Keyword Planner

In 2013, Google replaced its free Keyword Tool with the integrated Keyword Planner, which is geared more towards PPC advertisers than organic search marketers. While the free keyword research tool is still the preferred keyword planning tool for many, it has certain disadvantages.

Disadvantages of Google’s Keyword Planner

1. The Keyword Planner isn’t a good place to look for trending search topics. The average monthly search volume displayed by the tool is calculated over a 12-month period.

2. Search volumes for mobile and desktop are clubbed, which means device targeting becomes difficult.

Fortunately, there are quite a few free alternatives to Google’s Keyword Planner to help you with your keyword research.

1. Google Correlate

A keyword planning tool that is very often overlooked, Correlate is great to build a list of long tail keywords. It gives related search phrases for your primary keyword. You can compare state-wide search patterns for the US, or take a look at country-wide data.

Pros:

It moves away from simply giving you iterations of your primary keyword, which makes it a worthy tool for getting creative with your keyword list.

Cons:

Sometimes, the related search phrases that it throws up might not align with your business.

2. Wordtracker Scout

Snooping on your competitors is an important part of keyword research, and Wordtracker Scout helps you do exactly that. A Chrome extension, it gives you a webpage’s primary keywords. All you need to do is press W.

Pros:

It is the simplest way to check the keywords that your competition is optimizing for.

Cons:

You need Chrome to use this free keyword planning tool. 

3. Ubersuggest

Think you are getting all the data from Google’s Keyword Planner? Think, again. The Keyword Planner is primarily targeted at PPC advertisers, which means you might be missing out on organic search data. That’s where Ubersuggest can help. It can give you an extensive list of suggestions based on your primary keyword, which includes long-tail terms that you might not find on the Keyword Planner.

Pros:

It also allows you to search YouTube, Images, and Shopping for keyword suggestions.

Cons:

It does not give you rankings for search terms, or even how competitive they are.

The list above is meant to provide you with both the tools that you can use to build a new, or evaluate an existing campaign, as well as offer a broader view of your digital footprint. If you are looking for more advanced keyword research tools, you can also take a look at WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool, or SEMrush’s keyword tool.

“Programmatic Advertising – The use of software to purchase digital advertising in lieu of  manual insertion orders.”

Plain and simple, programmatic advertising is nothing more than the process of using software to purchase digital advertising on various platforms and or sites instead of letting humans negotiate rates and place insertion orders.  The main reason that this “matters” is as a result of the increased speed and efficiency that it brings and the elimination of menial tasks that we’ve had to deal with in the past like sending insertion orders in to publishers etc.  That doesn’t mean that the machines are taking over.  It still takes a marketer with a keen vision to architect a successful strategy, put the pieces together, and optimize campaigns.

Ironically, the benefit here is also the danger.  Think of it in terms of a hammer and nail versus a nail gun.  As inefficient as the use of a hammer and nail are, they force the absolute deliberate placement of each nail because of the effort required.  The manual placement process was fairly similar.  It required a certain deliberate intent, review, and confirmation.  The effortlessness of a single mouse click that automates purchases, much like the nail gun analogy, creates a process that if left unchecked could cost clients money.

In the end everything moves forward at the rate that the market dictates, and no doubt that this year we will hear about more success stories like Red Roof Inn’s programmatic buying of ads in airports when flights were cancelled that increased booking rates by 60%, but we will also hear stories like Gary Vaynerchuk never buying a Samsung product again because their ads kept blocking the screen on his mobile phone when he refreshed a page while waiting for an update.  After all, a tool is only as good as the person that uses it.