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 -
8 New Location Pages Have Been Indexed But Only 1 Is Showing in SERPS
Hi All Thank you in advance for any help. Previously we were sending all keyword traffic to our homepage, targeting the main keyword garden rooms plus the seed keywords eg garden studios, garden offices etc. We created 8 new pages, 4 for each main seed keyword and location and these went live on May 12th. The pages are indexed by google. The issue is that all searches, except for garden annex brighton, are still pointing to the homepage and not the new location/service pages and now we're on July 27th it seems enough time has gone by. We've setup this post to ask the question, what can we do to reinforce to google that we want the services pages listed in SERPS and not the homepage? Here is the list of new pages : - garden offices brighton garden offices sussex garden gyms brighton garden gyms sussex garden annexes brighton garden annexes sussex garden studios brighton garden studios sussex Many Thanks
Local SEO | | DigitalProgress0 -
Company with multiple services | multiple locations/states
I have a company that rents, repairs, and sells product both new and used. They also have 3 locations in 3 states and service multiple cities out of the locations (ie... los angeles and orange county). Having a hard time redesigning the website so that it fits for customers to look around and for the best of Organic SEO. The issue seems to be fitting the locations in the mix in order to get the customer to the right area without being too confusing. In the end, I'm thinking well maybe the homepage should just be some content to get them to choose the location first then they can go into silos where they pretty much remain in the location for rentals, repairs, and sales but I'm not sure how having the locations on the home page would affect the site. Obviously, we would be trying to rank the silo locations more but they would be 2-3 pages in on clicks to get to the right section 'if' they started from the home page. We need to do this right from the beginning though because we are working on expanding nationwide one day. Thanks for any help on this manner. (PS> Thought about doing subdomains like locations.example.com or state.example.com and rentals.example.some and shop.example.com but I think that will dilute the rankings)
Local SEO | | Ryan_Marshall1 -
Keywords not ranking at google.COM, only at google.com.br
I have a website registered with .com.br. And I have noticed that some (not all of them, some are ranking the same way at both "Googles") of its keywords are ranking only when I search at google.com.br, but if I search the same term at google.COM, those pages aren't ranking. What could I do to rank not just at google.com.br, but also at google.com. My chrome, for example, redirects searches automatically for google.com. If this happens with a large number of people, the impact in my website's visits would be very harmful. Please, help me.
Local SEO | | Ricardocpereira0 -
Google My Business Locations Query- Do I need unqiue Picture File Names for every location
Hello All, I am just in the process of updating all my google business locations for each of my depots. I have been uploading photos but I am wondering if the file names of the photo's need to be unique for every location ? I know I need to describe the picture in the filename so it's good use of keywords but I am wondering if google will see it as spaming if I upload the same product pictures etc to ever google business location ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much.. The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere. As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on. I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence. I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it. I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD. I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number. This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up. So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Local SEO | | RyanShahed0 -
Keyword Question - Metro Suburb
My question is about keyword selection for a small divorce law firm located outside of a major city. My firm focuses only on family law matters, such as divorce, child support, child custody, and paternity. Divorce cases generate the most revenue. We are located outside of the Orlando, Florida metro area, in a small town about 15 miles west of Orlando. My keyword research shows a significant amount of traffic for keywords including Orlando, such as Orlando Divorce Lawyer, Divorce Attorney Orlando, and Orlando Divorce Attorney. For my location, Winter Garden, Florida, the search volume is reported as "0" using Moz's Keyword Difficulty tool. When I use other tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, the reported volume for my physical location and surrounding cities, other than Orlando, shows a volume of "0." We do get potential clients contacting us indicating that they found us via a Google search, and I know that we are ranking well in local search results. That's the good news. However, we are trying to increase the volume of potential clients contacting us, and it seems that the way to do that is to rank well for searches including the word "Orlando." I know that ranking in the local results for Orlando is out of the question because my office is not physically located in Orlando. However, it does not seem to make sense to target keywords for organic search including my location and the surrounding cities because the search volume appears to be next to nothing. So my questions are as follows: Even though the search terms with high traffic seem to be quite competitive and my office is not located in Orlando, should I still target keywords including the Orlando location? How should a small business approach this strategy as far as keyword usage and organization of the website? Should I have a city landing page for Orlando or should I target my main pages using keywords including "Orlando" and build city pages for the smaller, surrounding cities? Thanks in advance for the help. My website is located at http://www.thegrossmanlawoffice.com
Local SEO | | ajgrossman0 -
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?
Local SEO | | tunatraffic1