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
-
Weather providers in search results - any idea how to become one?
Hi, as google are displaying more and more weather forecasts within results, we'd like to explore whether there's a possibility of exposing our api to google to allow them to use us as one of the providers for the data. At the moment it appears they use weather.com, weather underground and maybe also accuweather (although I've not seen them mentioned for a while on there), but I'm not sure if this is some sort of commercial agreement, or whether it's simply that google have been given access to the api's from those providers in return for the link in the weather panel in the search results. Does anyone have any information about this sort of thing (I assume weather isn't unique in this respect), or know of any way to contact google and find out at all please? Thanks
Local SEO | | PaulM01
Paul0 -
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 -
Search Results Issues
Hi All, I am having an issue with https://www.toyotaofwilmington.com/ If you do searches using Ad Preview for “2016 Toyota Camry in Wilmington, NC” or “2016 Toyota Corolla in Wilmington, NC” we are having issues with the website not showing up organically. We have the location set to Wilmington, NC, but their competition which is located in Jacksonville, NC which is over an hour away shows up organically on the first page. I am wondering if there are any obvious reasons as to why this would happen, or if there is something bigger I need to look at? Thank you, Cyrus
Local SEO | | Webstreak0 -
How can I personalize content based on a state/region? Is it possible?
I'm getting a lot of traffic from different regions throughout the US. I need to personalize the content in my website or on a certain landing page based on the users state/region. Is it possible? For example, forwarding a user that lands on page "x" to page "y" if he's from California and to page "z" if he's from South Carolina. And of course, can this somehow affect my rankings in Google? Thanks!!
Local SEO | | OrendaLtd0 -
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 -
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 -
Best Rank Tracking tool w/ data exports or APIs
I have briefly reviewed the API data available through the Moz API endpoints and did not see that the rank tracking data is available. I first wanted to confirm that? Second, I am looking to start tracking rank for nearly 1 million keywords (local pages multiplied by dozens of core keywords). I want to watch the rankings for a region move over time, as well as keywords generally, and then keywords in a region. My momentary initial research shows that there are a LOT of rank tracker tools, which felt a bit overwhelming to sift through them all and figure out which one would be best. My biggest needs are: handling lots of keywords and URLs exporting the data automatically (via an API or recurring export) allowing for localized results without having to qualify the keywords not breaking the bank to do so -- I'm not an SEO w/ multiple clients, these are all on 1 domain
Local SEO | | Mase0 -
Im a big fan of niche web develop/seo companies. I was wondering how many clients can you ethically take on in the same field, located in the same city
How do niche web development companies justify having multiple clients in the same field in the same cities. I would love an explanation on how to justify this, and how many clients in the same field/same city is acceptable. A good example would be an seo company for auto dealers or hotels. Thanks
Local SEO | | aholyman0