Effective local keyword research is a key skill for digital marketing and is only becoming more important.
It is something that is used for several different practices such as SEO and PPC where you need research to find which topics you should be writing about and what to target in your content.
Check out this video with Cole and Cody chatting about some local keyword research hacks.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your site so that its visibility in the local search queries. If you don’t know what this is, it is like searching for “restaurants near me” and things similar to that.
If you can get your company to appear in this listing space, you will have a better chance of being seen by your potential customers.
In order for you to dominate the local SEO space, you need to start by finding the best keywords which start with local keyword research.
Want three local keyword research hacks? Just check out this video with Cole Anderson and Cody Warren!
What is Local Keyword Research?
Local keyword research helps you to target your sales and can benefit your business in several different ways. You will get warmer ready to convert leads, get more visibility from local customers, and improve your reputation in your area.
And just like regular SEO, you need to figure out your target audience, find what they are searching for, and see how you can provide value.
How to do Keyword Research for Local Business Listings
So, how do you start with your local keyword research?
It is about finding what your audience looks like and what they are searching for.
The goal of local keyword research for your SEO is to find the most commonly searched, relevant terms for your industry so you are able to target that audience with content, landing pages, etc..
One thing that is important to remember is that if your content isn’t relevant to what people are searching for, then you won’t appear in the search results. This means that this won’t be a one-time thing. It is an ongoing process that requires continued effort in order to be successful.
So what are some ways for you to do it?
Spy on the Competition
One great way of doing keyword research is by spying on the competition and see what they are doing. By doing a competitor analysis, you can see all the local keywords that your competition is ranking for, go for those words, and beat out your competition.
When you do this, you will even find yourself coming across a good chunk of words that you hadn’t come across before so you can add more keywords to go for. A great tool for doing this is Ahrefs. It will allow you to check out the competition and the keywords they’re ranking for.
It makes it very simple for you to go in and find bunches of new keywords from other local competitors in your area.
Discovering Keywords
When it comes to your keywords, you may already have a few that you are looking to rank for such as your products or services. These keywords give you a great starting point and allow you to expand more ideas off of those.
A tool that will be helpful for this process and one that we use ourselves is Ahrefs. This tool allows you to see the average search volume of a keyword, as well as the difficulty of ranking for that keyword. This is a lot of help for finding which keywords are the most popular among the searches taking place.
One thing that you will come across is the huge variety in the search volume of keywords. While going after the heavy-hitting keywords that are getting greater search volume is something you should be doing, going after the less competitive and lower search volume terms can be advantageous as well. This is because they are less competitive and not as many people are going after them.
This is why learning more about search volume can be very beneficial for helping you prioritize which keywords you are going to go after and which ones are the best fit for your website and give you the most strategic advantage.
How Search Volume Works
The higher the search volume a certain keyword has, the more work has to be done in order to get a higher ranking. This is called keyword difficulty, which takes in different variables that determine how difficult it is to rank for these keywords. The large brands will often take up a majority of the top results in a certain area, so going after these keywords may end up taking years of effort and will be a battle not likely in your favor.
As you can see, the higher the search volume, the higher the competition usually is, and the lower the search volume, the easier it is to rank. If you’re thinking that you could just go after all the low volume keywords, think again. When you go too low, you will risk not getting any searches for the content that you are putting out.
Basically, you want to target specific keywords with higher search volume, but try to find ones that have a lower difficulty so you can rank easier.
Conclusion
Now that you have a better idea of how local keyword research works and find what your audience is looking for, you should be well on your way to getting more traffic from your local area.
Local SEO is a process that requires an ongoing effort and is not a do it once and fix everything type of approach. This makes Local keyword research a must and is something that should be kept up with routinely.
