What is Google Keyword Planner and how do you use it for keyword research?

Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool inside Google Ads. It is the only first-party source of Google search demand data available to small businesses without paying for a subscription SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. tool like Semrush or Ahrefs.

With Keyword Planner, you can enter seed terms related to your business and get back keyword ideas, average monthly searches, competition levels and cost-per-click data. That information helps you decide which topics to write about and which keywords to target in your SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. and content marketing.

To access Keyword Planner, you need a Google Ads account. You do not need to run any ads. Sign up at ads.google.com with your Google account, create a campaign shell (you can set a low daily budget and pause it immediately) and then navigate to Tools > Keyword Planner from the top menu. That is it. The data is yours to explore.

There are two main ways to use the tool:

The first is Discover New Keywords. Enter a few words that describe your business (for example, "digital marketing", "SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. services", "content marketing"), and Google returns a list of related keywords with average monthly searches, competition (low, medium, high) and the bid range advertisers typically pay. Use this to find the search terms your potential customers use.

The second is Get Search Volume and Forecasts. Paste in a list of keywords you have already identified, and Keyword Planner shows you their historical search volumes (going back 12 months) and how demand changes by season. This is useful for validating whether a topic has enough search interest to be worth writing about.

A few things to keep in mind:

Keyword Planner groups similar searches together. The monthly search figure it shows is a range (for example, 100-1,000 or 1,000-10,000), not an exact number. That is because Google wants to prevent competitors reverse-engineering exact search volumes for advertiser bidding purposes. You still get enough information to rank keywords by relative demand.

The competition column shows advertiser competition, not organic (SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages.) competition. A keyword with high advertiser competition may still be easy to rank for organically, and vice versa. Treat the competition metric as a signal about how commercial the intent is, not how hard the SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. work will be.

Keyword Planner is not a rank tracker. Once you have identified your target keywords, you need a separate tool to monitor your positions in search results. Our free SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. report at /run-a-seoSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages.-report checks your keyword rankings alongside site health, and Metrona tracks your visibility in AI search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini. For daily rank tracking, the Ahrefs and Semrush docs on this site explain the paid alternatives.

Despite its limitations, Keyword Planner is the best free starting point for keyword research because the data comes directly from Google. No third-party estimation, no guesswork. Every small business owner can use it before investing in paid tools or agency support.

If you would like help turning keyword data into a content plan that drives traffic and enquiries, Victory Digital's SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. packages start at GBP 980 per month and include full keyword research, content strategy and monthly reporting. Book a discovery call at https://victory.digital/book/discovery-call to discuss your goals.