Local SEO Optimisation – The Four Golden Rules of Keyword Research

When it comes to local SEO optimisation, the first and most important step is doing keyword research and yet it amazes me how little research some people do. What usually happens is that in the rush to get their business online, most business owners put a whole bunch of content on their site that they think is related to their industry or that they think people will be searching for and then they are often disappointed when they don’t get the results they were hoping for.

Poor results can be avoided by simply doing some keyword research of your own. In order to make this easy for  you, I have outlined four ‘golden rules’ for you to follow.

What are the Characteristics of  ‘Golden’ Keywords and Why Are They Important for Local SEO Optimisation?

 These four rules are as follows:

 relevance

1. traffic
2. competition
3. commercialty

Relevance

Sometimes, in their rush to get their business online, many business owners stick a whole bunch of keywords in order to get traffic. The problem is that, although the keyword may be relevant to your industry, it may not be relevant to your site, so when visitors do come, they may be disappointed by what they find. If your site is for a boutique hotel in Sultanahmet, then don’t include words related to holidaying in Istanbul such as tours and sightseeing unless that is a seperate service you actually provide. There may be a great view from your hotel but this is not the same as ‘sightseeing’ and the visitor is looking for a different service. You see, the secret is not just traffic, it’s targeted traffic and making sure your keywords actually match what is on your site is the best way to ensure this.

Traffic

Another way to increase your local SEO optimisation is to follow the second golden rule for keyword research, traffic. In most niches, over 90% of keywords have insignificant traffic and are therefore are not worth focussing on but the less than 10% of keywords that are worth bothering with can drastically improve your traffic and growth. It is not easy to know which keywords can get you the most traffic. You would need to find a good traffic tool like Market Samurai, Wordtracker or use Google’s own keyword tool to to really get an insight into this.

The Biggest Mistake People Make When Doing Their Own Local SEO Optimisation – Not Assessing the Competiton

The biggest trap that people often fall into when doing their own local SEO optimisation is using keywords for which there is too much competition. You may find a keyword that is relevant to your business and gets loads of traffic, but there is already too much competition for. The best way to get visitors is to get a front-page ranking but the problem is that there are only 10 spots. So what to to? You need to consider your competition carefully and remember that in order to outdo your competition, you DON’T need a brilliant-looking website, you just need to be a little bit stronger than them.

Now, there are two aspects of competition that you need to consider.

1. the amount of the competition, and

2. the strength of the competition

The amount of competition is, of course, important as some words have high levels of competition with a lot of people vying for first-page rankings, while others don’t. Obviously you want to go for the ones with lower levels of competition as this will increase your chances of being found on searches. The other thing you need to consider is the strength of the competition. Imagine if you were entering a boxing ring. Would you want to step into the same ring as Mohammed Ali or would you prefer to see an inexperienced lightweight with a similar physique to the annoying blonde guy in ‘How I Met Your Mother’? (sorry but I find him really annoying and he probably deserved to get punched in the face for all of the sexist jokes he makes).

local SEo Optimisation – competition strength

I’m fairly sure you wouldn’t choose Mohammed Ali unless you were a complete idiot. Well the same rule applies on the internet. If you find a phrase that has sites trying to rank for it that are older, have lots of pages of high-quality, professional content and hundreds of backlinks, then you’re in the wrong boxing ring. Instead, go and find a phrase that has competition which consists of newer sites with not much content and not many links.

Ever heard of the phrase, ‘pick your battles carefully’?. Well, here’s a situation in which it definitely applies.

Commerciality

The last of the golden rules for local SEO optimisation measures the potential a keyword has to earn money. A keyword may be relevant, attract high traffic and there seems to be a reasonable level of competition but the visitors are not buying. When this happens, you have targeted a keyword that isn’t what I refer to as a ‘buyers keyword’. Instead, it is searched for by people looking for information only, hence it isn’t converting. A great example of this is an antique furniture manufacturer I did some keyword research for. They were great at finding keywords relevant to their industry, for example ”French Renaissance’, ‘baroque furniture’ and ‘restoration’. But when I did some keyword research for them, I discovered that buyers were looking for actual products like ‘antique sideboard’. It’s simple but the closer you can get your keywords to actually match products that people buy, the more likely you are to turn those visitors into buyers. We sell things and services, not concepts.

So how does Google work out the ‘value’ of a keyword?

Its refers to its own tool, Google Adwords. As a keyword becomes more popular, advertisers will pay more for it. This means that those advertisers have realised which keyword gets more buyers and are prepared to pay to eliminate the competition. The higher the adword value, the higher the potential to sell something.

So there you have it in a nutshell. In order for your site to be successful on the internet, you need to find relevant keywords, keywords which attract a lot of traffic, have a low level of competition and have sufficient ‘commerciality’. It’s very difficult to do this research yourself, so I would like to make a suggestion here and that is to either make use of one of the excellent keyword tools such as Wordtracker, Market Samurai or Google’s own tool. Even better, hire someone to do that for you. Even if you have to pay a consultant to do your local SEO optimisation, the result (a list of targeted keywords) will no doubt make their fee worth it.

If you have any questions about keyword research or local SEO optimisation, feel free to leave a comment.

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Linda