If your only keyword research tool is Google’s Keyword Planner you are leaving money on the table.
Don’t get me wrong. You should absolutely use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool as a starting point for your SEO strategy. It is a work horse keyword tool that provides search volume, costs, and trends. It can also help you create keyword themes. Just don’t make the mistake of using it as your only keyword research tool.
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What Makes Keyword Data Useful For SEO:
- Search Volume: are people interested in the topic?
- Cost-Per-Click: are businesses willing to invest money in this keyword?
- Keyword Difficulty: can you rank for this keyword?
- Ranking Probability: can you actually rank for this keyword…or will you just be wasting time?
You can read what Google says about keyword competition, but you’ll find out that cost-per-click and keyword difficulty is what matters.
Low Keyword Competition Does Not Mean Easy SEO
When you are looking at the keyword planner tool you need to understand that low keyword competition does not translate to “easy to rank” organic keywords. It means that advertisers don’t bid on them. This is usually a sign that the keyword is too generic to result in conversions. You can not run an effective AdWords campaign by bidding on keywords that don’t convert. Over time, AdWords managers learn to avoid these keywords so there is little competition between advertisers.
At the surface, this high volume/low competition keyword looks like it would be great for SEO. Couldn’t be further from the truth.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t understand the important difference between keyword competition for advertising and keyword difficulty for SEO. If you don’t understand the difference you could be targeting the wrong keywords. The problem is compounded because many paid search tools (ex. SEMRush, SpyFu) pull in data from Google’s Keyword Planner to fuel their competition score. SEMRush and SpyFu provide robust competitive SEM data which is useful for keyword gap analysis. Neither tool provides an easy to understand organic keyword difficulty metric.
UPDATE: SEMRush now provides a keyword difficulty metric.
High Competition Does Not Mean SEO Will Be Too Hard
You’ve probably heard that you should avoid highly competitive keywords when developing your SEO strategy. This is true, but not when it comes to data from Google’s Keyword Planner Tool. If a term is highly competitive, you shouldn’t dismiss it right away. Advertisers are spending money on these keywords because they turn into sales.
It might be worth the long term SEO effort to rank for these “money” keywords IF the organic competition is not too fierce. These terms can be byproduct of your long tail SEO efforts. In other words, don’t directly spend money “optimizing for them” use internal link building and site architecture to help you rank for these harder terms.
The bottom line is the keyword planner tool does not provide a keyword difficulty metric.
There Are Better Tools To Help You Understand Organic SEO Competition
Scribe SEO
Scribe is a simple tool that does a lot of heavy lifting for you.
“This difficulty score is derived by comparing your site for the term to sites that already rank — including comparing the amount of content, links, authority, and social media shares.” – Sonia Simone
Scribe Tells Me That The Keyword Is Actually Hard To Rank For
In addition to keyword research, it is also helpful to analyze your content for relevance. Check out the full list of features here. Scribe is available in a few different ways:
- As a stand alone SEO tool
- As part of their hosting package
- As part of their new marketing automation software, NewRainmaker
- As a part of Raven Tools
Can I Rank
Can I Rank is a super easy to use keyword research tool that pulls in data from both Moz and SEMrush. Can I Rank has made it into my personal arsenal of SEO tools for two main reasons:
- Gives you actionable items to improve you site’s ranking. You can actually build an action plan directly from the interface.
- Suggests other keywords that you are already ranking for. It is extremely valuable to find a high value keyword that you are already on page 2 for.
Usually with a little effort you can get to the top 3 listings for those keywords.
Starting at $25/month (beta special) – you can’t beat it! Plus the founder, +Matt Bentley is super smart and friendly!
Moz
If you only have the budget for one SEO tool, I would recommend Moz. It does a good (not great) job of a lot of different tasks, one of which is presenting an easy to use keyword difficulty metric.
If you can’t cough up the $99/month for Moz, you can download the free Moz Bar and do a little detective work yourself. Here is what you should consider when trying to figure out keyword difficulty for a given term:
- Number of Listings
- Domain Authority Of Listings On Page 1
- Number Of Links
- Any Home Pages On SERP?
Now that the keyword competition metric is cleared up, let’s move on to search volume.
Keyword Search Volume Is Limited, Especially For Ecommerce Products
Most people understand that the Keyword Planner tool was meant for advertisers. That’s one reason you shouldn’t use it for ecommerce SEO. The other big reason is Google is trading keywords for data feeds when it comes to products in the shopping results. Advertisers CAN’T BID on keywords for products to appear in the shopping results. So metrics for products in the planner tool is almost meaningless.
So really, you shouldn’t depend on the Keyword Planner Tool for product SEO. It’s great for ideas, but you have to take the information with a grain of salt.
To get decent keyword data from Google, I recommend setting up both a text based ad group and a shopping campaign targeting your product. When I did this, I noticed a huge difference between actual search volume and estimated search volume.
This keyword generated 500+ ad impressions in a month.
My Adwords query string report showed a long tail (8 phrase) keyword received almost 500 impressions in one month, yet it doesn’t even register in Google Keyword Planner Tool. With Google moving away from keywords for product advertising, it is no wonder why good product keyword data is hard to find in the planner tool.
In this particular ad group, I have keyword phrases that contain 15 words that convert! That’s as many words as the last sentence.
If I never used set up Google AdWords, I would have never found these profitable long tail keyword phrases. Once I identified them, I went back to the product landing page and updated the content.
So, What Can You Bank On?
I use the Google Keyword Planner tool every day. It’s free. You can’t bank on free. Spend a little cash on a keyword difficulty tool. Set aside a small AdWords budget to help find long tail keywords that convert. You can’t afford to chase the wrong keywords with PPC or SEO.
I’d love for you to comment below and let me know which keyword tool you decided to use.
Hey Darren! This is very interesting. Especially the part about product SEO research. For the long tail product keywords you mention, did you originally pick the keywords using google’s keyword tool? In other words, how did you decide upon a keyword phrase to test if it did not yeild any estimated data in the planner tool to begin with? It may seem obvious the more experienced SEO folks, but I’m kinda confused.
By the way, I use Market Samurai, Scribe, and SEMrush. Samurai’s competition module color codes competitive data similarly to the dial in Can I Rank (but no dial). Still playing around with Scribe on the Synthesis server; it seems to be pretty remarkable so far.
Thanks for the great articles! Keep em coming…
Blaine – Im glad you caught my points about keyword research for products. It’s very subtle in that people won’t notice it, but is a game changer in my opinion. The fact I’m showing 500+ searches per month for a highly converting keyword…that has no data in Google’s free tool is significant. It almost seems like this data is not making its way into the KW planner tool at all.
I found the long tail keyword by simply using broad modified match in AdWords. I’ll write more about this over the next few weeks. Ill use “Louis Vuitton Sunglasses” as an example for you (since I am staring at a spam comment for it while I reply).
In AdWords, I would set up a an ad group to focus on the category and use +Louis +Vuitton +Sunglasses as my keyword. There really isnt much thought behind the strategy other than I want to show my ads to people searching for that product line.
Using broad modified match means that the search query HAS to include all those words (in any order) with any additional words. In setting it up this way (using the search terms report in AdWords), I might be able to see that a lot of people are searching for “louis vuitton damier tortoise shell brown sunglasses” and I would be able to prioritize my On-Page, Link Building, effort to that specific product page.
I probably wont rank for “Louis Vuitton Sunglasses” but I might have some success with “louis vuitton damier tortoise shell brown sunglasses”
If your doing KW research for a non-branded, non-physical product – the process is a little different. I ALWAYS start with Google Keyword Planner tool, and try to figure out the possible keyword themes and search volume for the theme as a whole. I would still try to break it down to the seed term, and use AdWords to see the real search volume (impressions, clicks, etc.)
Hello Darren,
What a great article about SEO keyword. But i really get confused whenever I do keyword research. For example, I was doing a keyword research for my friend’s business of website consulting. So i look for the long-tail keyword “Web development company karachi” , but in return Google only showed me low Competition keywords and low volume (only 70, 50, 20 etc. ) i used the variations of keywords but still got the same result. So my question is, should I go with low competition and low volume, I think NO, but I couldnt find any high volume search. Secondly, for another keyword lets say “Edmonton marketing company” I want to rank for this keyword. But I typed this keyword in Google KeywordPlanner, it shows me (marketing companies, low, 40 avg monthly searches) (internet marketing company, low, 50 avg monthly searches), advertising agencies, low, 320 avg monthly) etc. I am totally lost and have no idea how to get it right. What are the basics to get it done smoothly, by the way I am new to SEO, and keyword research is the most difficult part in SEO. It would be great if you could help me with the questions mentioned above. I will highly appreciate that. Thanks in Advance !
Cheers,
K
Kaizaa,
Thanks for dropping by
Local SEO is a little bit different that ecommerce SEO. I don’t really like or use the keyword competition metric in Adwords for SEO. Have you looked into any of the keyword difficulty tools I suggested in this post? The search volume for ANY of the tools is not that accurate. I’ve gotten 500 visits a day for a page optimized for a keyword that was supposed to be getting 170 searches per month.
For your situation, I wouldn’t try to chase the keyword planner too much. Just use it as a guide. I would go after keywords that are most relevant, ones that would get your business. I would start with specific problems that your friends company wants to solve. Who cares if you get 500 visits per day if none of them contact you. For my site, I started off targeting keywords like “SEO in Jacksonville” but quickly gave up on that because it wasn’t bringing in any business. I have received more leads from posts like “How To Outrank Amazon” – Virtually no search volume according to Google Keyword Planner.
For local SEO, i usually strip out the city from the keyword research aspect. I would set up a sales landing page, and run a local adwords campaign to it to see traffic estimates in your local area. I would also check out to see which keywords convert. Then I would spend time doing SEO for those keywords.
I hope this helps – Good luck!!
This is one of the most insightful articles I’ve read on the keyword tool, especially the insights about the tool for e-commerce. I recently came across the same findings, nailing dozens of conversions on a keyword with no data! It really just takes a little budget and some tinkering! A great way to find revenue stream gems that no one else is bidding on. Thanks again!
So glad to hear that Travis! That is awesome!!!!
Hi Darren,
I am having an issue with trying to find actual monthly search results. I normally use Google Keyword planner to see how many searches are being made per month. The keyword that I am researching is – “diabetic life insurance”, Google Keyword Planner shows 250 searches/mo. I ran the same keyword in keyspyword.com and came up with different numbers are far as number of searches/mo. they are showing 2600/mo. Which is correct?
Thanks,
Vini
Hey Vini!
Thanks for stopping by! Search volume is really, really tricky. You can get data from multiple sources, but its always going to be a little bit of a guessing game. For one of my sites, the monthly search volume for the targeted phrase is 170, but the page gets 100 visits per day.
I would try a small AdWords campaign with exact match or broad modified match keywords to see how many impressions are being triggered.
In general, I think you might be better off targeting multiple keywords around that semantic core.
http://intertwinemarketing.com/ecommerce-keyword-research/
Sorry on the last comment I meant to say http://www.keywordspy.com/ not, Keyspyword.com
Thanks,
Vini
Hi, I really liked this blog post. Thanks for the info.
I am curious as to your thing with the keyword planner, I too have noticed some weird disparities between the keyword planner and actuality, for example some common sense search terms will have 0 volume traffic in the keyword planner, but people are clearly arriving on my site using these 0 volume traffic keywords.
Also on google trends some weird disparities too, some trends would show up as too little data, but will be marked in related keywords, for example if you search something it will say 0 data, but it the same keyword will turn up as a related keyword with a volume of 20 per month under a different keyword. On top of that sometimes certain 3 or 4 term keywords will come up as “rising”, but no indications to why it is marked as such, meaning there is some data underneath it.
when you do a text page ads, google now doesn’t allow you to do impressions of ad’s that are under its low volume search (which seems like another conspiracy to me), unless i’m mistaken – how do you find out if people are actually searching for your long tail keyword.
Also I notice my blog content is doing pretty well without SEO optimisation, perhaps keywords are overrated? Yoast regularly says my content is too wordy, but google says otherwise. It just seems there is no logic to the game.
Final question (if that doesn’t dig into your consultancy services) – It seems most people simply “price surf” is lower competitive prices more important than marketing for conversions? I am scared of this kind of race to the bottom, but it does seem people genuinely really care about saving a dime or two rather than the content/quality of the website – what do you think?
newcomer here. I appreciate your advice!
Welcome, Joey!
Keywords are NOT overrated. I recently tripled a sites traffic by ONLY using keyword research to find 3 low difficulty long tail related keywords that each have over 1000 searches per month (No Link Building to that Page). I used SEMRush for that.
Regarding your question:how do you find out if people are actually searching for your long tail keyword.
I use Google Adwords, Here is what I do:
Step 1: Set Up A Test Ad Group
Step 2: Add my keywords as broad modified match (BMM) (ex. +baseball +gloves)
Step 3: Run it a few weeks and check search terms report. I look at impressions for search volume. Using BMM I could find terms like “Glove’s For Womens’s Baseball” or “Large Baseball Gloves”
I hope this helps
Sorry to add to the above ^
What I mean is if I am reinvesting my earnings into my website/s , I am not sure where to put the money and time in. If I churn out more content, whats stopping people just reading my info/guides/advice and then flipping to a cheaper site to make the purchase?
Also I mean – the google thing interestingly if you put the “rising” keyword back into google trends it will saw no volume which makes no sense, because it can’t be marked as “rising” without volume.
I would spend A LOT less TIME churning out new content, and more time promoting your best content.
You do know that the low competition color on google smaller is for the advertising right? It’s not for website competition. It’s for advertising competition so really you want a website advertiser rank med or higher.
Hi Roy, thanks for commenting. Yes, I do know that the keyword planner tool is for advertising. This is really the reason I wrote this post is because too many people confuse keyword competition (advertising) with keyword difficulty (SEO).
Great Tips and list Darren. Serpstat has launched a new one. In addition to knowing what questions your prospects are asking on the web, you can as well find out what drives traffic to your competitors and even analyze website structure.
Cool. Ill check it out 😛
Nice article, although I believe most keyword tools rely on the Google Adwords API. You also might wanna check out this Keyword Tool app and add it to your list: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keyword-tool-marketing-research/id1004654176
Thanks for the suggestion
I do PPC for clients and disagree with one thing about keyword competition and ppc. I find it very useful to bid on as large a list as possible with phrase match. It allows us to pick up search terms that we never could have imagined. It takes managing the negative keyword file a little more closely, but it is worth the effort.
Ron recently posted…Getting the Facts: What You Need to Know About Local SEO
Thanks Ron. If your goal is to use PPC to find keywords broad modified match is a much better way to collect variation keywords vs phrase match.
You can cast a much wider net with broad match modified.
The Keyword Planner is the last resort for looking at long-tail keywords for SEO.
Look at forums for what questions people are actually asking. Those are your best areas for keyword research.
Couldnt agree more, Andrew! I actually wrote a step my step process for this.
https://selfstartr.com/persuasive-marketing-techniques/#research
Cheers,
Darren
Honestly, I was wrong about “Keyword Competition” in keyword planner. I suggest the low competition in Keyword Planner always means easy to rank in Google organic.
You have nice and clear explanation about Keyword Research, this is the stuff which i need.
Thank you very much
Glad this helped! You can also check out termexplorer. Ive been using them lately.
Also on google trends some weird disparities too, some trends would show up as too little data, but will be marked in related keywords, for example if you search something it will say 0 data, but it the same keyword will turn up as a related keyword with a volume of 20 per month under a different keyword.