen you'll see that we have the opportunity to Enter a bid, and a daily budget. So let's say we wanna put in a bid of $2.50 and then select Get detailed forecasts. So Google's suggesting at that bid price I can get about 2.5 to 3 Clicks a day, between about 900 and a thousand Impressions, and I can even see what my Avg. position might be based on the competition. You can also see your position marked on the graph with this line and the box and what that indicates is this where you are in relation to all of the opportunities available.

And again, as I mouse over the blue line you can see what the Max CPC becomes. So in this case Google's saying, "Well at $20 things might look a little different." You can click on that point and what Google will do is update the bid at the top of the screen and now provide you a forecast on that. And if you scroll down you can also see that forecast broken down by Ad Group and Keywords and you can select the Ad Group, just like we did in the previous view, and we'll see the breakdown, again with our budget in the upper left hand corner, for how many Clicks and Impressions each one of those Keywords will receive.

So you can see san francisco hotels deals is very popular, it will get about 12 Clicks for a $20 cost per Click. Now that sounds expensive, but when you think about the cost of booking a hotel if I can get about a $100 CPA, in other words, if every four to five people click on this ad actually book the hotel, that's CPC might be worth it. And more on setting your bid in a later movie. So that's the basics. This is a free tool to use for your keyword research and ad group planning. This is a great way to get started, start thinking about your budgets, and really begin to hone in on those ideas for what keywords you wanna start with when we build out your first campaign.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/google-adwords-essential-training-2/using-google-keyword-planner