How To Do Keyword Research For Local SEO?
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How To Do Keyword Research For Local SEO?
When you want to optimize your website for local searches, you will have to first make an in-depth keyword research because keywords analysis is the doorway to all SEO efforts. The same applies to your local SEO efforts too. Here is a systematic guide on how to do your keyword research for local SEO.
Step 1: Check What Is Already Bringing You Local Traffic
If your website is a well-established website, then you are likely to have analytics setup for your account. See what is bringing you traffic in terms of local searches. You need to know what is already working and you need to bank on them. You will not have this data if yours is a brand new website.
Step 2: Think Like Your Customers
The next step is to get into the shoes of your customers and see if you were to look for the products or services in your niche what would you use to search for the information you need. Avoid the temptation to act like the business owner because when you do so, you will tend to use terms that you think are important but customers think differently.
List all the services or products that you are promoting. For example if you are offering flower delivery services you are likely to be offering flower deliveries for birthdays, anniversaries, valentine’s day, Christmas, Easter, etc. Some of the search terms that you can think of that your customers will be using include,
birthday flower delivery
anniversary flower delivery
valentine’s day flower delivery
Then you need to associate your services with the most important places that you are targeting.
For example,
birthday flower delivery Sydney,
birthday flower delivery service Ashfield Sydney
and so on.
Step 3: Narrow Down Your Keyword Options
Make use of Google Keyword Tool for this step. Make sure that you are selecting the country of your choice correctly. As a next step, you will have to select the right devices. Though many people are using their mobile devices to access the web, even today majority of the searches are done using desktop computers and laptops and obviously you are going to select these devices while making your keyword searches. To narrow down the list further you will have to set the minimum and the maximum number of searches per month. These figures will vary from one niche to the other. So better use your discretion and something to remember is not to go for keywords with very high monthly search frequency because you will be facing huge competition here.
Step 4: Discard Irrelevant Searches
You will have to make an important distinction when you are performing your keyword research, that is, not everyone that uses the internet to search for information is using it to buy something. A considerable percentage of users look for information on certain topics. You will have to target users that want to buy your products or hire your services and discard information seeking keywords.
Step 5: Competition Analysis
This will step will also help you understand the level of competition for the relevant keywords. Here you will have to look at your competitor's websites too to learn how they have used the keywords in their website. Never conclude your keyword research for local SEO without competition analysis because after all, that is what you are fighting. Are you not?
Concluding Remarks
Once you have all the keywords at hand, you will have to check your current ranking for those keywords and keyword phrases. There are numerous free tools using which you can get your website’s current ranking for the local keywords.
As you can see, you need to take a systematic approach to your keyword research for local SEO. This is no rocket science but you do need the time. The temptation here is to skip the crucial steps and to jump on to some keyword research tool but stay away from such temptations. If you do not have the required time to perform the keyword research yourself, it is best to get help from professional keywords research companies so that you do not compromise on the quality of your keywords research.
