Is it worth tracking both "keyword" and "keyword near me" for a nation-wide directory?

[4RS_John]

We're a directory of industry-specific services, so a lot of people find their way to our site by searching something like "tire repair near me." For every keyword we rank for, ("tire repair"), we also rank for the "near me" version, ("tire repair near me").

I'm looking for opinions on if is worth spending ~50% of the keywords included in my plan to track these "near me" keywords, or if we would be better off tracking some of the most important "near me" keywords, and some of those same base keywords on a local basis for major population centres, (for example "tire repair nyc").

What does the forum think?

[4RS_John]

Most of the data about the keyword + "near me" keywords came from GA - or its integration with the Webmaster Tools. This means I've got data about what the keywords are, where, and how many times, we've been in the SERPs, the # of clicks, & the click-through rate. Of course, the CTR is not super useful for comparison with other keywords if they're not at the same position in the search results.

Is the idea of running a small PPC campaign to see how well the "near me" version of a keyword converts vs. the non-"near me" version? That seems like a good idea, (I'm fairly new at doing any active SEO or Keyword Research). Once I've got that info I should be able to see if it's worth devoting resources to tracking "near me" - heck, I could even add a few geographic areas as well, so I would see how "tire repair near me" compares to "tire repair" compares to "tire repair nyc."

Thanks for the insight.

[MoosaHemani]

If I would be at your place, I would have looked in to the Google Analytics data (although good amount of data is hidden but still it can help you give it a clue) and would have seen how many people are coming from near me keywords and what are the top services most people are searching for.

Ranking for extra keyword is never bad but should you invest your time on it or not is a big question.

Once I will have the GA data of top 5 services that most people are searching for according to the available data I would have tested the near me keywords in a PPC to see impression vs. click ratio of my targeted audience.

If amount of data I received would be interesting, I would have invested my time and if the traffic is not good enough I would have focused on other important areas.

Hope this helps!