Should I concentrate keyword ranking locally or nationally?

[A_Fotografy]

Hi all,

I have spent few last days reading here in community and watching Moz videos about keyword research. I used keywords planner tool.

Here is the question.

When I researched keywords I took into account search traffic nationwide UK rather then my local search volume.

My photography business operates more for local customers rather then nationwide. Does it mean that I need to concentrate on my local city/region search volume rather then nationwide.

After I have done Nationwide keyword research I realised that most of those keywords which are with really high search volumes are pretty much non existent in my local search results. I meant to the point that keyword search volume is under 10. Considering that I have small number of pages i could use them for, my guess is that it is no point to target those high search volume keywords as most likely those won't be my clients anyway.

I might be getting all this wrong, but wanted to ask here.

Thank you all,

Regards,

Armands

[EGOL]

If you are writing content with the intent of appearing in the search engines for work opportunities in specific locations they you should focus on local.   An example would be "product photography in London".

However, if you have the ability to produce content that is competitive enough to rank well nationally or globally for broad topics, that content can increase the strength of your site in local search.  And, if you can generate significant traffic, that traffic can be monetized with adsense, product sales, direct ad sales, remote consulting, or jobs that you travel to complete.

I live in the United States and have a license to consult in the state where I live.  However, I have written content that ranks for industry keywords in local communities across the United States.  I run Google Adsense on those pages and local businesses (and many other types of businesses) use Google Adwords to place ads on my site.  I make far more from those ads than I could possibly make from full time consulting.

ADDED:  If you use Google's DoubleClick for Publishers ad server, you can control who sees your ads based upon their geographic location.  If you don't want to show ads to visitors in your local service area, they can be blocked.  At the same time, you can display Adsense ads to visitors from outside of your area or directly sell impresses to local businesses in other areas when visitors from those areas visit your site.  Advertisers using Adwords can do the same from their side.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Armands,

Great advice from EGOL. I will add a bit - I don't find the Keyword Planner to be very helpful for accurate local search volume research. Believe me - people are searching for photographers in your city, even if tools don't accurately reflect this. So, yes, you'll want to market yourself locally (website content, citations, reviews, etc.) but there is no reason that you can't simultaneously go for national coverage as well, if your business lends itself to that, as EGOL has described.

[A_Fotografy]

Thanks Miriam,

What you would then recommend for keyword research?

Thank you for joining conversation.

Regards,

Armands

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Armands,

This might be a bit shocking, but I've never been a big fan of any free keyword research tool I've tried for Local SEO purposes, but then, keyword research hasn't been a daily task for me in a couple of years. It's really important for me to mention that it has been at least a couple of years since I've looked at whatever paid tools may be new, so I can't say whether their accuracy has improved, specifically for correctly representing local search volumes. When I was doing more of this, I simply used the old strategy that I remember first being recommended by Matt McGee of performing non-local keyword research and adding geomodifiers back into your list of findings, knowing that people search for most things that exist in most cities, regardless of what tools say. This may not sound sophisticated - and it isn't - but it has always made good horse sense to me. Do note, however, that Rand did an important Whiteboard Friday on this topic of how we can't do keyword research like it's 2010: https://moz.com/blog/cant-do-keyword-research-like-its-2010-whiteboard-friday

Where this gets a bit more complex is when you have geographic vocabulary differences (soda vs. pop, lawyer vs. attorney, stick horse vs. hobby horse), in which case, knowing the way your audience speaks is either going to be something you research in person, or something you approximate via Internet research of social media to see how people talk locally about the products you sell.

Now, that being said, there is one trick I'm totally fond of - the wildcard search Mary Bowling spoke of at a recent conference. I had never seen that before, and it's awesome:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/02/18/how-to-use-wildcard-searches-for-local-keyword-research-lightning-round-with-mary-bowling/

And, remember to pay attention to the 'related searches' section at the bottom of most Google results. There are some really obvious clues there.

And, finally, I've always thought that Google's categories provided some of the most important keywords one should be optimizing for, when you are aiming to rank well in Google's local product.

So, while I want to be sure to note that I am not a local keyword research expert in any way, I think much of keyword research is actually just common sense, but with the understanding that some of it isn't common sense and findings can totally surprise us about the way people search.

Further Reading:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-tools-software/38694-free-keyword-rank-software-competitive-analysis-pre-consultations.html

https://www.brightlocal.com/2014/07/22/effective-local-keyword-research/

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-content/38255-keyword-research-blog-posts-local-content.html (see CodyBaird's comment)