Google's Keyword Planner is free, fast and the first tool most B2B companies open when they build a keyword list. Give it a website and it reads the pages and returns hundreds of search ideas with volumes and bid estimates. It feels like the list is done.
It isn't. Keyword Planner reads words, not businesses, and B2B websites are full of words that mean something else to the rest of the world. This chapter shows what happened when we gave it twelve real B2B websites, then builds a keyword list the way we do for a B2B account: seeded with the competitors who already bid in your market, cut by hand, and sorted into small ad groups that match the pages from Chapter 4.
Keyword Planner Guesses What a B2B Site Sells From Its Wording. "Boxes" Topped the List for a Packaging Distributor.
Our example set is twelve B2B companies from one example market, the Milwaukee area, all running Google Search ads: three made-to-order manufacturers, three equipment makers, three distributors and three service firms. Your market will differ, but the tool behaves the same way everywhere. We gave Keyword Planner each company's website, set to the whole US and again to the Milwaukee area, and read the top 40 idea groups by volume for every site.
For five of the twelve, the very first idea wasn't a buyer's search at all:
- A CNC machine shop that makes parts to order got "cnc machine," 135,000 searches a month from people shopping for a machine.
- A packaging and janitorial supply distributor got "boxes," 550,000 searches a month, nearly all of them household.
- A managed IT provider got "technology solutions professional," 450,000 searches a month that have nothing to do with hiring an IT firm.
- A maker of sheet-metal storage racks got "pallet racking," a different product.
- A third-party logistics company got "chain supply management," a definition people look up.
Two more led with searches both buyers and non-buyers type, like "temp office near me" for a staffing agency, which employers and job seekers both search.
Google says that when you enter your domain, it "will try to exclude keywords not related to what you offer." It tries. But the tool can only match the words on your pages to searches that use the same words. A packaging distributor's site says "boxes" on dozens of pages. So does every moving guide on the internet.
Two Distributor Sites Got the Cleanest Keyword Lists. Their Pages Name Products the Way Buyers Search.
The share of buyer searches in the top ideas varied enormously from site to site.
The two cleanest lists came from distributors. For the electrical distributor, 96% of the top idea volume was buyer searches; for the fastener distributor, 87%. The injection molder was close behind at 82%. At the other end, the staffing agency's top ideas were only 3% clear buyer searches, the conveyor maker's 5%, the rack maker's and the packaging distributor's 14% each, and the managed IT firm's 16%. Business type isn't destiny: one distributor sat near the bottom, and the 3PL landed in the middle at about half.
The pattern makes sense once you look at the pages. A catalog distributor's site names products the way a buyer searches for them: wire, conduit, hex bolts, a part number. A service firm's site tends to use broad words, like solutions, technology, partner and supply chain, that match millions of searches from people who will never hire anyone. The injection molder's pages say "injection molding" in plain words, and the tool rewarded it.
If your own site reads like the service firms', expect to throw away most of what Keyword Planner hands you. If it reads like a catalog, the list will be cleaner, but still not clean enough to use unread.
Keyword Planner Learns Your Market From Your Rivals' Websites, Not Only From Yours.
Your own site is one input. The better input is the competitors who already bid on the searches you want, because their pages show how the market describes the work.
Start by finding them. Your Google Ads account includes a tool called Ad Preview and Diagnosis that shows the live results for a search, and checking it doesn't add impressions to your own ads. Type in your main product searches the way a buyer would. Note who shows up, and don't click their ads; every click costs them money and teaches you nothing. Google's Ads Transparency Center adds a second view: search for a competitor and see the ads they've been running.
Next, paste each rival's web address into Keyword Planner separately, and limit the results to the states or region your team covers. Run your own site the same way, so you see what Google thinks you're about. Google notes that adding a keyword alongside a website can produce more ideas than the website alone, so add your main product term too.
What comes back is a long, messy list from several angles. That's the raw material, not the keyword list.
For 6 of 12 B2B Sites, Most of Keyword Planner's Top Ideas Came From People Who Weren't Buying.
For half of our example sites, more than half of the top idea volume came from people who weren't looking to buy what the company sells. So the most important step is the one the tool can't do: reading every idea and cutting.
The cuts fall into a few groups, and every B2B list has some of each:
- Jobs and training: "temporary agency jobs near me" (27,100 a month in the staffing agency's list), "milwaukee jobs." Cut them, and add the job words to your negative keyword list.
- Definitions and how-to: "3pl meaning" (6,600 a month), "chain supply management." People learning a term, not buying a service.
- Equipment for sale, when you sell a service: "cnc machine" for a machine shop, "injection mold equipment" for a molder.
- Consumer and DIY: "boxes," and searches like "computer keeps crashing" from Chapter 2.
- Other companies' names: a competitor's brand, a marketplace, a big-box retailer. These become negative keywords in your main campaigns. Bidding on competitors is a separate decision, made later, in a campaign of its own, if at all.
Searches for your company's name are a different job entirely; they live in a brand campaign apart from the product keywords.
The survivors get grouped by what the buyer wants: roughly five or six keywords per product or process, and every group tied to its own page from Chapter 4. At launch they all run on exact match, so you pay only for the searches you chose.
Here is what that looks like on one real list. Seeded from the packaging distributor's site, Keyword Planner led with "boxes" at 550,000 searches a month. Reading down the top ideas, the household and moving searches go first: "boxes" and the packing-box and wrapping-paper ideas around it. What survives is a different list, and a much smaller one. Among the keepers: "kraft paper roll" (18,100 a month), "corrugated shipping boxes" (14,800), "mailer box" and "poly bags" (12,100 each), "corrugated boxes" (8,100), "water activated tape" (1,000), "vci bags" (880), "strapping tool" (590). Every one of those is something a business buys for its shipping room. Once grouped, they become a handful of small ad groups: boxes and cartons, mailers, paper, tape, bags, stretch wrap, strapping tools. Each one points at the matching catalog page.
In the top ideas alone, the list shrank from about 740,000 monthly searches to roughly 107,000. That's the right direction. The 550,000 were never going to buy a pallet of cartons, and every click from them would have come out of the same budget that has to reach the warehouse manager reordering tape. The same exercise works for any of the twelve sites; only the words that get cut change.
Don't throw out a keyword because the volume looks small. A B2B search with 30 searches a month can be worth more than a consumer search with 30,000, if one of those 30 sends a drawing for a production run.
The negative list isn't finished at launch either. It needs a look every week, and every day for the first month after broad match arrives. In our method that happens in Exploration, the second campaign, after the exact match launch campaign we call Isolation has proven itself. That's when Google starts matching searches you never chose.
Your Sales Team Hears the Searches Keyword Planner Never Suggests.
The last source isn't a tool. It's the people who talk to buyers every day.
Quote requests, call notes and RFQ emails are full of the words buyers use for what they need: part names, materials, tolerances, finishes, model numbers, the brand of machine the part goes on. Keyword Planner rarely suggests these, because they're too specific to show up from a website's main pages. But a buyer who knows exactly what they need often searches exactly that way.
So ask the sales team, or read the last few months of quote requests yourself, and pull out the phrases that come up again and again. Check each one in Keyword Planner under "Get search volume and forecasts" to see whether it has search volume. The ones that do become their own small ad groups. The ones that don't still tell you how to word the ads and pages.
This loop never really ends. Every few months, the search terms report and the sales team will hand you new words. In a B2B account, keyword research is a habit, not a one-time setup. Put it on the calendar once a quarter, next to the budget review from Chapter 3.
Next: The Few Searches a B2B Buyer Types When Ready to Buy
Chapter 6 takes the trimmed list and decides what runs first on exact match, and what waits for broad match once the account has proven what a qualified lead looks like. Every chapter is listed on the Google Ads for B2B guide home. For help building the list on your own account, see our Google Ads management.
