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How To Use The Google Keyword Planner To Find Things To Write About

Content marketing is the cornerstone of SEO & social media marketing but how do you know what to write about? Here's how to use the Google Keyword Planner

Every page on your website could be a potential entry point of traffic, be it via your SEO efforts from Google or sharing links in social media. This means the more content you have on your website the better.

The hardest thing, however, is often not knowing what to write about – what are people searching for and what will they find interesting? I think for most people it is this that forms the biggest block.

So while a moment of pure genius may strike you at times, knowing how to research your topics can be the thing you need to get your content marketing moving and optimised for the best keywords.

One of the quickest ways to get an idea of what you should be writing about is to check out what is working for your competitors using the Google Keyword Planner.

The following instructions are mainly based around selecting keywords based on your ability to rank for them in Google. However, in the process you may discover topics that you feel:

  1. Are valuable to visitors even if they have come to your website separate to any search related to the keyword, e.g. your email list.
  2. Will generate interest via your social media channels

The Google Keyword Planner is a free tool and is very simple to use. Once you open the keyword tool, select “search for new keyword and ad group ideas.”

Google Keyword Planner

Just enter the URL of one of your competitors and you will get a list of the keywords Google thinks are relevant for your competitor. Unless you are in a non-competitive industry it is probably better to go for a keyword that has “low” competition and gets a reasonable amount of searches. What you consider reasonable depends on the amount you make from a converted lead…10 leads for something worth $2 might not get you excited but if a converted lead is worth $20,000 it may be a different matter.

Note: the competition indicator is the competition for Google Adwords so may not be a direct reflection of the organic (non-paid) search results.

Now that you have found an acceptable keyword, take the low competition keyword that you found and enter it into the keyword planner by selecting “modify search” above the keyword information.

Competitor Research

Delete the URL of the competitor from the “landing page” box and enter the low competition keyword you found in the last step into the “your product or service” box, then click “get ideas”.

Expanded Search - LSI Keywords

You will then be provided with a list of keywords Google believes are relevant to the keyword you entered. Related keywords (often called LSI keywords) will give you an idea of keywords Google expects to see on the same page. In the past you would have created a page for each one to target that search term but recent changes to the Google algorithm has made this an outdated practice – only if a keyword warrants a page on it’s own should you be creating it. Current best practice is to have a page themed around a topic with related or LSI keywords included.

As you can see below, this method returned several low competition terms that have search volume. In your own business, your own products and services will determine the related keywords that are relevant to you.

LSI Keywords

It may take some time getting this right, but once you have the method going you should have no problems with coming up with new ideas for things you could be writing about. For every single keyword sit down and start brainstorming topics/titles for new pages and articles.

In one session you could have your whole year’s content strategy planned out and then all you have to do is schedule time to write the content (or delegate it).

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