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SOP 154: Keyword Research for Local Business

Goal: 
Research a list of keywords that are relevant to your local business and inform your local SEO strategy.

Ideal Outcome: 
A complete list of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you sell in locations you’re offering.
Prerequisites or requirements: 

You will need a Google Keyword Planner account. If you don’t have one, sign up for free here.

Why this is important: 
To understand what potential customers type into search engines like Google when looking for your business’ products or services so you can tailor your marketing strategy for them.

Where this is done: 
Google Keyword Planner.

When is this done: 
In the early stage of marketing your business.

Who does this: 
Marketing Manager, marketing consultant, or any person responsible for marketing strategy for your local business.

Identify Core Services Keywords

  1. Make a copy of the local keyword research template.
  2. In the first row, replace “Type of Service” with all types of service or product you’re offering.
We’ll be using CarpetBright as an example. CarpetBright is a carpet cleaning service located in the UK.
Hover over their navigation you’ll find a list of cleaning services they provide.

3. In the Local Keyword Research template, we will replace “Type of Service” with the services listed in the screenshot.

You now have a list of seed keywords to build on top of.

Generate keyword Ideas using keyword planner

1. First, Identify all the locations (cities and towns) you provide your service or sell your products to. For example, CarpetBright provides their services in 5 major cities in the UK — Bromley, Croydon, Kent, London, and Surrey.

2. We will then append the type of service you provide + the location keywords:
    • Carpet Cleaning London
    • Carpet Cleaning Bromley
    • Carpet Cleaning Croydon
    • Carpet Cleaning Kent
    • Carpet Cleaning Surrey
    3. Then sign in to your Google’ keyword planner account.
    4. Select “Discover new keywords”

5. Add the expanded keywords in the search field under “START WITH KEYWORDS”.

6.Make sure the location and language are set based on where your local business is located.

7. Click “GET RESULTS”.
You will then get a list of local keywords that are relevant to your business and the location you’re offering your service/product.

8. Export the list of keywords as a spreadsheet and open the sheet in a new tab.
9. The only columns we’re interested in are the Keyword and Avg. Month Searches columns.

10. Delete every other column by right clicking the column label and select Delete Column

The end result should look something like this:

Copy and paste all these keywords into the local keyword research template.

Repeat step 2-13 for every type of service/product you’re offering.
Your template should now be completed with all the local keywords

Trimming down the keywords

In most cases, Google Keyword Planner will generate hundreds or thousands of keywords. Not every keyword will be relevant to you or your business so it’s best to just remove them from the spreadsheet.

Remove keywords that are not relevant to your business:

Product or service you don’t provide — For example, if CarpetBright doesn’t provide carpet steaming service then remove “steam carpet cleaning london” from the keyword list.

Location where you don’t provide your service — For example, if CarpetBright doesn’t provide service in West London then remove “carpet cleaning west london” from the keyword list

Keywords that are irrelevant to the product or service — For example, “magic carpet cleaning london” is not relevant to the business.

Competitor’s brand keyword — For example, Chemdry is a competitor so remove “chemdry london” from the list.

You now have a completed list of keywords to inform your local SEO strategy such as on-page SEO, new content ideas, etc.