Drafting campaigns with Google's new "Keyword Planner"
To get access to the new tool you have to be logged in your Adwords account. The difficulty to use the Keyword Tool of Google without being logged in will in the near future not exist anymore. After logging in, you will find the Keyword Planner on the same place as the old trusted Keyword Tool: under the tab page "Tools and Analysis".
First, the planner asks us to choose one of these three options:
- Searching for ideas for search words and advertisement groups
- Entering search words yourself and asking for statistics here
- Combining terms to search word- lists
We click on the first option. The primary tool of the planner opens and shows the following screen:
We can here search new keywords in three ways:
- By entering one or more search words ourselves and asking for similar search words
- By entering a website URL and letting it search on keywords. Think about your product pages, competitors, related news and blog websites, etc.
- By entering a product category.
To keep it simple, we can enter the word “drill” in the first textbox. Thereafter we can specify under “Targeting” the location, language and the search Network.
For this campaign are Dutch and Dutch speaking Belgium of interest. We keep the search Network to Google. Finally the search task can be refined by setting limits to the search volume, avg. CPC, Keyword Competition or by filtering specific search words.
We click on “Get ideas” to get to the next screen.
This is the heart of the Keyword Planner. On top of the screen you can see our entered search word: “drill”. On the left are the earlier entered specifications for location, language and other filters. In the middle are a couple of suggestions for advertisement groups.
By clicking on the advertising group you can quickly see which search words are in there. Take, for example, adgroup ”Bosch”.
The list with search words inside the adgroup “Bosch” is shown within one click. Next to the monthly search volume, the level of competition and the average CPC is shown. We now go back to the previous screen. If we are satisfied with the content of advertising group “Bosch” this can be added to the “Plan” with a blue arrow.
Eventually this plan can be downloaded, with the Adwords Editor imported and edited. After the click the ad group shows up on the right side of the screen.
Advertisement groups can, once added to the plan, not be modified. By clicking on the adgroup “Bosch” a new screen opens up in which search words can be added or deleted. There is no possibility to split advertisement groups or to easily move search words to another ad group.
We close the ad group and return to the main screen. Under the tab page “Keyword Ideas” more suggestions are given for individual search words without summarizing them in ad groups.
You can add keyword-suggestions by selecting an existing ad group.
We will now click the blue button "Get estimates and review plan" to continue to the next screen.
On this place you can see for different scenarios what the influence on your marketing performances (and your wallet) will be. By entering a maximum CPC bid on top, the Keyword Planner will calculate the expected amount of clicks, impressions, average position and how big the total daily costs will be. Keywords can also be added and deleted in this screen, and you can adjust the match type to get more detailed data.
If you are happy with the new campaign, you can download it as a CSV file and import it in the Adwords Editor.
With this the most important part of the Keyword Planner is accomplished. But the Keyword Planner has even more functions. On the starting screen can for example be chosen to combine terms to lists of search words.
This is a fast and easy way to get large amounts of search words.
Conclusion
The new Keyword Planner is a big progress compared to the old tools. If you change function within the Adwords Keyword Planner your progress will be saved. Therefore, you can first search for search words and combine these to get to more search words. Eventually all search words can be downloaded in the plan as CSV and be edited in the Adwords Editor. There still have to be added ad texts, campaign-settings, landing page URL’s etc. before your campaign is ready to go online. The new Keyword Planner will not pick up all the work, but by combining two old tools in one it is easier to see what a campaign will cost and produce.