Local keyword research is the process of finding keywords that people search for when searching for local products and services.
Ranking for these keywords generates local traffic directed to the website and sends more customers to the site.
Local keyword research is important because one needed to understand what people are typing in search engines like Google when searching for the company’s products or services.
That may seem obvious, but that’s the problem.
Most people just guess these keywords and assume they know how people search for the business.
This often leads them to target the wrong keywords or completely neglect the keywords that could have a positive impact on their results.
Conduct local keyword research by following these five easy steps.
- List the services to offer.
- Check local intent.
- Check the search volumes.
- Group and map keywords.
- Search for “things to mention.”
List the services to offer:
Before starting searching for keywords, one first needs to understand the services that the company offers.
One should think about doing local keyword research for a client or for their own business.
a) Ask or brainstorm:
If doing this for the own business, one probably already have a good idea of the services offered.
Write them down in a text document and proceed to the next step.
If someone is doing it for a client, ask them to list the services they offer.
This is more important because many people never consciously think about all the different services that they offer.
b) Expand ideas:
Brainstorming will rarely uncover all the relevant services that people are looking for.
Therefore, it is worth taking a minute to check the services that may have been missed.
Another way to find “missing” services is to connect a competing site to the Ahrefs Site Explorer and then find the URLs that map to the services in the Top Pages report.
If work with a client, submit the ideas to found and ask if they offer those services.
Add any confirmed services to the initial list.
Verify local intent:
Local SEO is all about ranking keywords with local intent, which means that the people searching for them are explicitly looking for local services.
Check that people looking for these services really want to buy locally.
Searching for local keywords, the easiest way to do it is to Google the services.
Ranking of local companies in organic results.
Verify the search volumes:
Getting accurate local search volumes for local keywords is difficult because almost all of the major SEO tools only show volumes at the national and global levels.
It depends on whether to want to check the volumes for implicit or explicit keywords, a concept that is distilled.
Find search volumes for implicit keywords:
Implicit local keywords are those in which the search engine looks for a local result despite not mentioning its location in its search query.
Find search volumes for explicit keywords:
Explicit local keywords are keywords in which the search engine explicitly refers to their location.
If the implicit searches by some of the services are found not to have a local intent, this is where a location modifier can be added to convert them to explicit searches.
With explicit keywords, there is no need to depend on the Google Keyword Planner because the query itself indicates the location of the search engine.
Therefore, a keyword research tool such as Keyword Explorer can be used to obtain more accurate estimates of search volume for these keywords.
Group and assign keywords to URLs:
Local keyword research isn’t just about finding what people are looking for.
It’s also about understanding how those keywords will be targeted.
Most of the time, the home page will not rank for all the services that are offered.
That is why most local businesses create pages dedicated to each service.
This is where things can get a bit confusing because it’s not always obvious which services need dedicated pages and which don’t.
The best way to verify this is to analyze the current highest ranking results for the keywords.
Look for things to mention:
The approach that many people take here is keyword stuffing.
It can help to rank for long-tail keywords.
Not everyone looks for something in the same way.
Check the keyword ranking for similar pages.
Head to Google, search for one of the services and find a high-ranking page from a local business.
Looking at these keywords will often reveal things that might want to mention on the page.
This can potentially help us qualify for long lines and also give potential customers the confidence that we serve their area.
This process is worth repeating for any relevant high-ranking pages to create a complete view of what customers are looking for.
Check the highest-ranking pages manually.
Although keyword research tools like Keywords. Explorer runs on huge databases (ours has over 11 billion keywords), some local keywords are searched too often to find tools.
This shows what other keywords and phrases are on the highest-ranking pages for the target keyword.
People seeking the services will probably want to answer a few questions before hiring.
The first method is to search for the service and look for the “People also ask” box in the search results.
This shows related questions that search engines also ask on Google.
The second method is to connect the service to the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and view the Questions report.
This displays popular questions that contain the name of the service.
If any of these questions sound like things potential customers might want to know before doing business.
Google ranks the home page for relevant explicit local searches.
If preferred, create landing pages for each physical location.
That’s what this counter does:
If want to connect the site to Ahrefs Site Explorer, one will see that Google ranks the local landing pages for relevant explicit local searches:
Since local businesses only cover the local area, they generally won’t be able to write and rank blog posts on Google that actually send a lot of business down the road.
The problem is that these searches rarely have local intent.
So even if one did manage to rank for them, 99% of the visitors to attract will not be in the local area and will never convert to customers.
Keywords are really just a proxy for what people are searching for.
With local keyword research on the exchange and the pages created, one will need a way to track local keyword rankings. Here’s how to do it with the Ahrefs range.
Local keyword research is pretty straightforward.
Create and optimize Google My Business profile, create local appointments, optimize pages, get reviews and much more.