Local keyword research is under the umbrella of local SEO. It has to do with everything that you do for your business to show up when someone searches for your business on Google, especially when it is a search from where your business operates.
Did you know that nearly all searches done on Google are seeking local businesses?
About 16 eye-opening statistics show that if you’re lacking local SEO or local keyword research, then my friend, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Don’t worry. We’re going to talk about everything local SEO local keyword research, here.
By the end of this post, you’ll have all the information you need to make your business appear in Google’s Snack Pack and start getting found by your local customers.
To make things easy, we’ll divide everything into various subtopics. Although we recommend that you read everything from start to finish, you can still scan through and jump to the parts that you need the most.
That said, let’s start with the basics.
What is local Keyword research?
In simple terms, local keyword research is the process of finding the words that local customers are using to find your business and services online. Local keyword research and SEO are mostly done by businesses that operate at certain locations. However, other forms of businesses can make use of this skill.
For instance, a bakery in the city of Santa Ana would perform local keyword research to find the search terms that their local customers are using to find their services.
It should be noted that local keyword research is slightly different from the normal keyword research that everyone does.
The two main differences are the language and the location. Apart from that, it’s basically the same principles that’ll be applied. But why do you need local keyword research, anyway?
Why you need to perform local keyword research
Let’s consider the bakery we mentioned earlier. They may be confident that their customers would be typing things like “bakery near me”, “baker”, “local bakeries”, etc on Google.
They’ll not be wrong to target these kinds of keywords. People are searching for those terms.
But what about those searching for “cakeshops”, “cupcakes near me”, or “best donuts”?
Local keyword research would help you find all these search terms that you may have otherwise missed during your brainstorming session.
That’s why you need to prioritize local SEO, especially if you want your business to show up when someone within your territory searches for your services.
How to know if it’s time to do local keyword research or not
As we mentioned earlier, local keyword research is needed when your business operates in a particular city or location.
It doesn’t have to be only a brick-and-mortar shop.
Businesses like pet services, medical services, or spas need to perform local keyword research.
If you’re an agency and are trying to attract local clients, you need to have a local SEO strategy in place.
Also, if your business is located in many locations, you’ll have to find the keywords for each location to drive targeted traffic to your business.
The last kind of business that needs local keyword research is those that offer services to their customers. Here, we’re referring to the plumbers, electricians, cleaners, and similar roles.
If your business falls into any of these categories, then you surely have to perform competitive keyword research to rank higher in your location.
Let’s look at the different parts of local SEO and how to do keyword research.
Parts of local SEO
There are about five parts of local SEO. To get it right, you’ll need to have all these parts in place. They are;
- Google Business Listing
- Local keyword research
- On-page SEO
- Local citations
- Backlinks
1. Claiming and optimizing your Google Business Listing
This is the first and easiest thing you need to do (if you haven’t done that already). Simply go to google.com/business, sign in to your Google account, and then fill in all the information about your business. Verify your website through mail or phone. That’s it! You’ve created your Google My Business account.
But that’s not all. You’ll have to go further by adding your work hours, more relevant categories, business descriptions, and actual images of your business location.
It is important to note that this is not the time to “stuff” keywords into your business name and description. It’ll not help your SEO in any way.
Time to find what words to target.
2. Local keyword research
Knowing what search terms your local customers are finding your business with is very key to optimizing your site to match those terms. Here are the steps to follow when searching for keywords for your local business.
Simple steps to perform a successful local SEO for your business
We’ll use the bakery in Santa Ana again. Let’s name it Special Bakery.
So we’re going to perform local keyword research to find competitive keywords for Special Bakery.
Let’s see how we’ll do that.
Step 1: Make a list of all your products or service
It is very important to brainstorm and jot down all the services you offer. That way, you would have a lot of keywords to make research around.
If not, it’ll be very easy to confine yourself to one or two general terms.
For instance, a cleaning company would list their services like residential cleaning, commercial cleaning, laundry and dry-cleaning, sanitization and disinfection, and green cleaning.
Even though your customers are searching for your job title, many of them are also searching for your services.
That’s why it helps to first make a list of all your services. We’ll use this list as the start of our keyword research in step 2.
Step 2: Search further for more service keywords
Brainstorming alone won’t be enough to cover all the search terms for your products or services. That’s why you’ll need a keyword research tool.
At FVG, Ahrefs is our go-to keyword research tool, and there are so many good reasons for that. We’ll show you how to use it for keyword research in this post.
Type each of your services into Keywords Explorer. Before you do, make sure you have an Ahrefs account.
After typing your ideas into the search box, select your country from the dropdown window, and then go to the “having same terms” report.
This kind of search would reveal all the keywords relating to your services. Simply look through the long list and select the keywords that relate the most to your business. Add those to the initial services you brainstormed.
Another way to find your services keywords is to do competitor analysis. In this case, you won’t be doing a full-fledged competitor analysis.
Instead, you’re going to find out which topics and services they offer that are similar to yours.
As you did previously with the services you brainstormed, simply paste your competitor’s URL into the Ahrefs site explorer search box and hit enter. Next, go to the organic keywords report. This would tell you all the keywords that your competitor is ranking for. Take note of those terms and move on to step 3.
Step 3. Find out how many people are searching for your services
On the SEO tools, this data is called search volume. How many people are actually searching for your business locally?
Different keyword research tools would give you different matrics. The point here is not to find keywords that have very high monthly searches.
Instead, we’re finding what keywords to prioritize and create dedicated pages for.
Remember, those search terms should be useful to your local customers.
For Special Bakery in Santa Ana, keywords like “cake shops near me”, “cakeshops in Santa Ana”, and “best donuts in Santa Ana” may have very few search volumes compared to “cakeshops” or “best donuts”.
However, “best donuts in Santa Ana” is more useful for their local customers. Hence it’ll be wise to make dedicated landing pages to rank for that term.
Here’s a simple tip. If the local search term has about 20-30 monthly searches, then it is worth targeting.
Now that you’ve found and gathered the keywords you want your business to rank for, it’s time to
3. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is a factor that affects your local rankings. It includes everything that’s done directly on a website or a web page to make it relevant to certain topics and keywords.
To optimize your business to rank for local keywords, you need to put those words or search phrases into;
- H1 tag
- Title tag
- In URL
- Meta description
A minor on-page SEO trick is to keep your URLs very short and yet have your focus keywords in them.
You don’t have to optimize all your pages. However, you can optimize your Home, About, and Contact pages.
For a single location business, like “Special Bakery”, you’ll need to optimize your homepage around your business location.
Another thing to prioritize is your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP). It may seem trivial, but this info can make or break your local ranking efforts.
Your NAP information should be consistent everywhere on the internet. This makes it easy for search engines to connect your business to your website, social media profiles, and your local citations.
The easiest way to achieve this consistency is to put it in the footer of your whole website. You can also put your NAP information on your services and contact pages.
Even though these are all important, you shouldn’t forget the copy on your web pages.
The content on your website should also be worthy of ranking. Instead of simply listing the location and working hours, why don’t you go a little further?
Put yourself ins your customer’s shoes.
What information would they need to make business with you? What kind of questions would they be asking themselves about your business?
This is your chance to explain whatever they need to know about your services or how you can help them. Of course, you don’t have to go overboard. Else you’ll bore them away from your site.
When you get this right, search engines would rank your business higher than your so-so competitors.
4. Building your local citations
You know the keywords you want your business to be known for. You have created and optimized your Google My Business account. On-page SEO, check!
It’s time to build local citations.
Local citations are simply any mentions of your business online. This is so important because it affects both Google’s Snack Pack and regular organic search.
Mentions of your business could be straightforward on business directories or websites.
We see the unstructured mentions on other people’s websites, in blog posts, and probably on a vendor’s page.
There are many ways to build local citations.
Local business associations, community hubs, and Chamber of commerce websites are great places to get local listings.
You can also submit editorial pieces to local newspapers.
Another way to increase your online mentions and rank for local keywords is to gather backlinks.
5. Backlinks
Having many businesses link to your website signals to Google that you have something great to offer. Hence, Google would reward you by showing your business and content to more people. That’s why backlinks are very important.
There are many ways of getting people to link to your content.
A great way to get organic backlinks is to create content that’s epic and worth linking to. You can make detailed infographics, run surveys to get unique and relevant statistics, and write very long and informative content that other bloggers can use. That way, they’ll link to you.
You can also get backlinks by using the broken link method.
Broken links are links that no longer work on a website. Sometimes, those broken links are from websites that are either closed or that the content is no longer available.
Your role here is to find those broken links, find out what was originally there, and then create the same thing on your website.
Then you’ll inform (mostly by email) whoever linked to that content that the original one is gone. And then you offer the link to the new one you created on your website as a replacement.
As simple as that.
Again, Ahrefs or Semrush would help you in this regard. In Ahrefs Site Explorer, enter the URL of your competitor or any business in your niche. In the left menu, click on ‘broken’ under the backlinks option. This would reveal the broken links that are on the website. You’ll be amazed at how many of those links there are.
Takeaways
Every business should add local keyword research to its priority list. It may seem hard at first to digest all these, especially if you’re new to SEO or you’re just starting your small business.
Here’s a video tutorial from Ahrefs that’ll simplify everything we’ve discussed here for you.
Claim your Google Business listing, find keywords that are relevant to your local business, put those keywords at vantage points on your website, get people to mention and talk about your business online, and finally, create something epic for people to link to.
If you put all these into practice, you’ll start to see your business grow by the day.
You don’t have to do it all at once. Start with one, and then add another one when you know you’ve got the first one right. With time, you’ll cover everything. You’ve got this!