KEYWORDS: How can I find keywords to target now that the majority of searches have been hidden from keyword planner?

[Andrew_IT]

Hello Community,

I am not an expert and I need some advice. So thank you for your time

I read that Google is not showing the same amount of search volume data it was showing before (like up until 2-3 weeks ago, after the NSA scandal) and that now it's changed the way we should look at which keyword groups to target since we dont know anymore how many people actually searched for these terms.

Say I want to start a new site around the topic "french chocolate" (just joking, but say I want to).

How do I find out today which is the most searched term in that keyword group/cluster? I mean this in terms of volume of searches.

Please help, I need some guidance on how to approach my content developmente strategy from now on, I always heavily relied on keywords and that got me awesome results in less than a year!

Thank you again for your time

Best

[MoeezLodhi]

Are you starting it just to rank best? I will rather suggest start something that you like writing about; let it be chocolate or banana shake. Let's say you love "chocolates" search for the ideas.. go for a keyword with relatively low competition. Grab bits and pieces and grow on them.
Cheers!

[Andrew_IT]

Hi, with my first site that I started 1 year 2 months ago im up 33k visits per month only organic, 98% of it is from Google.

Im writing top quality content in Italian which is the country I operate in with my dev agency.

Now I want to make a new site that can double that number of visits just by targeting different niches that I find interesting and potential. I know I have awesome content to pull out and only need to understand if there are new ways to find awesome keywords with tons of traffic.

Do you know of any new ways? Has anything changed on the keyword tool in order for us to determine what are the highest searched words?

Thanks again

[FedeEinhorn]

I would suggest you read the following post that outlines the pros and cons of keyword planner plus giving you some alternatives and ways to find out volumes:

http://moz.com/blog/keyword-volume-tools

Hope that helps!

[SebastianDyer]

You can still get useful data directly from the AdWords keyword planner. In addition, you can see limited historical data from the Webmaster Tools report (CTR, Impressions etc), but be warned that this isn't the most accurate and reliable tool in the world. Sometimes the best keywords come from thinking about what your audiences' needs are and then using instinct to think about what search terms they might use to find your content. I will often use the AdWords tool to pick out a few keywords relating to the page and will then create variants that I believe are likely to be searched and are semantically relevant.

Often, content that is well thought-out and created from the sole perspective of quality (without keyword research) can perform amazingly. With semantics, it's becoming easier for content to rank based on the overall theme of the content, as opposed to individual keywords. Do consider the long-tail keywords that pop up in good quality content, too (this has always been hard to research anyway).

Good luck!

[evolvingSEO]

Hey There

I know this question is a little old but just want to add some things. If we're talking about volume only - and getting accurate numbers from the Keyword Planner there are a few important things to know.

• First of all - the changes are just calculating the numbers in slightly different ways. They are still accurate, so long as you know what's different.

• For one, volume for desktop and mobile is now combined together - there is no separate report at the moment for desktop vs mobile so you're seeing these volumes combined

• Next is they are now averaging volumes across the last 12 months (which before I imagine they may have pulled from the most recent month)

• Now you can also not only get volume by country but also by city, state, region etc.

• Lastly - they are showing you all exact match volume by default - which is what you want. Broad and even phrase match are not very ideal for SEO.

So when you go into keyword planner, it's actually easier in my opinion to get the right data. You don't need to set a match type. You don't need to add up desktop and mobile and they have average the last 12 months for you.

The only thing you need to do really is decide on your location. If you want to know how many people type "french chocolate" in France vs. the whole world or vs. Italy - that's the biggest choice you have to make really.

Full documentation from Google on the changes here.

Hope that helps