Step 1 – Basic Market and Keyword Research
The first step to optimizing your local listings is discovering your targeted keywords. This process will give you insight to your marketplace and your competition as well as uncover very laser targeted keywords to your business
Get a handle on the marketplace and competition. Basic market and keyword research are key to the business description and the directory categories. I never cease to be amazed at the gap between my common sense assumptions and actual results – results will often contradict how a business has merchandized itself if they have not advertised online and researched their market.
First, some basic questions: Am I a new or established business? Do I have a website? Do I advertise online? Have I done previous market and keyword research? Do I have any useful data? Whether the answers to these questions, I do basic keyword research testing variations based on geography, to get a big picture based on search terms and number of queries.
With or without prior keyword research or experience, I like to imagine myself as an online customer of my business’s products or services (and my competitors), walking in their shoes as an online mystery shopper. What search terms or phrases (keywords) would someone enter into Google or other search engine to find your business?
I use basic keyword research tools to see the number of searches my business categories generate – nothing too sophisticated at this point.
As a local business I add location to my keywords. For example, if I am a seafood and waterfront restaurant in Miami I will check the number of searches for ‘seafood restaurant‘ and ‘waterfront restaurant‘, then ‘Miami restaurant‘, ‘Miami seafood restaurant‘, ‘Miami waterfront restaurant‘, and ‘Miami-Dade restaurant‘. It also pays to test for zip codes, state or county combinations.
Local keyword tools: GeoMake. This freeware creates location-targeted lists combining a keyword with a state, city, county only, both cities and counties, city before keyword, etc.
Need inspiration for creative keyword research? Read Aaron Wall’s ‘Keyword Inspiration’
Based on my research I can then move on to what is the most challenging task of all – a 200 character (200 being the most common limit) business description.
{ 0 comments }
