Using city location in keywords?

[strategit]

Hi all, new to SEO MOZ and SEO in general. I'm trying to do some keyword research to choose keywords and keyphrases for on page SEO as well as an Adwords campaign for a real estate agency that focuses on luxury high rise condos and homes in the Dallas area.

My question is, when choosing keywords do you need to include your location in the key phrase?

For instance luxury real estate or dallas luxury real estate?

Any input would be appreciated! Thanks!

[KevinBudzynski]

In adwords you can use more broad (competitive terms) in a small geographic area for one campaign. And in another use more longer-tail nationally (so if someone is looking for Dallas Luxury Condos in Michigan, the ad will still show even though the ip address is outside of Dallas).

So:

Dallas Area Campaign:

Luxury Real Estate
Luxury Condos

National Campaign

Dallas Luxury Condos
Dallas Luxury Real Estate

Definitely add it in the title of the ad:

Dallas Luxury Condos

Remember, Test, Test, Test....

[strategit]

Thank you! That makes total sense for an Adwords campaign. What about on page SEO? Would it be better to focus on localized long tail key phrases or broad terms? When doing keyword research for on page SEO do you usually use the same tools when researching Adwords campaign keywords? Such as the MOZ keyword difficulty tool and Google Adword keyword tool?

Thanks for your help!

[SEOTGT]

Definitely for organic SEO you will want to include your geographic terms in the on-page content. In an ideal world you could rank for "luxury real estate" but in reality that is probably a very competitive term and by narrowing it to Dallas you will capture people looking in your market and will have a much better chance of actually appearing in the SERPs.

You may even want to consider other major suburbs in Dallas to catch some of those longer tail searches.

[ClickIt]

For adwords you don't need to put the geo tag because you are only marketing to a certain radius.  I have seen where the CPC was more expensive when I put in the geo tag.

With SEO you def want to put the location unless you are trying to rank nationally.