As discussed in my last post, finding the right keywords for your search marketing campaigns is essential for getting the right traffic to your web site at the right price. But many small and midsized businesses should also consider adding geographic keyword modifiers to their search campaigns to really target their search marketing campaigns. In this post, we’ll define geographic modifiers and discuss why they are important to localized search marketers.

What is a geographic modifier?
A geographic keyword modifier is the use of a geographic term in the beginning, end, or in the middle of a keyword term. For example, if my core keyword was “health insurance,” you could geographically modify the keyword by adding the term “Denver” to it, making it “Denver health insurance” or “health insurance Denver.”  Pretty straight forward, eh?

Why would I use a geographic modifier?
Even if a business wants to appeal to searchers on a national basis, it’s not a bad idea to start out by targeting a local market, because they will be able to see better results more quickly. Why? Because competition can be fierce on the national level, and the timeline for success can be considerably longer.

An unscientific way to assess the competitive landscape is by Googling your keyword and viewing the total number of results. While this number does not express the amount of search marketing competition per se, it does give a good indication of how many web pages have been found on the Internet that could fulfill a search for your search term.

For example, the total number of documents (web pages, PDFs, etc) in the Google index for a term like “health insurance” is 105,000,000. That’s a lot. Even though a majority of those pages are not well optimized for that term, the web pages are still competing for a space in those search results.

Now, let’s add some geographic modifiers for a state, city and neighborhood and see how that number of indexed pages change:

- Colorado health insurance (state modifier) – 24,300,000 documents
- Denver health insurance (city modifier) – 16,100,000 documents
- Denver Highlands health insurance (neighborhood modifier) – 149,000 documents

As you can see, as the geographic area gets smaller, the number of web pages and other documents goes down as well. This shows the big advantage of geo-modifiers: a reduction in keyword competition.

Geo-modifiers give you the ability to target a specific local or regional market, and this means you can get results more quickly and get a faster ROI on your search marketing efforts. It also means you can focus on the areas that are most profitable for your business.

Starting local can get you from start-up to success quickly.  And if you want to go national right away, go for it, but consider doing it in a two-pronged approach where you target your local market with one campaign (including a local website) and another where you go for the whole nation.  That way you’ll be able to profit in the short term while waiting for long-term national success to kick in.

How do I choose the right geographic keywords?

So now that you have an idea of why you would want to use a geographic modifier, you might be wondering how to pick the right modifier for your business.

Sometimes it’s obvious. There are many businesses that are geographic dependent, such as sales people with a specific territory or a brick-and-mortar store that has limited regional draw. But other times it’s not so obvious.

Some companies that are able to operate in many locations struggle to define the geographic area that they will market to. This can be tricky, but one good way to make this decision is to ask the following question:

What is the smallest definable geographic area that I get or want to get 80 percent or more of my business from?

Is it your city? Your state? Your neighborhood?  Think of the answer to this and write down 3–5 potential geographic areas that would fit this definition.

Once you have done this it’s time for you to check and make sure there is search volume in your area for these search terms. Go to the Kutenda tool or another keyword tool, and plug in your keyword along with each geographic modifier (e.g., “Denver health insurance” or “Colorado health insurance”).  Check the monthly search volume on these geo-modified keywords and pick the one with the most volume.  This should be your primary geographic modifier.

Now that you’ve got your primary geographic modifier, it’s time to make a list of secondary modifiers. Secondary modifiers can come from a number of different sources based off of your primary keyword:

1.    Other nearby major cities
2.    Cities/towns within your primary modifier (if it’s a metropolitan area, etc)
3.    Adjacent states, counties, metro areas
4.    Neighborhoods within your primary geographic area

As you did with the primary modifiers, write down as many of the secondary geo areas you can think of and plug them into the Kutenda keyword tool along with the primary keyword you are using.  Check the search volumes for the words and then make a list of the highest volume locations you want to market to.  It’s good to have 10– 5 of these, if not more.

When you’re done, you’ll have a list of your geographic modifiers—congrats!  But what do you do with them? In the next post, we’ll discuss how to use these modifiers for search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and local search engine optimization.  And no, the use is not the same for all three.

If you have any questions about this post, feel free to leave a comment below.  Thanks for reading and please remember to take action and succeed online with Kutenda!

Selecting the Right Keywords for Search Engine Marketing

Here’s a fundamental concept that all budding search marketers need to understand: How to choose effective keywords for your online marketing efforts.

While approaches and strategy change from medium to medium (search engine optimization keywords vs. pay-per-click keywords vs. local search keywords) there are some fundamentals of keyword selection that work across all types of search engine marketing.

Defining Keywords
Before we jump into the actual keyword selection process, I want to define what a keyword is in a search engine marketing context. So, in the context of this description, we’ll refer to a keyword as:

A single word or multi-word phrase that is used when searching for information on a search engine.

Even though “keyword” seems to indicate that it’s only a single word, such as “insurance,” it can also be a short phrase, such as “auto insurance,” or an even long phrase like “my grandmother wants to buy auto insurance for her 1982 Buick.” In this context, if a searcher is searching for something on a search engine, that search is a keyword! (That’s a lot of search in one sentence!)

Intent Is Everything
Figuring out the intent behind a searcher’s keyword is one of the greatest challenges facing both search engines and search marketers. A classic example of this is the keyword “apple.”

From the perspective of a search engine, the word apple could mean a number of things. It could refer to…

• Fruit
• A computer company
• The baby of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow

The information provided by a search like “apple” is too broad to easily provide accurate search results based off of the keyword search itself. However, as a searcher further refines the search by using keywords like “apple pie,” “apple macbook” or “apple paltrow,” the search engines can more accurately display results and advertisements to searchers. In turn, the searchers are happier with the results they receive and are more likely to click on a search result.

Starting Your Keyword List
Keeping everything mentioned above in mind, let’s talk about how to start your keyword list.

First things first: Write down some potential general keywords that a searcher might type to find a product like yours. Make sure to avoid industry or company specific lingo that your potential customers may not use. Try to get into your customer’s mindset and figure out how they would search for your product.

For example, if you sell backup and data recovery services, a customer is not likely going to search for the industry term BDR. Instead, they will think to look for something like “computer backup company,” “data recovery computer,” or even “how to back up my macbook.” These consumer keywords are the ones to focus on.

Once you have written down some ideas, go to your keyword tool of choice (we like the Kutenda keyword tool for obvious reasons) and plug in your keywords. The keyword tool should then present you with the volume of the keywords you entered along with other keywords to consider. Look at the list and find solid-looking keywords that have the highest volume of search activity – then put them into a spreadsheet.

You now have a keyword list, but you’re not off to the races quite yet; just because a keyword has the most search volume it doesn’t mean it will be the most profitable for you. Why not? Again, it comes down to intent.

Keyword Intent
From a search marketer’s standpoint, it’s good to keep your potential clients’ intent in mind when choosing your keywords. Just as the search engines have problems when they get overly broad keyword searches, advertisers can face problems as well.

A key benefit to search marketing is that you can target prospects that are actively searching for your product or service. When your keywords aren’t targeted very well, you loose this advantage, and your search marketing campaigns will suffer.

A good test when looking at potential keywords is to think of what stage of the buying process a searcher would be in when they type in a particular keyword. Many search marketers break purchasing intent down into three categories:

• Browsers – searchers who are in information-gathering mode
• Shoppers – searchers who have an identified need and are weighing their options
• Buyers – searchers who are ready to buy something now and are looking for a place to do it

For example, if you were in the digital camera business, examples of these searches would be:

• Browsers – “best digital camera,” “digital camera information,” “digital camera reviews”
• Shoppers – “Canon digital slr camera,” “compact Sony digital camera”
• Buyers – “Canon powershot SD780,” “Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1”

While it may be beneficial to show up for keywords that would appeal to browsers, buyers and shoppers, you should focus your primary SEO and PPC efforts to bring in more shoppers and buyers than browsers. This will help you get more targeted traffic from people who are most likely to purchase a product or service from you. Targeting browsers may get you a lot of clicks on your ads, or visits to your site from search engines, but usually the searcher isn’t inclined to buy at this point. (And remember: You don’t want to pay for clicks that don’t ultimately result in sales.)

Now That You’ve Got Them, Use Them
Once you’ve found keywords with solid search volume and that target the shoppers and buyers in your industry, it’s time to start using your keywords to drive new leads and make new sales. Your researched keyword list can be used to:

• Create and optimize new content for your web site
• Build pay-per-click accounts
• Create keyword focused local listings

With the right keywords, you’ll be able to get quality traffic from search engines that will be both cost effective and targeted. So what are you waiting for? Start your keyword research process now!