Published on August 31, 2013 How to research search phrases with Google’s Keyword Planner tool
Google has closed their public Keyword search tool and replaced it with
the Google AdWords Keyword Planning Tool. What does this mean for marketing your shopping cart website?
Google’s external keyword tool has long been a key website for online store owners to identify popular search phrases and plan their marketing efforts. Google had announced in May that they planned to phase out the tool and replace it with their Google AdWords search tool and this week it was turned off for good. There are a few feature differences and not all of the previous search data detail is available, but the good news for online shop owners is that it will still be possible to look up search volumes and identify keywords to target when selling online. Here is how you can use it.
Google External Keyword Tool v Google Keyword Planner Tool
What’s changed?
What does this mean for you?
The old keyword tool showed searches just from laptops and desktop devices, whereas the new Google AdWords tool shows searches across all devices. This means you’ll get higher results using the new tool but this reflects the fact that more people than ever are using mobile and smartphone devices for website browsing and shopping.
Here’s how to use the Google Keyword Planning Tool – quick tutorial
First you need to log in to your Google AdWords account. Then from the Tools and Analysis menu, choose “Keyword Planner”.
You will get a menu of three items: Search for keyword and ad group ideas, Enter or upload keywords or see how they perform, and multiply keyword lists. Choose the middle option “Enter or upload keywords and see how they perform”. You can also finely target your search volume data – this is a great new feature.
Click on targeting and you can select Australia, Canada, or another specific region as your area of targeting (e.g., you can drill down to a city in Australia and not just the whole country). You can also apply negative keywords (exclusions) in your search criteria.
Local search volumes – drilling right down to city level
One great feature of the Google Keyword Planner Tool is improved geographic targeting. If you’re a local business selling products to just one city, then the new Google AdWords tool gives you the ability to see the search volumes of a keyword for just that city. So if you’re selling just to Melbourne you can enter Melbourne as your targeting and see search volume results that are specific for just your town. This is very valuable data which you could not get from the old tool which had either domestic searches for your country or Global Volumes for a search phrase.
Click Get Search Volume and you can start reviewing data. The column you’ll be looking at is “Avg Monthly Searches” which is specific to the targeting that you have set up.
Choosing the right keywords to monitor and target is important if you are getting an online shop, as getting the right traffic is essential to making sales. A high amount of traffic that is not committed to buying is just as useless to you as no traffic at all. What you need is well targeted traffic, and enough of it to increase the chances of making sales in your store.
Google Keyword Planner is the main tools used by Ajroni Agency during their Keyword Discovery process, as seen in their SEO checklist.
Getting search engine marketing reports
Ozcart shopping cart websites allow customers to receive free monthly reports targeted at the specific keywords that you have chosen, so once you’ve chosen the right keywords for your business and what you are selling you can see how your nominated competitors are ranking on those specific keywords and what specific actions that you can take in your store (ordered by priority) to increase the relevance of your page to Google and to increase the perceived popularity of your site – as a big part of ranking in search engines is a giant popularity contest. Ozcart also has many other marketing tools built in that can help your Australian, Canadian, US, and European online business succeed. See our Shopping cart feature tour to find out more.
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