What's the best keyword tool for discovering regional/metropolitan area keywords?

[BostonWright]

Generally I use the Google Keyword Tool for my keyword research, but given the fact that the data is either country specific or global, I was wondering what others use for regional/dma-specific keyword discovery. Regional traffic is very important to my site, so I'm hoping to find a tool that I can use to find keywords germane to my audience.

[MiriamEllis]

Hello Jon,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. You've asked one of those questions for which there still isn't a 100% percent satisfactory answer, but I'll do my best to provide you with some excellent resources here.

The trouble is, that unless you are doing KW research for a pretty major area, tools are often likely not to actually show you appropriate geo modifiers. However, I was recently speaking with Darren Shaw of Whitespark (awesome company) about this and will quote his advice to you, which is about as good as it gets on this topic.

Use Google Adwords tool without the location modifier, supplement with data from Google Insights, Suggest, and Related. Build a huge list.

Then, remove all location-oriented KWs from your list and set them aside temporarily.

Then, go through the list again and remove any KWs that don't trigger local search results in the search engines, or don't bring up your competitors in the search engines. Set those aside, too.

Next, go through the list again and identify all main keyword terms. These are keepers. So, if you're in the vacation rental business, then 'vacation rental' would be in this list.

Then, go through the list again and identify plurals, more descriptive terms, combined terms, etc. So, here, in the same business, terms might be 'pet friendly vacation rentals'.

At this point, you should have a really big list of main terms, plurals, longer terms, combined terms.

Now you can add back in any geo terms that came up. So, you can have Vacation Rentals Boise, Idaho, as well as Pet Friendly Vacation Rentals Boise, Idaho and so on. At this point, your list will be quite huge because for every possible geo term, there are all of the non-geo keywords you have identified that you can add the geo terms to.

Finally, if your research hasn't turned up any geo terms, it's likely that they aren't being tracked. Add them. Also, look at your analytics for any geo terms that didn't appear during your research. Add those to the list, too.

From this step by step process, you should end up with a really good list.

Also recommend you read these:

http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/local-keyword-research/1787/

http://www.expand2web.com/blog/tips-for-using-google’s-keyword-research-tool-in-a-local-context/

Hope this helps!

Miriam

[Naghirniac]

Please, take a look at this blog post. There i think you will find more than you look for. Good luck!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/be-careful-using-adwords-for-keyword-research