Keyword Question - Metro Suburb
-
My question is about keyword selection for a small divorce law firm located outside of a major city.
My firm focuses only on family law matters, such as divorce, child support, child custody, and paternity. Divorce cases generate the most revenue. We are located outside of the Orlando, Florida metro area, in a small town about 15 miles west of Orlando.
My keyword research shows a significant amount of traffic for keywords including Orlando, such as Orlando Divorce Lawyer, Divorce Attorney Orlando, and Orlando Divorce Attorney. For my location, Winter Garden, Florida, the search volume is reported as "0" using Moz's Keyword Difficulty tool. When I use other tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, the reported volume for my physical location and surrounding cities, other than Orlando, shows a volume of "0."
We do get potential clients contacting us indicating that they found us via a Google search, and I know that we are ranking well in local search results. That's the good news. However, we are trying to increase the volume of potential clients contacting us, and it seems that the way to do that is to rank well for searches including the word "Orlando."
I know that ranking in the local results for Orlando is out of the question because my office is not physically located in Orlando. However, it does not seem to make sense to target keywords for organic search including my location and the surrounding cities because the search volume appears to be next to nothing.
So my questions are as follows:
Even though the search terms with high traffic seem to be quite competitive and my office is not located in Orlando, should I still target keywords including the Orlando location?
How should a small business approach this strategy as far as keyword usage and organization of the website? Should I have a city landing page for Orlando or should I target my main pages using keywords including "Orlando" and build city pages for the smaller, surrounding cities?
Thanks in advance for the help.
My website is located at http://www.thegrossmanlawoffice.com
-
Sounds like a great idea. I would, of course, put some unique static content on the page, as well, explaining what you do in Orlando, and then have a constantly refreshed section of lead-ins for your blog posts. I think that makes sense!
-
Miriam,
Yes, I can write about Orlando cases and other activities in Orlando. Would you recommend doing that on my blog? If I did that, would it be best to have a city page for Orlando to link to from any blog posts that mention/target "orlando?"
-
Hi AJ,
It sounds like there is some potential here. Are these involvements in Orlando something you can creatively write about? If so, I think you've found a resource for highlighting a true association with this city.
-
Thank you all for your responses so far. What you all have provided so far is very helpful for me, so thank you.
Miriam,
My firm represents clients from Central Florida and we regularly appear for hearings, trials, and mediations at the main Orange County courthouse located in downtown Orlando. We also appear at other courthouses in other areas around Orlando, such as Lake County courthouse, Osceola County courthouse, Brevard County courthouse, Seminole County courthouse, etc.
Wherever there is case filed, we appear. So, in a sense, we travel to where our client's cases are handled. Since our attorneys are licensed in Florida, we can represent anyone in the entire State in any State courthouse.
We are members of the Orange County bar association, located in downtown Orlando as well.
Does any of this information help?
-
Hi AJ,
I think of this as a double-whammy situation: you don't have an Orlando office and you're not a service area business that goes to Orlando to serve (like a plumber). If the business had either of these attributes, the solution would be easy. In the absence of this, my question would be to ask if the firm has any connection at all to Orlando. For example, a general practice doctor in the suburbs might:
-
Be on the hospital staff in Orlando
-
Give lectures in Orlando
-
Attend conferences in Orlando
-
Give clinics in Orlando.
-
Sponsor something in Orlando, like a little league team, a women's shelter, etc.
Can the firm come up with some real world connections of these kinds that would provide things to write about/blog about?
If not, then there is no real connection between your firm and the major city, and the website has to reflect this. Obviously, you can state that you are 10 miles from Orlando or something along those lines, but that in and of itself is unlikely to earn extra visibility for the practice.
-
-
We see this exact 'issue' with hotels all of the time. Start with 'near' terms: 'near Orlando' or 'greater Orlando area' you will get those faster - they will drive some traffic and you will increase your relevance for broader 'orlando' terms. Do not do this to the detriment of your 'Winter Garden' terms. I think "Winter Garden Law Firms near Orlando" or similar would be a good start.
Good luck
-
On the Google places front -
You are absolutely right. Since you do not have a physical listing, you cannot rank in Google places. However all is not lost.
On the on page front -
Targeting keywords related to Orlando on your main static pages would not be ethical for the simple reason that you do not have a physical presence in Orlando. However I also understand your perspective of increasing your reach and targeting people from different Geo locations.
You will definitely need to create new pages for targeting geo specific keywords. Three types of pages need to be created -
- Primary Page - This page will talk about your services for a specific location
- Secondary Pages - The aim of these pages would be to support your primary page, for example how laws in orlando differ from other location, Case studies of cases in orlando etc
- Fresh Content - I noticed that you have a blog section, need to leverage this section by writing orlando specific content (can be a news, can be an article etc)
- Cross Promotion on various platforms - Once you have the on page side of things settled, focus on promoting the new sections via other channels that you might own (Facebook, Twitter etc)
The combination of all the above techniques should help you achieve a decent standing on the organic front. Unfortunately without a physical location, Google places will be a lost cause.
- Sajeet
-
Yes target Orlando. At the very least you will pick up some long tail search. I would target Orlando on the home page.
I would also set up pages for every single town/village/region that surrounds you. Google reporting is not 100% accurate - it is likely there are searches for obscure towns despite google reporting none. You may only be optimising a page for one or two searchs per 6 months but if you convert that customer surely it would be worth the investment (given legal fees are typically high)?
l
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
-
2 Websites Targeting Similar Keywords
One of my clients is set on setting up another website targeting some of the keywords/services on the main site. One of the services they offer gets traffic from natural search and also Adwords but doesn't convert well for this service. For other services (which are often utilized at the same time by the customers) the site converts well. My client feels that... "people are not converting on the main site because they click on the page and realise that we are a wider company. From this they probably work out that we don’t actually produce Green Widgets and we just buy them in. Therefore we will be more expensive than a company who does manufacture Green Widgets (although there are only a few in the country who actually make them)." The new site "...will have more of a manufacturer and specialist feel. There will be a small mention of other services. People visiting will think we are specialists and that we make them, whereas at the moment they may feel that they are just being cross sold a product. We have also noticed that we are not being found earlier enough and we are contacted to do other work only to find that another company is providing the Green Widgets." I did something similar back in the day, but here we ran a local website and a national website covering the same products. We tried hard not to duplicate the keywords we targeted minimising this as much as possible. I don't think we cared much about the local site as the national one went crazy busy. In essence, my client wants to do the following: Main Site...
Local SEO | | GrouchyKids
Blue Widgets Bristol
Red Widgets Bristol
Green Widgets Bristol (This would be retained) New Site...
The new site would focus on Green Widgets In time the new site would include content for...
Green Widgets
Green Widgets Bristol (As per the main site)
Green Widgets Cardiff It would also make mention of Blue Widgets and Red Widgets as possible addons. The new site would be at the same address but have its own companies house registration, emails and phone numbers. My feeling is that we should take an above-board, risk-free approach and remove the Green Widgets service from the main site to ensure it doesn't upset Google. In other words go out of our way to minimise targeting of similar/same keywords across the 2 sites. My client strongly disagrees showing evidence of others using similar tactics (we have had the EMD debate as well). I am also concerned about Google Places and how this might be viewed here. Opinions please, also any idea of what if any action Google would take if we push forwards?0 -
Adwords Forecasting Question
Hi Guys, First time question. I'm going to be creating some Adwords search campaigns. When I create these campaigns I will be targeting specific post codes in London. I've checked this and all is fine. However I need to forecast costs for my client before creating the campaigns. Google Keyword Planner only allows me to forecasts volume and CPC costs for London, it doesn't allow me to drill down any further than this. What would be the best way to try and forecast costs for these postcode specific campaigns? Even if its using a third party tool. Or is it just not possible? Thanks Dan
Local SEO | | jazzydan0 -
Variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Descriptive TLDs
Hi there, We have a variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Our business has two monetising areas, a clinic and a shop. To market them, we do recipes, blogs and social media, rather than relying primarily on SEO, but we do want to up our SEO game. Our primary site is www.example.co.uk This is Wordpress and where we market the clinic, host the recipes and blogs, and is our main email domain. Our second site is Woocommerce, at www.example.shop Our shop market is primarily in the UK, but we seem to pick up a fair amount of international business, partly because the clinic does virtual consultations to many countries. The shop is online only. We have physical clinics across the UK. Both sites cross link extensively, eg with blogs advertising products in the shop. The branding is intentionally related yet different, because they have very distinct functions, and eg. I don’t want to clutter the interface or distract people with blog or clinic once we have funnelled them to the shop checkout. I would also like to separate the blog and recipe elements from the clinic, using a slightly different theme with different functions. We use a lot of plugins, and the more we aggregate functions on the same Wordpress instance, the more likely something is to go wrong. I like the new TLDs because they are more “human”, and they identify where you are and what you are doing more clearly. We do email footers with links to example.clinic (redirected to www.example.co.uk) and example.shop. They are simple and explain what is going on. Conversely, shop.example.co.uk is not so easy to write or read out. www.example.co.uk/shop looks like an afterthought, rather than a shop in its own right with its own home page. So there would have to be a really good SEO reason for me to merge the shop into the main site with reverse proxy or multisite. Do you think that there is such a good reason? If not, by the same token, would it make sense to separate out example.blog or even naturedoc.recipes from example.clinic and use .co.uk as a single page portal to the three separate sites? My instinct, for what it is worth is that Google is smart enough to have started thinking that domains linked by topic TLDs can be equivalent to subdomains, and to recognise that we are not trying to build links from spammy unrelated sites. My last area is about human behaviour... Are people are as happy to click on or type in a new TLD like .clinic as a local .co.uk one? ...when (a) it is not a discredited TLD like .biz, and (b) it gives them more insight into what they will get when they arrive. And since we have the .uk domain, should we switch to this shorter version at the same time? I already use it for custom shortcodes (eg. example.uk/fte6 for people to type in from printed material or instagram). I can’t help feeling .uk has been unsuccessful, and its use now looks bad, even if it is shorter. Many thanks in advance.
Local SEO | | MizRabble0 -
Is dynamic keyword insertion a viable local SEO tactic/strategy for your content?
Hi mozzers, I have a meeting tomorrow with the dev team to discuss about dynamic keyword insertion implementation on a new site. This site currently holds 40 geo specific microsites with several service pages each carrying unique content. These pages(about 400 pages) are seen by VP of marketing as hard to maintain and inconvenient when wanting to change content across these pages. The VP is looking to automate content as much as possible without hurting our local SEO efforts. The dev team will be asking me if dynamic keyword insertion could a viable strategy for these 40 locations without harming local SEO. Currently we have a robust local SEO strategy in place and wouldn't want to change it unless dynamic keyword insertion is a viable option and won't hurt all the seo efforts that are in place? If this is not a viable solution, any recommendations on any other solutions we could use to satisfy the VP? If you have used DKI for your local SEO efforts, please share your thoughts and results that you have seen. Any real case scenario data/knowledge would be really helpful. Thank you!
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Adwords Express Keyword Ranking Hack
I heard a rumor that Adwords Express offers a tool that lets you check real time Marketing Google ranking results (colleague brought this up) Has anybody heard of this?
Local SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Another Keyword Driven Domain Question
So we have a client that has a ton of great links, solid social profiles, content with good keyword-to-content ratio (7.5-9%), etc. This site has been around for a while and performed well. Recently a new competitor showed up with a very long keyword driven domain and has been outranking our client (and everyone else) for a large quantity of keywords. We own a keyword driven domain that could be used, but should we switch? I am always for branded domains vs keyword, but in this case it appears to be working and undefeatable. We have waited for 6 months to see if it's a fluke, but it has only gained additional ranking. The site in question has bad backlinks, many spam items, and stuffed content on the homepage. We will not copy that format obviously, but should we take one more step and beat him at his own game? Our client has Yext Premium, MOZ local, AdWords, social paid campaigns, location targeting pages, fast load time, etc. Overall a good presence. He seems stuck around the 3-5 position on page one, and is looking to push into the top 3 consistently.
Local SEO | | David-Kley1 -
Multi location strategy - tracking keywords
I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location SEO have been incredibly useful and the original blogpost on Local landing pages by Miriam Ellis is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly. I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which is based in a single location but services a wide area, however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective? Many thanks, Sarah
Local SEO | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Local Search Question re Bulk Upload Feed
What option is best for a Bulk Upload Feed? A. Should this be done in the same Google account where we run our Adwords campaign or B. Should we use our Google account that has the Google Webmaster access? Thank you
Local SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0