How will changes to Google’s Keyword Planner affect your Keyword Research in 2017?

Google’s All New ‘Freemium’ Keyword Planner

Keyword Research in 2017
Firstly, we’ve said 2017 and that’s intentional because quite often when these things happen, the effects can take a few weeks or months to be fully felt. People running campaigns now will likely have done their research phase already, it will be campaigns and onsite work done for late (think Christmas) 2016 and into 2017 that will be most affected.

So how will it affect us & what will we do instead?

For agencies, I don’t think it will affect us that much to begin with. We spend enough on AdWords that we’ve seen no impact thus far. I’m guessing that most other agencies are the same. However marketing departments that don’t do much PPC and freelance SEOs, content writers etc. could be in a different boat. So, what do we do?

Option 1: We Look Elsewhere for the Data

The simplest solution is to find another tool; there are many out there that do a similar, if not better, job than the Keyword Planner. Unfortunately, you have to pay for most of these. Examples that immediately spring to mind are Moz Keyword Explorer, SEMRush, SearchMetrics, Advanced Web Ranking and KeywordTool.IO.

Here at SiteVisibility, we have been very impressed with MOZ’s brand new Keyword Explorer and have been using it extensively even before this announcement. We also utilise SEMrush in a number of our campaigns and when combined we can research, categorise and track key terms with ease. Most SEO agencies and individuals will likely have subscriptions to these but we still feel they may be getting even more soon.

It’s important to note that many of these tools use Google data too and it’s unclear if or how they will be affected, although MOZ have already moved to announce that their Keyword Explorer won’t be, as they use clickstream data.

Option 2: We Think Outside the Box

This may sound ridiculous but what if we don’t actually use search engine data to inform our search strategies. It’s no secret that simple words on a page aren’t what they were and google is moving towards a much smarter, more intuitive search. We know that we should focus on topic themes instead, and we know that we should try and optimise for local if and where we can. So Google’s decision to restrict data may not be the death knell we think.

What if we start thinking like users even more and get our data from other places… like social media?. There’s a plethora of social media monitoring tools and we could be using this to inform our onsite strategies. We know that Google wants to become more instant and adaptive, we know that conversations on social media can mirror other online intent and finally, it’s data we have access to.

I don’t see it being very useful for the more run-of-the-mill page optimisation for things like product or category pages but for creative campaigns, landing pages and informational content, it could be a great way of judging what people are talking about and tapping into it. As a bonus, it will also give us a measure of confidence that any content created has the ability to perform well socially.

Option 3: We do this…

Remember when directory submission worked and you would pay to do it? And then when it stopped working those same directories would charge you to remove the links…?

Welcome to 2017…

Source: sitevisibility.co.ukpaara