Best Keywords for my local niche

[BobGW]

Hello,

I'm a health coach helping people with multiple sclerosis. Here's my website:

bobweikel(dot)com

What do you think the top 4 local keywords would be for my niche? I'm in Boise ID.

I'm thinking

MS Boise

MS Boise Idaho

Multiple Sclerosis Boise

Multiple Sclerosis Boise Idaho

With your intuition, do you think these are valuable keywords for a coaching site? Also, can you think of any other keywords? I want this 100% white hat (no cloaking, for instance)

[MiriamEllis]

Terrific, Bob! So glad to be of help. Ventures like yours deserve big success!

[BobGW]

Hi Miriam,

What a thoughtful and detailed response. Not only does that get me started on this MS coach path, but it answers a question I've been having on how to do local keyword research.

I will do some heavy research and come up with my terms.

Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

First, I would like to say that I applaud your business. MS is such a tough condition and it's wonderful that you are helping people with this!

Are the 4 terms you've listed based on keyword research, or are they the product of brainstorming? I definitely recommend that step number one for you be using a keyword research tool. Google's free Adwords keyword tool is a good place to start. However, it's important to understand that neither this tool nor any other will provide you with accurate estimates of geographic terms. When doing keyword research for Local SEO, you want to search for product, service and topic terms, without any geographic words appended to them. Then, you can take your list of found keyword phrases and add your geo terms back in.

What I feel is missing from your list of 4 terms is you. People looking for 'MS' or 'Multiple Sclerosis' may have many intents...they may be doing research for symptoms, looking for a doctor or, simply, a definition. What you are offering people is a service for people with MS. This clarification is missing from your keyword phrases, and while you may eventually target these broader terms by narrowing the competition down to Boise, your core pages like your homepage, contact page and about me page are going to need to be optimized for who you are and what you offer.

Let's look up 'health coach'. And let's compare it to 'personal trainer' or 'lifestyle coach'...these are terms I've heard lots of time, though you'll have to let me know if they are accurate descriptors of your business. The Google KW tool says:

Health Coach 40,500

Personal Trainer 673,000

Lifestyle Coach 2,400

So, 'health coach' looks like a good strong term, and while not as searched-for as 'personal trainer', if it is more accurate for your profession, it looks like a good term to go on.

Now, let's see if there is anything more utterly specific to being a 'ms health coach' or 'multiple sclerosis health coach':

ms health coach 91

multiple sclerosis health coach 0

So, there is a small amount of traffic for the first term, and you can certainly put it on the list because it does describe exactly what you do. Let's look at the list to see if any other terms look good:

living with ms 8,100

ms diet 6,600

ms support groups 1,900

Perhaps these are things you can help people with? These may not be the perfect words for you, but if they were a good match, you could start to form title tags like:

Living With MS To Your Fullest, With Boise MS Coach Bob Weikel

or

MS Support Groups in Boise led by MS Coach Bob Weikel

Brainstorming other ideas, I'm coming up with further terms:

multiple sclerosis coach 46

multiple sclerosis therapy 18,100

ms coach 4,400

multiple sclerosis help 4,400

multiple sclerosis program 1,300

Could be some gems for you in there. In fact,  MS Coach looks like it could be a very clear term for you, but I'm less certain when I look at results for that search. One is from the MSAA's life coaching program, but others are about sports coaches and women coaches. So that needs to be investigated further.

At any rate, these are just some ideas to get you started. I would recommend that you make a list of every possible term you can think of associated with your profession, plug it into a keyword tool, and see what you get. And remember, do your research without geo terms. Add them later. These terms can include city names, county names, regional names, state names, neighborhood names and zip codes. Here is a nice, free tool I came across recently that helps you determine top geo terms for you region:

http://www.localmarketingsource.com/local-keyword-research-tool/

It's going to be very important that you handle the Local SEO of your website correctly, so that you are making it really clear where you are, who you are and what you do.

Hope my thoughts are helpful to you, and good luck in the wonderful work you are doing!