A Guide to Understanding and Using Your Keyword Plan

OM4 conducts keyword research and presents results and recommendations in a Keyword Plan.

Your Keyword Plan helps you select keywords for your website based on the actual keywords used by searchers. Not guesses. The Wordtracker keyword database tracks actual keywords typed in by searchers over the last 90 days. Wordtracker uses that historical data to predict the number of times a keyword will be searched in the next 24 hours.

To develop a Keyword Plan, seed keywords associated with your business are used to find related keywords and analyse their popularity. Based on the popularity and relevance of keywords, your keyword analyst develops recommendations to help you plan your website.

Keyword Terms and Concepts

Key terms to help you understand your Keyword Plan:

Keyword: A keyword refers to the word (or words) entered into the search box of a search engine. For example, sydney accommodation (two words used in a Google search) is referred to as a keyword. Another related keyword might be sydney hotel
Seed Keywords: Seed keywords are used as the basis for keyword popularity searches. For example, the seed sydney would return sydney accommodation and sydney hotel.
Keyword Family: Keywords are grouped into keyword families (based on the seed keyword used to find them) for reporting and analysis: sydney, sydney accommodation and sydney hotel are all grouped in the sydney keyword family.
Keyword Popularity: Keyword popularity is reported as the number of predicted searches per day for each relevant keyword (or keyword phrase) found using a given keyword seed.
Plurals: Google treats horse and horses as different keywords (even though we know they are the singular/plural form of the same word)
Spaces: Google treats compound words like farm stay and farmstay as different keywords
Ordering: Google treats sydney accommodation and accommodation sydney as different keywords
Capitals: Google doesn’t worry about capitalisation, so Sydney, sydney and SYDNEY are treated as the same word by Google.
Search Tail: Primary keywords (the most popular keywords in your niche) have a short or long ‘tail’ of more specific keywords e.g. pony -> wild pony, pony stories. A short tail has fewer keywords, and a long tail has more.

Contents of your Keyword Plan

Business Objectives	Understanding of the business objectives of your website that provides the basis for keyword research.
Seed Keywords	The keywords used for raw keyword seaches.
Keyword Popularity	Keyword results are filtered for relevance, grouped by keyword family and presented in graphical form. Aggregate popularity (by family) and detailed popularity (by keyword phrase) are both available.
Recommendations	Recommendations for keyword usage in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), domain name selection and for content ideas.
Keyword Data	Detailed keyword popularity tables.

How to use your Keyword Plan

Your Keyword Plan includes recommendations in four areas:

SEO: Plan for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Once you have decided on what keywords are most important to you, you can invest in creating relevant content. Ranking well in organic search engine results can take time, particularly where there is a lot of competition. So sometimes it is best to start with less popular keywords and work towards longer term goals with more competitive keywords.
SEM: Plan for Search Engine Marketing (SEM). You can tackle more competitive keywords right away with a Pay Per Click (PPC) search marketing campaign, although you need to make sure that the benefits of the campaign (conversions x customer value) outweigh the costs (PPC click costs and time/money to run campaigns).
Domains: Plan your domain names. In some situations having keywords in your domain name can help your organic search campaign and/or conversion rates. Use your keyword plan to help you decide on a new domain name (or in some cases to reposition from your existing domain).
Content: Ideas for specific blog posts and feature articles: keywords can give you great ideas for blog posts or feature articles that encourage more search traffic to find you, spend longer on your site and come to trust your authority.

Implementing Recommendations

This section provides information on how to implement the recommendations in your report.

Organic Search - SEO

How to implement a recommended keyword (using an OM4 website):

Identify a web page that will provide the most relevant content for people searching for this keyword - this will sometimes be referred to as a Theme Page, with the keyword representing the theme
Include the keyword in the page URL (edit the page slug/URL)
Include the keyword in the title tag (use the All in One SEO field for this purpose)
Write a Page Description (using the All in One SEO field) that will maximise click-through from search engine result pages
Enable the Content Theme plugin, create a blog Category for the keyword, and link the category to the theme page
Write content that solves the problem for the search visitor
Write blog posts that are related to the keyword and place them in the relevant category by ticking the box in the category list before publishing
Share your content with other interested parties who may link to your page
Register your page in web directories that may send relevant visitors to your page

For a more detailed explanation of the steps outlined here, see OM4 Client Resources and find the section on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). There are three articles that explain how to optimize your website.

One of the reasons we use Wordtracker for your keyword plan is because you can access the same keyword database for free to do follow up research. There is another excellent source of keyword data available called Keyword Discovery, and they have a useful article that talks about how to integrate keywords into your website: Implementing Keywords Into A Website.

Paid Search - SEM

How to implement a PPC campaign:

Review OM4 Client Resources and find the section Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Read web resources about managing AdWords

Domain Names

How to register domain names:

Review OM4 Client Resources and find the section on Domains

Content Ideas

Keywords can suggest ideas for content that respond to a clear search intent. The combination of a high value keyword, a strong search intent and a memorable headline create an excellent content idea.

How to implement Content Ideas:

Review the underlying keywords in the title and assess the search intent
Research the suggested topic and identify the problem (or problems) people are trying to solve
Use your site to create a new page or post
Use the suggested topic as a heading for your page or post

Sample Keyword Data

Source: Wordtracker.

Family	Keyword	Predict
saltwater aquarium	saltwater aquarium	130
seahorse	seahorse pictures	60
seahorse	dwarf seahorses	60
seahorse	interesting facts about seahorse	32
seahorse	dwarf seahorse	29
seahorse	seahorses for sale	25
oceanic	oceanic aquariums	94
oceanic	oceanic aquarium	37
oceanic	oceanic aquarium prices	10