How to reach the top in local search – Part 1

So you have a website. It’s a great looking website, it has relevant information set out in a clean manner that is easy to follow. It has calls to action and entices visitors to take action. But there is just one problem… It doesn’t get any traffic.

Such is the case for many small business websites. For one reason or another, when the website was setup, it wasn’t given any thought as to how visitors will find it. Many business owners mistakenly believe that Google is like the Yellow Pages – you just have to let them know you exist and you’ll get listed under your category automatically. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.

This article is the first in a three part series, if you know about keyword research, you can skip to part two: onsite optimisation or part three: link building.

When a user types in a search term, Google looks at that search term and compares it with every website in the Google database. Google then ranks them based on up to 200 different factors and shows the user what it believes is the most relevant results.

We’ll be looking at how to show up first in those results in parts two and three of this series, but for now, we’re going to look at something even more important.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of answering the question “what are my customers searching for?”.

If you’re going to spend some time, effort, and perhaps money to show up at the top of Google, it’s important to show up for the right words. Here are some examples of how targetting different words can make a huge difference.

“Skydiving” – 33,000 searches per month on google.com.au
“Parachuting” – 2,400 searches per month on google.com.au

If you are offering skydives, it’s quite clear from the above that you would much rather rank highly for “skydiving” than rank highly for “parachuting”.

Why can’t I just show up for everything?

A common question at this stage is “why can’t I show up for both? Skydiving and parachuting are the same thing!”.

Every competitor you have is also aiming for the top of your keywords. While it is generally a good idea to target a few keywords, if you spread yourself too thin, you may end up not ranking well on any of your keywords – especially if you choose keywords that are not closely related too each other.

How can you do keyword research?

There are several tools available to aid with keyword research. The most popular ones are Word Tracker and the Adwords Keyword tool. I personally prefer the Adwords Keyword tool.

Using the tool is quite simple, simply enter the keyword in, and the tool gives you the average monthly search volume, and a list of similar words that might also relate to your site.

If you already have a website, you can see what Google thinks are currently the best keywords for your website. On the left hand side, click the radio box that says “Website content” and enter your URL in the box provided. Google will then think about it for a bit and come back with a list.

For interests sake, this is the list Google comes back with for this website:

• small business marketing
• small business advertiser 
• for small business 
• small business opportunity 
• a small business 
• small business 
• business marketing 
• internet marketing

Selecting keywords to target

Armed with your new knowledge on how to do keyword research, it’s time to put it into practice and do some keyword research for your own site. If you have a small website (5-10 pages), you will only want to target a couple of keywords. The bigger your website, the more keywords you can go after.

For most small businesses, look for variations of [your product] [your geographic target]. Find which variations are providing the most traffic, and write a list of them.

Armed with this list, we’re going to optomise your site to show up for those keywords. In the next segment of this series, I’m going to go into detail about what changes you can make to your website to take advantage of your new knowledge and research. Then in part three I will look at making your site a local authority by building links to it.

As always, if you liked this post, leave a comment, and subscribe to receive updates of future articles =)

Related posts:

• How to reach the top in local search – Part 2
• How to reach the top in local search – Part 3
• Shoppers search online: Take advantage of emerging buying trends
• Websites for local builders – Beat the big guys and how to use their biggest weapon against them
• Human Behaviour in Search – plural vs. singular matters