Note before starting: This post is intended to give value to local businesses.
A business that is online and does not depend on location will not get value from this article. Such a business might learn something new and cool though, so stay tuned 
Good keyword research is a key factor for both SEO and PPC.
The reason it’s so important is that the research will determine which expressions will be promoted and which won’t.
This means that a mistake in the research or in choosing the right keywords may cost us an important phrase that we decided not to promote or an unimportant phrase that we decided to promote as if it was important.
For example: I have a gym in Connecticut.
I did a quick keywords research and found out that the phrase “how to get in shape” has millions of searches per month of searches per month and decided to promote this phrase.
After not receiving traffic for a while, I dive into the details and suddenly discover that although this phrase has a few millions of searches per month,
most of them are from the NYC, so this phrase might be more suitable for a business that’s located there, right?
This technique is used a lot by us in promoting international websites
Therefore – for local businesses it is very important to check the amount of searches in their area.
In this post I will explain exactly how to do it and how to choose the right phrases for your area.
Step 1 – “Normal” keyword research
In our keyword research, we want to look for phrases that are relevant to our business.
The question that should guide us is “what people are searching for and how we can help them find it.
In order to choose the final keywords to promote, we should understand the user’s intent. That is, “what did the person who searched for the phrase on Google intend to find”.
But that is already at the selection stage.
Even before that, in the keywords research, we find a large number of potential expressions.
When we already have a list of a few dozens or even a few hundreds potential keywords from which to choose the final phrases to promote – that’s the time to check the local searches in our area.
Step 2 – checking expression by location.
Let’s see how it’s done:
Enter Google’s keyword tool – a free Google tool for checking phrases and search volumes.
A Google Ads account is needed for this – if you don’t have a Google Ads account, you are more than welcome to contact us and we will help you with this.
Click on “Get search volume and forecast”
Type a phrase and press “get started”
Search for phrases in Google’s keyword tool
On the left side, click on the country button (in this case United states)
Type the areas where you want to check the search volume.
As you can see in the picture, we now have for comparison the amount of searches in each region: in the whole country, in Connecticut and in NYC.
Now you know if you should promote the phrase or not.
A local business needs to take the amount of searches in its area into account.
Therefore – if you are a business with a physical address that works with customers, look for phrases that have many searches in your area – this will help you promote phrases that are relevant to your audience and your leads to be more relevant.
