Is there a tool out there that can help me determine how people in a particular area search for things?
-
I'm attempting to create geo-specific landing pages for a client. For example if I'm targeting southern Milwaukee very specifically I'd have to target Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, Bay View, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to create landing pages for every one of those. Is there a tool to help with this issue?
The tool I use right now is this http://www.5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php I like it for getting the names of every city/village/town in the area. However, it doesn't answer the nagging question ... how do people search for services in those areas?
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for clarifying the business model! So, the client is an SAB, and, yes, developing geo landing pages would be the right way to go. Typically, such landing pages are built around city terms. I believe what I'd do in this case is build one landing page per town/city and then encourage the client to continue on with narrowing down this subject by blogging about their projects in neighborhoods like Riverwest and Oak Creek.
The main thing, of course, is to be sure you've got something unique and important to say on each landing page you build or blog post you write. Covering completed projects in the various cities is a good way to go with this. But as for a tool that's going to reveal what you want to know regarding whether people are using neighborhood names to search for services, I'm afraid I just don't know of anything reliable. Between 'keyword not provided' and the loss of the old Google Adwords Keyword Tool, it does seem to me that one has to rely mainly on common sense these days. No tools were ever very good at providing geo data, because the data centers were seldom local, but with the recent changes in what's available, I think the situation has gotten even tougher.
I think you are right about trying different things and seeing what works, once you've built the core landing pages for the major service cities.
-
Bill and Miriam,
Thank you for the information and further inquiry. Indeed the business model is an SAB which unfortunately makes the landing pages a necessity. I'd love to do some Local SEO for their service locations if we could. I do have the Google Places set up to cover all their service locations, but that has limited value in driving traffic to their website.
I've also tried Google's keyword finder with local parameters and on this micro of a level it doesn't provide any useful information.
I do wonder about the vocabulary in specific neighborhoods and suburbs. I actually live in a neighborhood called Riverwest in Milwaukee. If I wanted to know about coffee shops or bars in my neighborhood I would search using the neighborhood name. However, if I wanted a plumber I'd search using "Milwaukee".
In the case of the original question I believe users would search using their neighborhood or suburb name. However, I still can't figure out (without throwing a few things against the wall to see what sticks) if a user in Oak Creek searches using "Oak Creek" or "South Milwaukee" or some other specifier.
This may be a case of try a few things and see what works.
-
Hi Mike,
As I mentioned to Bill, I think it might be helpful if you clarified what the business model is. Is the client a franchise with multiple physical locations (like a fast food chain) or an SAB (service area business like a plumber) with only a single physical location but multiple service cities?
Unfortunately, regardless of the business model, there is no tool that I know of which is going to show you how someone in Oak Creek might search for a plumber vs. someone in Bay View. Likely, if they are all in the same part of the state, their language usage is going to be similar. One runs into differences across the country with things like attorney vs. lawyer or international differences like french fries vs. chips, but within part of a state, I would expect people have a relatively common vocabulary.
Google's new keyword finder tool does have the ability to set local parameters, but personally, I find the resulting statistics to be a bit useless. I've heard other Local SEOs complain of the same.
Would you like to provide a bit more info about the business model and what you're trying to accomplish?
-
Hello Bill,
It's great to have you here in the forum. Totally agree with you about making sure the site is optimized for the physical locations a business has, but thought I would add that for SABs, creating landing pages on the website for service cities is considered a best practice. Hopefully, Mike can clarify his business model for us a bit.
-
Mike, you may want to re-think your strategy here. There is no need to create specific targeted landing pages for each location. Rather, you would want to make sure your site is optimized (or the location pages are optimized) for the locations that you do have. When you set up your Google Plus local pages you can specify the area that you service.
You'll want to also work on getting more local citations for your business, which will include mentions of your NAP data (name, address, phone number).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to go about SEO when the content on all the pages is in a regional language (with its own script which is non-roman) but majority of searches are in the same language but roman script?
For example, the entire content is in an Indian language called Gujarati and the script is also Gujarati. However, when I did a keyword research, I found that majority of the searches are in Gujarati langugage by roman script e.g. "gujarati sahitya" meaning Gujarati literature. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Local SEO | | Tumul0 -
How can I make a compelling financial forecast on how SEO will bring tangible value?
Hi all, I am currently doing keywords research and matching it to our sales data. With an input of resources, do you know if there is a good way to create a growth forecast as a result of SEO investment? How do I work out a strategy and align it to a compelling financial forecast? Your experience on this will be super helpful! Many thanks, Eric
Local SEO | | Eric_S1 -
Can we use the same titles and meta descriptions for all of our office locations? We have 18 locations in total.
Hello, TTR Data Recovery has 18 different office locations and I am wondering if we can use the same title and meta description for all locations and just change the location name...For example: #1 Best Data Recovery Services in Atlanta, GA| TTRDATA TTR Data Recovery offers a comprehensive suite of data recovery services in Atlanta, GA including Hard Drive, SSD, Server and RAID/NAS. Get A Free Quote! #1 Best Data Recovery Services in Miami, FL | TTRDATA TTR Data Recovery offers a comprehensive suite of data recovery services in Miami, FL, including Hard Drive, SSD, Server and RAID/NAS. Get A Free Quote! Would this be already, or would it be better if we had a unique title and meta description for every location? We want to get the same message across and it would be difficult to change the wording 18 times. I look forward to hearing back from you guys. Thank you.
Local SEO | | Kiakh19870 -
From traction to non existent! What happened to my Photography site and what can I do to fix it?
Aloha guys, To start as I always do with the (awesome) Moz community I wanted to say thanks for the insight! This has to be one of the best online communities and help resource with great positive and concise help that really makes a difference, so many thanks everyone! PS I also do my best to relay what I learn here to fellow business owners and point them to SEO boosting avenues to help support the community as much as possible. Anyways... **My Photo website ** **Current top wedding website (I do enjoy her work!!!) ** Attached below is a link to some stats/graphs! The Problem! After the recent Google update last month I've had a drop in my site visibility from 5.8% and some change to now .7% of search volume.. Painful for my photo & video business here on Kauai to say the least. A few images are attached, is there also any correlations you guys can see or think may help to get my site up to the first page? I know we deliver some of the very best work here on the island and deliver great service too, its a bummer that we cant do more for folks visiting here that dont even know we exist! The question! Do you guys have any ideas on what can be done to get my page to gaining organic traction and doing great again? My goal is to have our business rank for Kauai Wedding Videographer, Kauai Wedding Photographer, and Kauai Family Photographer! My moz dashboard is still saying we're on the way for that but that my search visibility is way way down. Any clarity or ideas are greatly appreciated you guys! I would love to relay this to the wedding community as well! Warmest aloha from Kauai everybody and have a great day! NjELT NjELT
Local SEO | | Trey30 -
Is there a benefit SEO and ranking-wise in putting a free SEO audit tool on your homepage?
Hi everyone, I work for a digital marketing agency in Australia. Our team noticed some businesses similar to ours use a free SEO Audit tool on their homepages. We are considering having one as well but, but want to know how it would benefit us. Will adding this tool on our home page help us rank better in Google? If yes, can you please tell us how? Thank you.
Local SEO | | nhhernandez0 -
How to Best Optimize for Multiple Cities and Services Areas?
A business with offices in 3 major cities and loads of service areas hired us to build its website. Here's my internal debate regarding local SEO: Do I build one site with a thorough sitemap that utilizes one page per city and/or region for local SEO? Do I build a primary site with a limited sitemap and a subsite for each city (e.g. companyname.com/city) that essentially replicates the sitemap from the primary site? If I go this route, the content on each page of each subsite would be unique (not copied and localized versions of the content on the primary site), but what about the keywords? For example, should each subsite use the same keywords as the primary site (e.g. companyname.com/keyword-or-phrase and companyname.com/city-name/keyword-or-phrase OR companyname.com/keyword-or-phrase and companyname.com/city-name/variation-of-keyword-or-phrase). In the end, I suppose the question is, "Should I build one site with a more thorough sitemap and single pages for each city and/or region OR should I build a site for each city with less thorough sitemaps?" Budget constraints won't allow for option C, which is build a site for each city with a thorough sitemap for each. Thank you guys in advance for whatever insight you're willing to give!
Local SEO | | cbizzle0 -
The best click to call tool
Hi,
Local SEO | | corn2015
Can you please tell me what is the best cost per call tool to use? Is the google mobile click to call feature effective? A client who runs a local business wants to increase the amount of calls their business receives.0 -
Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much.. The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere. As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on. I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence. I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it. I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD. I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number. This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up. So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Local SEO | | RyanShahed0