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How to Target for Local Keywords: A Guide to Keyword Research for SEO
If you are a business owner there is nothing you would love more than boosting your local website’s online visibility.
The first step to do this is a thoroughly organized keyword research process.
Keyword research is an important part of any digital marketing strategy, this goes for any business, whether local or global.
Keyword research is a fundamental part of SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.
Using keyword research in SEO helps you to make sure that you are centering your energy and time to search words and terms that are popular among people.
Doing SEO can take up a lot of your time, so you don’t want to spend many months or years of hard work just to get that number one spot on Google for terms or keywords that nobody uses to search.
Many businesses that have a big dependence on local businesses know that local SEO keywords are essential to get the most out from local and phone searches.
How to find keywords to focus for local SEO
The goal of keyword research for local SEO is to find the most commonly searched, relevant terms for your business industry.
Google particularly pays attention to relevancy when it comes to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and they are Google’s response to a user’s search query.
SERPs tend to include organic search results, paid Google Ads results, featured snippets, knowledge graphs and video results..
A 72% of marketers claim that relevancy is the main leading factor for improving SEO. If your content isn’t relevant to what people are actually searching for, you won’t appear in their results.
Researching which keywords have the highest search volume and search intent, helps you to ensure that you’re focusing on the right terms.
If your business’ website is not relevant at all to the search terms you’re trying to target, not only will you find it difficult to rank for them.
If you do, customers will likely be turned away, clicking away from your website without interacting further on your page.
How to Find Local SEO Keywords?
The first step in finding local SEO keywords is to ask yourself this question: What are the keywords that are specific to your industry?”
So, you should think about what are the common words or terms that your customers would use in order to find your business.
A great example for this is to simply imagine yourself as the customer that is searching for your service and then normally type in Google.
For example, if you are in the baking and pastries industry you can type words like, ‘cupcakes’, ‘beautiful layered cakes’,, ‘fresh bread’, ‘local bakery and ingredients’, ‘local bakers in my area’ and ‘chocolate cake’, and so on.
If we were to just go off the main search, you would just type ‘bakery’, but if the business offers other special services, you would miss out on potential customers who are looking for those special services that you offer.
Here are some specific services, ”customized wedding cakes’’, ‘’local bakery doing catering’’, “fresh French pastries”, and “bakeries with coffee and tea”.
What else can you do to modify keyword searches?
You should know that you should use keyword modifiers to make your searches more relevant.
These words should be able to further describe the service, quality, type of product or event that they can be used.
Some examples of keyword modifiers:
- Best
- Top-rated
- Where
- How
- Recommended
- High Quality
Words like “best”, “excellent”, “recommended”, “how” and “high quality” are popular modifiers that people can use when searching.
Putting these words will change the meaning behind the keyword and can improve the people clicking on your website, as they are more appealing.
You can also add modifiers that you find are relevant to your business industry.
For example, a restaurant, “catering”, “buffet”, “Chinese” and “delivery” are all relevant keyword modifiers, even though they don’t mention your business industry specifically.
Include Local Keywords
The next part of your SEO strategy should be finding keywords that are local-based.
Many people are in a hurry to get to something or to get something, that is why many people like businesses that are in their local area, areas that are close to them.
So it is important to market the location of your business, the areas where your target market lives in and frequently are in, let us say in the business district or a school district.
You should include names of towns, cities or counties in your meta tags and on-page content that are specific to the location so that many customers find your page relevant to them
Adding local keywords in your promotional posts in social media or ads will help you spread the name of your business to the areas that are in your target audience.
How Do You Do Keyword Research for SEO?
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Step 1: Make a list of relevant terms or words based on what you know about your business.
You should be able to come up with 5-10 relevant words that are important to your business.
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Step 2: Add to your terms other keywords
These are keywords that are relevant for your to rank for in the SERPs because your target audience is probably conducting searches for those specific terms.
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Step 3: Analyze how intent affects keyword research
It is important that your website meets what the searcher is intending to look for.
How Can to Find a Keyword for a Location?
Potential customers search for businesses close to where they live that offer services or products for quick access.
In order for your business to appear in the top search results, you need to incorporate local keywords into your website.
For example, if you’re a lawyer in Seattle, you may start by searching “lawyer in Seattle.”
By using that piece of information, you can get other relevant keywords that you can use like, “corporate lawyer in Seattle, Washington”, “law firms in Seattle”, and “top lawyers in Seattle.
Keyword Research Tools
If you want to try keyword research for yourself, here are some tools you can start with:
Or you could find an expert who can do it for you. Let our team at Big Easy SEO help you!
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Big Easy SEO is a web design, SEO, and digital marketing agency that strives to help small to medium sized businesses boost their brand in the online market and search engines.
Our goal is to provide metrics, results and services tailor made to your business through a variety of strategies including search engine optimization (SEO), web design, and ads.