In this article, I’ll show you how to do keyword research with Google keyword planner. Read on.

We’ve seen what is keyword research and how to do keyword research. We’ve also seen tools such as SEMrush to find keywords.

Like I’ve mentioned in the other articles, keyword research is half science and half art. No one tool can help you with it fully.

In my experience, keyword research is best done if you take a holistic approach.

Brainstorm internally with your team and figure out what your target audience is searching the internet for.

On top of it, use tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner to find out what people are searching for on the internet.

Layer in these two factors and you have a good keyword research done.

Google Keyword Planner is a free and easy to use tool for keyword research. Let’s take a look at how to do keyword research with it.

How to do keyword research with Google keyword planner

First off, go to Google Keyword Planner here.

You need to make a choice from the two options you see on the first screen (as shown below).

Option 1 – Discover new keywords

This option is for those who have no idea where to start and want to find new keywords based on a topic or seed keyword.

Option 2 – Get search volume and forecasts

This option is for those who have an initial keyword set with them and want to find out what are the search volumes for them.

If you are starting afresh, and want to find keywords related to your website or a competitor’s website, click on the Option 1.

I’m gonna enter my favorite examples, “Apples”.

I also chose “United States” from the location. (One good thing about Google Keyword Planner is that you can drag and drop on locations to choose search data from that area. Even smaller locations like cities or states.)

I’m also giving apple.com as my competition URL.

Clicking on “Get Results” will give you the results, that’ll look something like this.

It’ll show you all the keyword ideas, their corresponding search volumes and filters to find related keywords.

If you want to find out keyword topics (i.e similar keywords grouped together), then click on “Grouped Ideas” on the left hand side.

What are “Grouped Ideas” in Google Keyword Planner?

“Grouped ideas” in Google Keyword Planner will give you keywords grouped in to themes by similarity.

For example, when you search for “Apples” as the seed keyword, and click on “Grouped Ideas”, you will get grouped ideas like shown below.

Clicking on each group will give you keywords that are related.

This is especially good if you are looking for “themes” in your content.

Using the filters above, you can broaden your search and find relevant keywords.

Summary

Google Keyword Planner is a great tool by which you can do keyword research. It is free and easy to use – that’s the highlight.

What I don’t like about Google Keyword Planner is that the search volumes it shows are rounded off and never accurate.

Many other SEO keyword research tools use the data from Google AdWords so the basic data is the same. However, data is visualized in different, easy to understand ways. Which is why I’d prefer a tool like SEMrush for keyword research.

All the best!

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments section.