Google Keyword Planner: how to use it for free, without running ads

Google Keyword Planner is Google’s free keyword research tool. It sits inside Google Ads because it was built for advertisers, but you can use it without running a single ad.

There is a catch. You need a Google Ads account in Expert Mode, Google asks for billing details, and without ad spend the volumes appear as ranges, such as 1K–10K, rather than exact figures. This tutorial shows how to get in without spending anything, then how to read what you find so that you can choose the keywords your pages should rank for.

It is part of my guide to small business SEO. Menu names below are those of the English interface. Google moves them from time to time, so a label on your screen may differ slightly.

What Google Keyword Planner is, and what it shows

Keyword Planner suggests keywords and estimates their monthly searches and their cost in ads, from Google’s own search data. For SEO, it answers three questions: does anyone search for this, which phrasing do people use more, and which searches are worth money.

Step 1: create a Google Ads account without running ads

1. Go to ads.google.com and sign in with the Google account you will keep for the business, rather than a personal address you could lose access to.
2. Google’s setup opens on questions about your goals, to build a first campaign. Look near the bottom of the screen for a link that skips it. For years it read Switch to Expert Mode, then Create an account without a campaign on the next screen, but Google changes this sign-up from time to time, and not every version offers the shortcut.
3. Confirm the billing country, the time zone and the currency: United Kingdom, London time and British pounds for a UK business. Choose the currency carefully, as it cannot be changed later.
4. Add your billing details when Google asks for them. Keyword Planner can stay locked until the account setup, billing included, is complete.

Adding billing details does not start any ads: you pay for ads that run, and an account without a campaign has nothing to run.

If your sign-up offers no way past the campaign, finish it, then open Campaigns and set the new campaign’s status to Paused. A paused campaign shows no ads and costs nothing. Google reviews most new ads within one business day, so pause it as soon as it exists rather than the next morning.

Step 2: open Keyword Planner

In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon in the left-hand menu, open Planning and choose Keyword Planner. If your menu looks different, type “Keyword Planner” into the search bar at the top of Google Ads.

The tool opens on two options:

• Discover new keywords suggests ideas from words related to what you sell, or from a website.
• Get search volume and forecasts gives figures for a list of keywords you already have, pasted in or uploaded as a CSV file.

Explore with the first, then check your shortlist with the second (step 8).

Step 3: find keyword ideas from words or a website

Click Discover new keywords. You can start in two ways:

• Start with keywords: type a few words or phrases that describe what you sell, the way your clients say them.
• Start with a website: enter a web address, yours or a competitor’s, and Google suggests keywords from that site’s content. You can use the whole site or a single page.

Give the tool precise seeds. A wedding florist would start with three or four phrasings, such as wedding florist, wedding flowers and bridal bouquet. A single broad word such as flowers brings back ideas from every corner of the subject, from garden plants to same-day delivery, and most of them will never bring a client.

The website option is most useful on a competitor’s service page: it shows the vocabulary Google associates with that page, including phrasings you had not thought of. Check the language and the location under the search box, then click Get results.

Step 4: set the location, language and date range

Above the results, four settings change every figure on the page. Check them before you read anything.

1. Location: the area you serve. A business that works in one city should choose that city or its county; a national service, the whole country. Run London and Manchester as two searches rather than one.
2. Language: English for UK clients. Change it, along with the location, for each market you sell in.
3. Search network: choose Google rather than Google and search partners, the other sites that show Google’s ads. For SEO, the searches made on Google itself are the ones that count.
4. Date range: the last 12 months by default, which turns a seasonal business into a flat average. Choose the months of your season to see their figures, or read the season itself in Google Trends.

Step 5: read the search volumes and trends

The table lists your own keywords first, then the ideas. These are the columns that matter for SEO:

Why you see ranges, and how to work with them

Without ad spend, average monthly searches show as bands such as 100–1K or 1K–10K. For choosing keywords, a band is usually enough: it tells you whether people search for a phrase at all, and whether one phrase is in a different league from another.

Within one band, two other free tools decide:

• Google Trends puts close phrasings on one chart, so it shows which of two keywords in the same band people type more.
• Google Search Console, once your page ranks, shows how many impressions it gets for each search.

Step 6: use the top-of-page bids to spot keywords that sell

The last two columns, Top of page bid (low range) and Top of page bid (high range), estimate what advertisers bid to appear above the unpaid results. Google defines them as roughly the 20th and 80th percentiles of recent bids that showed an ad at the top of the page, for the location and network you selected. They are not a price list, and they stay empty for keywords with little bidding history.

For SEO, these columns are a free measure of commercial value. Advertisers do not keep paying for clicks that never turn into clients, so a keyword that stays expensive is usually one that brings them business.

This is how I choose what to rank for. I look at the keywords advertisers pay for and what each click costs them, which shows the keywords that work best, then I double down on those with SEO instead of paying for every click. I do it in Semrush, but Keyword Planner gives you the same signal for free, straight from Google.

Read the bid columns together with the volumes, comparing each keyword with the rest of your list:

Compare bids for the same location: the price of a click varies from one place to another.

Step 7: filter out what will never bring a client

A long list is not a good list. Two tools shorten it:

• Refine keywords, beside the results, groups the ideas by theme, such as brands or product types, so that you can untick a whole group at once. Google explains it in its help page on refining keywords.
• Filters, above the table, hide ideas by their text or their figures. Exclude the words that bring people who will never buy, such as jobs, course or DIY, and free unless your clients search for a free quote.

Then remove by hand the places you do not serve, competitors’ brand names and services you do not offer. What is left should read like the requests of your future clients.

Step 8: check a list with Get search volume and forecasts

When you already have phrasings, from Google Trends, from your clients’ emails or from your own research, go back to the start page and choose Get search volume and forecasts. Paste your keywords, or upload them as a CSV file. You get two views:

• the same historical figures as in step 5, for your exact phrasings and nothing else;
• a forecast of the clicks, impressions and cost you could expect if you bought these keywords as ads. You can change the daily budget, the bid strategy and the period; conversions appear only if conversion tracking is set up in the account, as Google’s Keyword Planner help explains.

For SEO, read the forecast as the price of not ranking: roughly what the same traffic would cost you through ads. It is an estimate, but it puts a figure on the choice between a page that takes months to rank and ads that start within days. My SEO vs PPC comparison helps you make that choice.

If the forecast tempts you, Google Ads is not that tricky, provided you research your target and what they search for, which is what you have just done. My guide to Google Ads for small business covers the rest. Saving a plan in Keyword Planner costs nothing; ads start only once a campaign is created and running, so stop before any button that creates one.

Step 9: download the list and give each keyword a page

Use the download button above the table to export the ideas as a CSV file or to Google Sheets. Add a column for the page each keyword belongs to, and sort the ideas by what the person wants:

Give each page one main keyword and its close variants, and never give two pages the same main keyword, or they will compete with each other. Use the main keyword in the page title, the first paragraph and one heading. The whole method, from the first list of words to the plan of your pages, is in my guide to keyword research for small businesses.

Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Semrush or Search Console?

Keyword Planner answers part of the question. Other tools answer the rest:

My tutorials on how to use Google Trends and how to use Google Search Console cover the two other free tools, and my Semrush review looks at whether a paid keyword tool is worth it for a small business.

Your Keyword Planner checklist before each new page

1. Work from an Expert Mode account with no active campaign.
2. Set the location you serve, the language, the Google network and the date range.
3. Discover ideas from three or four phrasings your clients use, then from a competitor’s service page.
4. Read the volume bands as orders of magnitude, and settle close calls in Google Trends.
5. Look at the top-of-page bids: high bids point to the searches that bring business.
6. Filter out jobs, courses, DIY, brands and places you do not serve.
7. Check your shortlist with Get search volume and forecasts.
8. Download the list and give each page a single main keyword.
9. A few months after publishing, compare your choices with the impressions in Search Console.

You do not need anyone to do this: the tool is free and, once the account exists, the routine is quick to run for each new page. Hand it over when you would rather have someone choose the keywords, plan the pages and write them; that is part of my SEO service.