PPC keywords and locations help
-
Hi.
I have a client who is looking to target locations. In their PPC campaigns they have generic keywords such as web design but the campaigns are location based so Surrey, Kent etc...
Would they be better to target UK wide but use localised keywords such as Web design surrey?
Also in your view, is the Display Network worth it for a small business competing against cheaper/bigger services/companies?
Any views be great.
Thanks
-
Bricegump & Laurean both have great insight to provide on location targeting. It's best to test different types of geo targeting & whole location targeting. There will be people who are not opted in to accept cookies and will still be searching.
So terms like "web design Surrey" are good to target the whole nation, then "web design" is a better term to focus in on at the more geo-specific level in a separate campaign. Of course, head terms like "web design" are still a bit vague and you will likely see a quality score decrease, but I'm sure you were just suggesting it as an example
Display network is absolutely worth it for small businesses! My first job was a lead gen position at a small business and display worked better for us than search (we were advertising on medical terms). I would arm yourself with some persona research first so you know what areas to target and set up very specific banner ads to preemptively engage those viewers. However, I have seen the GDN prices rising recently, so be cautious with your budgets.
-
I don't know how it works over in the UK, but here in the States, I can run a PPC campaign with a generalized keyword "web design" and only target specific zip codes, cities or county (through Google PPC), and even more granular based on hobbies (in FB).
So, yes, I would do the generalized, and then if you can, spread it around the several different geo areas that you can target.
Good luck!
-
As for your local PPC question I would say the answer is both. *My disclaimer here is that we are not in the same vertical and our customers actually have to go to the store at the end of the day, so what works for me might not work for you. But in my experience:
It sounds like your could be showing up for people who are just interested in learning web design who live in Surrey and you could be missing out on impressions from people who live near by (but outside of your targeted area) and are interested in finding web design services based in Surrey.
With our local campaigns we see customers searching for all kinds of keywords so we target both general keywords within our location and geotargeted keywords. Keywords that have a geomodifier tend to convert better, but general keywords have so much more volume that they get more conversions while the conversion rate is much lower.
I'd test it and see what you find. I always try to start small and scale up rather then throw out a bunch of broad match and scale down later. So if I were in your shoes I would test a larger target location with more long tail geomodified keywords while maintaining the local campaigns for modified broad (always +modified +broad, not broad, assuming you're using AdWords) generic keywords and keep checking the data to see what you find. The search terms report could be your best friend for a while.
As for display: we (again this a local based brick and mortar business, so it could be different than yours I don't know) saw very low conversions using the display network in our vertical and decided to end advertising on the display network. However we have awesome cost per conversion numbers using the display network for remarketing to non-converters on our site, so that we use a lot.
Hope that helps!
-
I am not location-specific in my PPC so I cannot speak from experience but if I had that question I would probably set up two campaigns, one UK-wide with localized keywords and the other region-specific with the more general keywords, let them run a while, and see which one performs better.
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
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
Low competition Related Keywords
Hi everyone, I have a blog with product review articles on the best wireless Bluetooth headphones. It is a vast niche and I am finding it hard to rank on this main keyword. Is it a good practice to work on the longtail, related keywords with low competition, so I can keep my blog in the serps? Do you think this will affect my ranking for the main keyword? Please advise, Thank you!
Local SEO | | Salman425520 -
Multiple keywords in one article?
Hi guys! I will be soon getting my article published in local newspaper (online edition) with DA 50. They told me i can choose whatever anchor text I want. The article is about towing business and my keyword is going to be also "towing". Is it smart to add another keyword in the same article (which is similar and is also a money keyword) ? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Suksinho0 -
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 -
I need your help about backlinks
Hello everyone, If your website is in English and if you have backlinks in different language website, does it still affect the SEO in a good way or the websites that you have backlinks has to be in English for getting better position on SEO? I look forward to your answers.
Local SEO | | gyesilkaya0 -
Strategy for [list of keywords] + hundreds of cities
Hi, hoping to get some suggestions on strategy in terms of building out my site as I'm a bit overwhelmed. We provide home services throughout hundreds of locations - some major cities, others smaller yet affluent towns where demand is sufficient, though have no physical presence in the majority. My question is really regarding ranking organically (given local listings will be so difficult). I am new to Moz and have been using the Keyword Explorer to generate a long list of keywords, which I've refined to those which offer the most opportunity. Do I simply now take this list and append [city_name] to each keyword/phrase? If so, working in [list_of_keywords] + [city] into hundreds of location pages is surely going to be a nightmare to make unique, and most likely a horrible user experience. All my customers really want to see is: that we service their area, some info on how we operate, that we are trustworthy (reviews/site quality etc) clear pricing/information (across mobile/desktop) and an easy way of contacting us. If I was searching for a lawn care service in Manchester for example, I couldn't care less about anything else other than the above information. So is padding out pages with content like 'Things to do in Manchester' etc. really the way forward? Would I be better off focusing on building relationships/links with other local complimentary businesses/influencers rather than building out tons of content (on the assumption of course that what content is there is high quality, contains a smattering of keyword + city, and optimised very well)? Any help hugely appreciated!
Local SEO | | Cleanily1 -
Local SEO Best Practices for 2,000+ 'location' service area business
Hi Moz Community! We operate a business where we have a network of 2,000+ technicians around the country who help people repair their mobile phones. These techs do the fixing at the customer's location, making them service area businesses. Even after scouring all of the go-to places on local SEO, I'm struggling to find best practices for this type of situation - the fact that our techs are operating in service areas presents a number of challenges. The biggest one, it seems, is that inevitably service areas are going to overlap. When I talked to a Google rep on this he said this "might" cause our locations to get de-listed and we'd just have to test and find out. Other challenges include the fact that we cannot bulk upload the service areas of our techs, and we cannot bulk verify - meaning there is a ton of work to do at our scale. Any suggestions on where to go to find resources on this specific topic, or an example of someone doing this well we can model? Thanks everyone!
Local SEO | | JohnGroves1 -
How to globalize your brand if the name contains a geo-location modifier?
Hi Moz community,_**[Posting for one of our staff members 🙂 ] **_One of our clients has difficulty attracting a national and international market potentially due to their brand name including a geo-location modifier. We believe that it may be a combination of search engine algorithms incorrectly assuming that the brand is location specific as well as human users perceiving this. I can't reveal the brand but a similar example may be "Houston Cheese-makers". This company wants to attract national and international customers and not be restricted to just Houston. It appears that both search engines and human users are understanding the brand to be limited just to Houston. The client does not want to re-brand. The brand also has a Google Plus Local entity verified against their headquarters location in Houston. We have considered the following tasks to help alleviate this restriction: Changing site messaging to include modifiers such as "national", "USA" and "international" (title-tags, meta-descriptions, on-page text etc). Including a testimonial page that has testimonials from multiple international locations (eg "Joe Blogs from Sydney, Australia says..."). Changing the title tag format site-wide from "page-name | Houston Cheese-makers" to an abbreviated version such as "page-name | HCM" or "page-name | H Cheese-makers". Schema tags - is there any specific tags that can send a signal about the global presence of the brand? What other techniques can help alleviate this problem? Is the Google Plus Local page potentially hampering this as well? Has anyone had a similar experience and can shed some light?Thanks so much!
Local SEO | | AriNahmani0