No idea where to start with keywords

[GroundFloorSEO]

I have a friend who owns an IT business in Pennsylvania.  I have been on the adwords tool begging for keywords that people are searching for and I am getting no search results at all.  I have tried all types of combinations-

IT consultant Pennsylvania

IT consultant PA

network solutions pennsylvania

computer tech pennsylvania

...and many variations thereof.  Does this mean that maybe just no one looks for this type of business on google?  What would you guys do in this situation?

Thanks!

[sumanpatra]

You got to be kidding me! a thing like this exists! I am new to SeoMoz, earlier I was actually measuring all those metrics to measure competition and opposition factors and what not in SERPs, it used to take me ages to do the things i just did in few clicks a minute back... many thanks!

[Thommas]

In addition to using keyword tools,  you can also look up your most successful competitors and look at their keywords.

[GroundFloorSEO]

Yes I was using the term loosely.  Bad word choice for a forum such as this

[KaneJamison]

In that case I would focus on the usual local tactics:

1. Optimize your Google Places and Bing listings and use the xx-mile radius option for who you service.
2. Get all the local citations you can. See here: https://www.google.com/search?q=local+citation+source
3. I would probably have no more than a few location pages on the site. If it were Seattle, I might do an "Eastside: Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland, ..." page, a "North Seattle: Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Ravenna, Lake City, ..." page, and so on.  I probably wouldn't dedicate a page to each city unless it's a business with physical locations in that city. Hard decision though. If you can generate good content for each page, you could make a decent case for having one per city. You'd better have good content though - testimonials from people in that city, information about the neighborhoods you currently work in, considerations specific to that city like zoning regulations for landscaping, etc.
4. You mentioned spinning content. I'm not sure if you meant spin casually, or if you meant the act of spinning content by using word and sentence replacements such as article spinning. That's hard to do well, so it typically looks spammy or is obviously duplicate content, and probably not worth it for the site you're talking about.

[GroundFloorSEO]

So what would you suggest in a situation on my other question with my lawn care company?  We service no less than 30 different cities.  How would I optimize for that?  Maybe by dedicating pages to specific cities?  Problem there is that I can only spin content about lawn fertilization so many different ways.

[GroundFloorSEO]

So I think maybe I'm a little too focused on my local modifiers.  As long as I mention on page that we're talking about Pennsylvania, and my main keyword is "small business it consultants", then I shouldn't have a problem ranking for a search term of "small business it consultants Pennsylvania"?  As I stated above, I think my biggest worry is that my sole focus here is local traffic, so I don't want to compete with the whole country for a particular keyword. Can I target the same keyword set on more than one page?  For instance, in my area we are comprised of about 10 different towns in which we all work.  So could I just have one page for this town, one page for that town, both of which would target the same keywords?

[GroundFloorSEO]

So, if I interpret what you are saying correctly, then once a places and bing biz are set, google gathers the location based on this?  I just don't want to get into a situation where by taking out my local modifiers, I am then competing with the whole world for a keyword, when I could just be competing with other locals.  Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me.  You obviously have a lot of it, and I value your opinions.

[GroundFloorSEO]

Thanks for your input on this.  I am really grasping all things seo, with the exception of the keyword research portion.  I think I would have no trouble if my friend was, say a dentist, figuring out keyword combos.  This situation is just so difficult because in a technical, B2B company, what are those businesses really typing into google when they need a guy like him?  I suppose a in a situation like this it's a little luck, a little research, and some guessing.  Mix that with my somewhat lacking understanding of localized seo, and here I am lol.  From what I gather, a lot of you guys are looking for high traffic, low competition keywords, which obviously makes sense.  But for localized, I would think that often in certain areas, most ranking companies do not have great seo plans.  In this case, I think I could simply go with the keywords with highest traffic, considering localized competition seems so much easier to compete with for many businesses (in my area anyway).  Research is limited by country only, so even running the keyword difficulty tool IMO would lead to less than accurate levels of competition.  Am I anywhere on the right track here?  Sorry for the "elementary" questions, I'm just trying to have all my ducks in a row before I act on anything.  I like to be as right as possible the first time

[ShaMenz]

Hey Robert,

It's all good & a whole lot hotter down here

[RobertFisher]

[RobertFisher]

Sha rocks! Great suggestion on Best Kept Secret....it really is. 
Hope all is well down under!

[RobertFisher]

For a title tag as an example, if you are using Legal IT Consulting | Great IT Company, you will have room to change it to Legal IT Consulting (locator) | Great IT Company and this will be workable. For your on page you can also put in locations (Don't put 400 cities in the footer please). 
For Places or Bing use the locator as the address of the business. (There are places in Houston where I can use a suburb or other urban name or I can use Houston, I choose the most beneficial to the client). Be sure to GeoTag photos on Places, Bing, etc. This will help.

Don't do for categories: IT Consultant - Philly, etc.

Best

[RobertFisher]

No problem, we are all learning and there is a lot of good advice here.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Ryan,

All great advice here (wearing out my thumb up guys!).

Just wanted to suggest that you try running the keyword terms it help and computer help. I just ran them in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (exact match) and it returned some related terms with decent search and low/medium competition that could work for you.

Also, any time you are struggling to come up with the right terms for a site, try just asking people you know what they would search for if they needed ".................". Sometimes the bleedingly obvious can be the last thing we think of and other times people come up with what I think are the weirdest terms that are frighteningly common!

Once you have chosen some terms that might be suitable, you can also use the Keyword Difficulty & SERP Analysis Tool to help identify the strengths & weaknesses of sites already ranking in the Top 10 for that term. If you have not used the tool before, Rand's post The Best Kept Secret in the SEOmoz Toolset gives a good explanation of how you can use it.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[Brother22]

Google is really smart and they already know where you are for the most part. Usually I start by doing a search for my biggest fat head term (most commonly searched keywords for the niche) on Google. I take the top three relevant niche related sites in the SERP's and copy the URL to check what text they're using. One of my favorite tools to use is the Keyword anchor text tab in Open Site Explorer. After I check the competitors anchor text I will cross reference the keywords with the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to see how high the competition is. after I have this data it's usually easy to figure our the variations I need to help my pages rank for the correct keywords.

[KaneJamison]

Well, no - as a general rule of thumb, including Pennsylvania IS important for localized SEO. For example, if there were tons of searches every month for "Pennsylvania IT consultants" than I would absolutely focus on it. However, since it doesn't appear to get much traffic, it's less important in the example you presented above. Because of that, I would focus on more general and niche-focused keywords, and make sure that Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Allentown, etc. appear throughout the site, particularly on Location pages and Who We Work With-type pages.

Also, I'd still use "Pennsylvania keyword a keyword b" in the title tags of the homepage if it's less than 70 characters, since it will likely improve the click through rate for people located in Pennsylvania.

[GroundFloorSEO]

Great input here, Robert.  I am very new at this, and of course I have a friend that I run into trouble with.  Thanks for your help!

[GroundFloorSEO]

Thanks!  So, for localized SEO, I don't necessarily need the location modifier as part of my keyword phrase?  (I'm a newbie)  So I can use my standard broad keyword phrases, and then just make sure I have specific locations somewhere on the page?

[KaneJamison]

+1 for the legal, dental, etc. suggestion. Everyone loves a specialist, and if they have a page on their site dedicated to Dental IT Consulting" then those clients will eat that up.

[RobertFisher]

Kane offers good advice here. We do a lot with legal IT. I would suggest you take out the location identifier and go with small bus, medium bus., legal, dental, etc. 
Also go with IT support, software support, hardware/software installation and support, etc. Add in the professions your friend targets, etc. If you want to go for localized do that using Bing Business Portal and Google Places. (Don't over utilize city names. Stick with good categories under what your friend does in IT.

Best

[KaneJamison]

The traffic counts for broad/phrase/exact traffic are showing up as negligible for me as well. I would try removing the physical location from the searches and taking a different approach, such as "small business it consultants." If your site mentions that you're in Pennsylvania and targeting a few major cities, then I would target non-geo phrases in this situation, since you'll likely have a good chance at getting the geographic traffic anyways.