People across the world depend on search engines to find information on the Internet. They use keywords of their interest in the search engine’s search bar to initiate their search, and pick their desired result from the search engine result page (SERP).
The phrases that users search for are called keywords and are of huge importance. Online marketers know the power of keywords and why it is so very important to rank well on keywords for potential customers to be able to find them on the web. But, what are local keywords? They are just an extension of keywords and are limited by geographical boundaries.
Local keywords are limited by geographical location in the keyword. For example, if you’re looking for dentists in your area, merely searching for ‘dentists’ will not give you the best results. Instead, you should search for ‘dentist in NYC’ if you are in NYC, and replace the city name with your area’s name.
However, it is very important to mention that Google is getting smarter and it does not require you to enter the location anymore. This is why when you look for a certain service on Google, it shows you the service providers close to where you are. This is because Google can read your location and then can give you the desired results. So, does it mean local keywords are no more of importance? Not at all!
The truth is that they are still important and people still use locations in their search terms for various reasons. A good example would be of an individual that is going to travel to another city – say San Antonio to Austin. If he or she looks for a hotel while sitting at his or her computer, the results displayed will be of the hotels near San Antonio. To get Austin hotels, terms like ‘hotels in Austin’ would be better.
It is also important to note that when people search for products and services, they typically filter their keywords and use specific, local keywords. For example, if Carol wants to find a dental clinic near her locality in Garfield Avenue Savannah to get a root canal, she will type something like ‘root canal in Garfield Avenue Savannah’ or ‘dental clinic in Garfield Avenue Savannah’ in Google’s search bar. Google will run the search and display all web pages that have used these keywords in their content.
There is no denying that content is king, but the use of keywords is equally important when it comes to ranking in local searches. If your content includes local keywords, chances are your website will show up somewhere on the first few pages when people use those local keywords in the search engines. Why? Because you have used relevant, local keywords in your content to make it easy for your customers to find you.
Well, if you are a local business, you already know that in order to attract local customers, your website needs to rank higher in local searches. The good news is that there are very effective local search engine optimization practices you can implement to attract local customers to your website.
Implementing local keywords in your content is not a complicated task. It just takes you some researching effort to find what people are searching for on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing etc. Then there is the practice of mentioning your business address, opening hours, and phone number and product or service descriptions on your website or blog in addition to getting your business cited on other popular online platforms.
Keyword placement for local searches is quite straightforward. After you conduct keyword research and find appropriate local keywords, just go and place them in different areas of your website. You can place the keywords in the page titles, heading tags (H1 to H6), page URLs, content and description, META tags. Search engine spiders typically crawl these areas when ranking websites. However, when it comes to using keywords in the content, make sure not to do keyword stuffing. Instead, keep 2-3 percent keyword density throughout your content.
When used judiciously and intelligently, local keywords can do wonders for your business. They are very powerful in attracting local customers to your website. If you are not using local keywords on your website, you should jump on the bandwagon now.
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