Google Keyword Planner - Just PPC?

[Bendall]

Morning Mozzers,

Please help a layman learn. This is probably a silly question but when I look at keyword search data in Google's Keyword Planner Tool and I see "COMPETITIVE" or "LOW" am I looking at all searches inclusive of organic and PPC?

I have been a bit confused by logging in through an Adwords account?

At the moment to get my keyword research I am using a combination of Moz, Webmaster Tools, Keyword Planner. I have had a look at the free version of SEMrush which looks really cool. Is my approach right using these tools? Am I covering all bases / missing key opportunities?

Regards

Ben

[Alick300]

Hi Ben,

"when I look at keyword search data in Google's Keyword Planner Tool and I see "COMPETITIVE" or "LOW" am I looking at all searches inclusive of organic and PPC?"

Keyword planner provides stats for Paid only not Organic.

If you ready to spend some money I would like to suggest you to go for paid version of semrush tool. You will get many important stats apart from keyword research.

Hope this helps

Thanks

[Bendall]

Thank you for your prompt reply, appreciate it.

So Google's Keyword Planner tool only shows me PAID data, so is merely showing a trend and not the complete picture.

SEMrush paid tool sounds amazing, I only heard good things. Will look into.

Regards

Ben

[TomRayner]

Hi Ben

First of all, that's a good solid approach.  I like SEMRush a lot.

Just to clarify for you - the "competition" metric in the Keyword Planner tool is strictly for paid search competition.  The search volume is for all search volume (searches that resulted in a paid or organic click, or no click at all).

Moz's tool gives you a competition score based on organic competition, so it is a good supplement.

You might also be interested in Term Explorer - as it gives a topline competition based on organic competition and is a bit more indepth.  I'm a big fan of it.

Hope this helps.

[MattAntonino]

The search volume is "supposed to be" for all search volume but as has been proven time & time & time & time & time again, it's often far off. We've seen phrases in Adwords, no location set, as global as it gets with "50" results. And our client has actually achieved 700+ on the same keyphrase.

If it's in something viral that makes sense. But credit repair & debt collections? There aren't exactly mind-blowing reasons to be that far off.

For this & other reasons, we don't rely on Adwords numbers at all. You don't really know when it's going to be right or drastically wrong.

[Bendall]

Thank you for taking the time to reply Matthew.

In light of the defiances of Keyword Planner can you recommend a better solution please? Or is it a case of using multiple tools to get a well rounded answer?

[MattAntonino]

We tend to use multiple solutions. Adwords planner + Ubersuggest + Moz Keyword Difficulty + SEMRush ... those four tend to give a really well-rounded view. If it's ecommerce we may add in Soovle for Amazon.

[Bendall]

That's really very useful, thank you Matt.

I have also been recommended termexplorer.com and keywordeye.com - I guess a lot of this is personal preference.

I think I now have a clearer idea on the 3 or 4 tools I want to concentrate on using for my keyword research. For someone fairly new to SEO it can be confusing as there are so many tools out there.

But certainly MOZ, SEMrush, Ubersuggest come up time and time again, and so I think this is where I will concentrate.

Ben