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Choosing Keywords for Local SEO

By Matt McGee | October 5, 2007

I had the pleasure of speaking on Wednesday to a group of about 50 local business people (mostly small business) about SEO. They were a mostly beginner audience, and very eager to learn. I spoke on one of the foundational elements of any SEO project: keyword research and keyword usage.

In their excellent post earlier on this blog, Teri and Doug shared some comments on keyword selection from the paid search side. In my presentation, I shared an example from the natural/organic side:

Imagine you own a museum in Seattle, or you offer guided tours of the city; put yourself in the position of a business owner whose customers are tourists. In some of your paid advertising, you’re asked to categorize your business, and you probably chose Tourism or Tourist Attractions — something along those lines.

So, when it comes time to optimize your Web site for local search traffic, you might think a good phrase to use on your site is Seattle tourist attractions, figuring that’s what visitors would type at Google, Yahoo, or MSN when looking for things to do in Seattle.

But have a look at this:

This is a screenshot of search numbers from Keyword Discovery, one of the keyword research tools we use. For a variety of reasons (too deep to go into in this post), we don’t worry too much about the exact numbers; what’s important is that the phrase “things to do in seattle” gets about 10 times more searches than “seattle tourist attractions.”

So if you optimize your Web site for “seattle tourist attractions,” you’re likely missing out on a lot of potential traffic. Don’t make that mistake; make sure your local SEO effort includes keyword research to help you choose to right keywords to target.

Topics: Local SEO |

One Response to “Choosing Keywords for Local SEO”

  1. Doug Kelly Says:
    January 8th, 2008 at 12:29 am

    Excellent advice Matt. The foundation to every solid organic SEO program is research.

    Planning and research are key factors in mitigating risk.

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