Posted by Cameron Francis
on
22 May , 2014
in
News Uncategorized
Keyword research remains a vital component of both paid and organic search strategies. As a matter of fact, it is estimated that search marketers spend about one-fourth of their time researching keywords.
Without much fanfare, Google has recently updated their Keyword Planner with some significant changes the make it quite a bit more useful and easier to use. These changes, which were rolled out at the end of April make the Keyword Planner more powerful, and more visual, with an increased emphasis on mobile. This is the first major Keyword Planner update since it was introduced approximately one year ago.
So, without further ado, we’ll describe the new features offered in Keyword Planner.
Search Volume Trend Visualisation
When you perform a keyword search, you will now be presented with an attractive chart that will display the volume trends associated with your keyword for each month. This can be very helpful, particularly for businesses that sell seasonal products and services. It can also help you to identify search terms that are gaining or losing popularity over time.
Prior Time Period Comparisons
The Keyword Planner now allows you to compare the volume a keyword is currently getting versus a past period of time. All you need to do is to select a monthly range and turn on “compare”.
This gives you the ability to visualise the way search volume has changed over a time-span. Therefore, if the traffic that is associated with a particular keyword that you are ranking well for has declined, you may want to check this out, it could be due to lower search volume.
This data will be displayed in your dashboard, and you have the ability to export it for further analysis or to include in your reports.
Mobile Trend Visualisation
In today’s world people are continually connected via their mobile devices, consequently, Google is now displaying desktop versus mobile search volume with the Keyword Planner.
This gives marketers an idea of the number of people that are searching for a particular term on mobile and desktop devices. This can provide some useful insights into user behaviour and the type of ads that can be used to target an audience. It also provides information that can be used to adjust mobile bids for AdWords users as well.
Search Traffic Displayed By Device
VSearch volume for keyword searches can now be segmented by device type, which is another useful feature that provides marketers with greater insights into user behaviour and ways that their ads can be tailored. In the past, this data wasn’t available within the Keyword Planner.
Location Breakdown
Search volume can now be displayed based upon a geographic location of your choosing. This gives local marketers excellent insights into the search behaviour of their local audience.
More Granular And Powerful Estimates
After selecting several keywords, the new Keyword Planner gives much more granular information regarding them that was not available in the past. You can segment by location and device, but Google will customise your results based upon your AdWords budget and bids, so that the impressions, cost, clicks and other data are fully customised if you’re running AdWords campaigns.
