Keyword Research Tool For Local Customers
-
Hi all, and thanks in advance for your input.
I help mostly small local businesses with SEO and other IM strategy, but am having a hard time finding a good tool for local seo searches. For instance, I have a smaller plumber that covers Denver, but really wants to market to some of the suburbs.
What is a good tool to try to find search volume for "littleton plumbers" or similar searches? By the way Littleton is a suburb of Denver.
Thanks again.
Chris
-
Thanks John! It's exactly what I needed.
-
Hi Chris,
You've received some good suggestions here, and Matt's post at Small Business SEM is a good read on this. At the end of the day, there is currently no tool of which I am aware which offers a comprehensive or accurate picture of local search terms. This is something that comes up again and again in the Local SEO industry. I consider myself fortunate to be in daily contact with some of the best Local SEOs on the planet, and basically, the suggested process for doing keyword research for local businesses is this:-
Perform keyword research as though Local was not your goal. Just use your main keyword terms (plumber, plumbing, leaking faucet, toilet overflowed, etc.).
-
Make a big list of these terms.
-
Then, go in and add your core Local terms (city, region, zip code, etc.) to each of the terms.
-
If you are working with clients in a region of the country where there are unique language variants, explore these with the business owner. For example, a Canadian plumber may say 'hot water tank' vs. the 'hot water heater' of the USA. Keyword research tools may not show you these variants because their data isn't coming from the targeted geography of the business. So, discover regionalisms and make sure they are being given preference, as this is the way your client's customers talk and search.
You will end up with a big list of terms to work with from this process. Hope this helps!
-
-
Yupp, make sure you check the keywords trends with the help of Google Insight. Will really help you find some really good local keywords.
-
Hey Chris-
Have you tried Google Insights? http://www.google.com/insights/search/
It's pretty good for narrowing in on specific geographies. The only real issue is lack of suggested keywords using this tool. But if you know some you want to compare, this works great.
-
Thanks John, really appreciate the tips!
-
Hi Chris,
Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are the three tools I most regularly use for finding search volumes for local search terms. If you can afford it Hitwise will give you the most accurate information, but this is out of most people's budget so not usually an option (I only include it to be thorough).
Here's a reasonably useful post for finding local search terms, that might give you a couple of ideas and help you figure out the best terms for your client:
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/local-keyword-research/1787/
Hope that helps : )
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
block primary . xxx domain with disavow tool
Hi friends I discovered spam url attack on top sites with good google positions for specific keyword. Can I block primary domain like .xxx with disavow tool? There is hundreds of different domains but primary domain is always the same. for example like this domain:xxx? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netcomsia0 -
Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
Hi all, May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword. The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)? I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Rankings and keywords
I have a site www.firewall-cs.com that I have been working on for 4 months. The first 2 months the keywords were going up and then...dropped like a rock! We didn't build the website, but it is a Wordpress site so I can make some changes. For the keywords that have "IT" in them, we haven't been able to recover. It's like Google isn't even reading the home page. The home page slider has the H1 in it and has 3. I have told this to the client. Plus there isn't a lot of content on the page. Is the H1 issue enough for the word "IT Support Orlando" to not rank? Any suggestions would help! Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClickIt0 -
None branded keyword Sitelink?
Hi Friends I have sitelink when people search my brand. Can I have another sitelink for none branded keyword that my site is more than 1 year top of google position?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vahidafshari450 -
Google disavow tool
I have an algorithmic penalty on one of my websites. I never received a notification of a manual penalty in GWMT and even sent in a reconsideration request 6 months ago ad they told me their were no manual penalties on the website. I have cleaned up my link profile and what I could not clean up I sent in using the Google disavow tool a few days ago. I've heard to just wait if it's algorithmic or should I send in another reconsideration request for disavow links tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkHIggins0 -
Webmaster Tools Internal Links
Hi all, I have around 400 links in the navigation menu (site-wide) and when I use webmaster tools to check for internal links to each page; some have as many as 250K and some as little as 200. Shouldn't the number of internal links for pages found in the navigation menu be relatively the same? Or is Google registering more internal links for pages linked closer to the top of the code Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Why our site dropped in rank for a main keyword
Hello, Our site nlpca(dot)com dropped in rank for a few terms, including the main term "NLP". Could you look at our site and tell us what might be the cause? Thank you so much, Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Strange Linking Data in Webmaster Tools
I run a site that was a Wordpress blog with Edirectory software for a directory on the back end. I've scrapped the Edirectory and built the entire site on Wordpress. After the site change I'm seeing about 700 404 Not Found crawling errors, which appear to be old Edirectory pages that no longer exist. My understanding is that they'll cycle out eventually. What troubles me is the linking data I'm seeing. In the "Links to My Site" area of Webmaster tools, I'm seeing 4,430 links to the "About" page, another 2,900 to an obscure deleted directory listing page and only 2,050 to the home page. I show 1,700 links to a terms and conditions pdf and other strange data. To summarize, I'm showing huge numbers of links to obscure pages. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC0