Researching local keyword modifiers in local SEO

Often, you’re faced with a dilemma when you service multiple cities. You probably want to know which is the most important to rank for. Typically, the answer is the physical address you’ve listed for your company. But, if that city is small, maybe it’s residential, or even close to a city border, what do you do then? Just as we did with keyword research, we can take a look at the popularity of locations near us, as they relate to our target keywords. This is also, actually, a really useful strategy if you’re looking to expand your business into new territory, or with new ideas.

Here, we could look at our target keyword in our particular city, and see if it’s of interest as it relates to other popular areas. To do our research, we use Google keyword planner. Here, what we want to use, is the Multiply-keyword-lists-to-get-new-keyword-ideas option. I’ll select that, and Google’s going to bring up a list, a little X, and a List 2.

What this means, is it’s going to take everything we’ve put into List 1, and combine it with everything we put in List 2. This is really helpful when you’re looking at multiple cities versus the keywords that you want to rank for. Now, since most people search for their term, followed by the city, I recommend putting the cities you’re interested in, in List 2, and the keywords you’re interested in, in List 1.

Now you can enter the cities you are interested to look at in list 2. You could make these local cities. You could make these big cities. These are really specific to where you’re located.

If you were trying to compare between which city you wanted to really rank for, the multiply tab in Google keyword planner is a good starting place to see, once all your keywords are put together, the aggregate number of monthly searches. Being broad is okay, when combined with a local modifier.

Notice here, that it says competition is medium. That’s referring to buying ads on Google. We can also infer that if people are buying ads on Google, for cupcake delivery, they’re likely trying to rank, organically, as well. That term’s going to be a little bit harder to fight for, and require a little bit more effort as you approach that strategy. Now, we can go back, and look at a different city, simply by selecting the Back option.

Now, these keywords, and their modifiers, are going to be very specific to you. But, I suggest you pick a list of the most popular cities near you, enter those into your list modifier, and figure out which ones have the best monthly search volumes. Write those down, as we’re going to be using those when we conduct our keyword strategy.