Keyword Strategies for Local Businesses: Finding and Using Geo-Specific Keywords
For location-based businesses who serve customers in defined geographical areas offline, local SEO and geo-targeted keywords play a pivotal role in driving visits to their stores. Ranking for service + location semantics helps divert relevant searchers towards avenues where they can actually transact.
In this blog, we discuss approaches local enterprises can adopt through their website optimization or local business SEO campaigns to prominently rank for geo-specific keywords aiding customer acquisition.
Significance of Geo-targeted Keywords
For merchants running brick and mortar stores, traffic metrics like overall website visitors matter relatively less than getting discovered by commercial intent users in their locality actually searching for outlets to engage offline. This is where tactics like identifying and ranking better for keywords like:
“digital marketing company in texas”
“Fitness center near me”
“Salon services in Ohio”
become invaluable as it denotes the customer is geographically approachable to buy. Hence local SEO experts lay emphasis on such conversion-centric keywords.
Methods to Find Relevant Keywords
The best geo-targeted keywords are uncovered by:
1. Leveraging Tools Providing Local Insights: Software like SEMRush, Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner tend to showcase search volume of keywords used by customers to find local stores like yours. Analyze them.
2. Review Business Listing Analytics: Check search queries visitors typed before contacting your outlet via Google+ MyBusiness listings phone/ direction clicks. These provide ready ideas on potential semantics to target through on-page content.
3. Analyzing Competitor Websites: Study keyword usage on your nearest competitors site’s through SEO tools for semantics driving visits to analyze gaps.
4. Area-Specific Question Mining: Identify questions posed by searchers online around problems your products/services solve in the locality through forums like Quora or Reddit.
Optimizing for Geo-targeted Keywords
Once identifying relevant location plus offering keywords, optimize pages around them by:
1. Exact Match Anchor Usage: Include targeted phrases naturally within page content to establish topical relevance.
2. Prominently Highlight Location Served: Clearly state operational cities, regions served on homepage itself so search engines associate sites with geo-semantics.
3. Local Business Schema Markup: Formally confirm area served via schema code on pages to get ranked better for local pack. Local SEO experts assist.
4. Location-Specific Content: Craft blogs, FAQs addressing problems, use cases specifically for the geography to build relevance such that searchers get attracted.
5. Landing Page Focus: Because multiple pages dilute ranking strength, focus optimization attempts on few core locations plus service pages rather than spreading across sites.
Why Local Citation Building Matters
While on-page and off-page SEO does influence local pack ranks, citation signals also carry weightage where search engines cross-verify a local business existence across directories, review platforms and listings. Key platforms for citation building encompass:
- Google My Business
- Apple Maps
- Bing Local
- Yellow Pages
- Locally
- CitySquares
Through manual listings creation or using local citation building services, merchants should consistently augment their address, contacts and operating hours across related databases. This improves visibility and station trust.
Tracking Ranking Effectiveness
Monitoring metrics like:
1. Local 3 Pack CTR
2. Traffic from Local Searches
3. Geo-Modified Branded Searches
4. Organic Traffic from Targeted Postcodes
5. Google Analytics Location Report
Helps analyze if rankings for geo-keywords indeed get localized users to visit physical premises where conversion likelihood stays higher.
Conclusion
For hyperlocal businesses who majorly serve customers in defined regions offline, identifying and ranking better for intent-based geo-modified keywords like “digital marketing Texas” directly aids in acquiring visitors who can be converted more readily into buyers. Tools provide a starting point while relevance building requires holistic efforts spanning on-page and off-page area authority building through citations, reviews etc.