How to find and use local keywords for better SEO

Why do local keywords matter?

A core task of doing SEO for local businesses involves identifying the search terms people use when they turn to the web with a local search intent, meaning that they are trying to find a nearby solution to their needs. 

These local keywords must be discovered and implemented across a variety of digital assets by any local brand you market in order to signal to both search engines and searchers that the business is a relevant answer to specific, local needs. 

What makes local keywords different from run-of-the-mill keywords is that they either directly state or imply geography. For example, a searcher might look for “Thai restaurant San Francisco” or “Thai restaurant near me,” instead of just “Thai restaurant.” 

The good news about local keyword research is that implementation of its findings can positively impact a local brand’s visibility across a variety of online environments including:

• Google’s local packs, finders, and Maps
• Organic search engine results
• Both desktop and mobile results
• Voice search results
• Social media 
• AI results

This comprehensive guide will help you to discover and implement local keywords for the local brands you market and put you on the road to improving your keyword rankings for local searches. 

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What makes a keyword “local”?

Confusion can arise for local business owners when they see a search engine like Google returning local results even when a search phrase doesn’t include modifiers like “near me” or “New York.” 

The above screenshot shows a user being shown a local pack of restaurants, even though their search phrase doesn’t include city names or a phrase like “near me.” 

This common phenomenon occurs when Google is confident that the search term signals a high degree of local intent. In other words, the searcher probably isn’t looking for the history of Thai restaurants—they are likely looking for a nearby place to eat. Because Google knows the location of people who use its search product, it can typically personalize its local and organic results to show the user resources nearest them.

This observable form of personalization can make local business owners think it’s not necessary to optimize their digital assets for local intent, because Google will do the guesswork for them. Don’t make this mistake. 

The more effort you put into proper optimization, the stronger a signal you will send to both the public and search engines that the local brand you’re marketing can meet specific needs within a specific geography.  

In performing local keyword research, it helps to be on the lookout for:

• Explicit local keywords: search terms that include geographic or location-specific terms like city names, neighborhood names, or zip codes
• Implicit local keywords: search terms like “near me,” “nearby,” or “downtown” that rely on the search engine knowing the user’s location
• Branded local keywords: search terms that mention a business by name plus an explicit or implicit phrase, like “Osha Thai San Francisco” or “Osha Thai near me”
• Service + location combinations: instead of mentioning a product or brand, these search terms mention a service plus a geographic modifier, like “water heater repair San Francisco,” or “water heater repair near me”
• Unmodified high local intent keywords: any search term that triggers local results, even if no geographic modifiers are used, like “Thai restaurant” or “pizza delivery” or “emergency plumber”

How to find local keywords that work

There is an excellent variety of ways to discover powerful local keywords for any brand you market, and the following step-by-step methodologies should be used in combination to reveal the most information:

Start with the community, wherever possible

Provided that the business you’re marketing is already up and running, the best place to start brainstorming a seed list of local keywords is within the community being served, via the following practices:

• Have staff at the location mindfully write down the exact phrasing customers use in asking for help (e.g. “do you have gluten-free pizza?”, “do you carry Firestone tires?”, “is your store pet-friendly?”, etc.).
• Analyze call logs for this same information, documenting the exact wording customers use in speaking and asking questions about the business.
• Survey/poll the community when you’re not confident about regional phrasing. For example, the same sandwich can be called a sub, grinder, hero, hoagie, and other variants in different parts of the country. Discover what the community being served says, and unlock your target audience’s preferred language.

If you’re promoting a company that isn’t yet open for business, you can still do local keyword research. Get a list of seed keywords by brainstorming with the business owner, looking at nearby competitors online, and practicing social listening on platforms used by the local community.

Use Google Autocomplete and “People Also Ask”

Start typing the seed keywords you’ve gathered into Google’s search box, as shown above, and document the options Google brings up. These are phrases people are already using, indicating that they are at least somewhat popular. You can find keyword ideas that likely resonate with potential customers.

You can also document what Google brings up in its People Also Ask SERP feature. In the above screenshot, we can see the kinds of searches the public is already doing in relation to finding gluten-free options at Thai restaurants, for example. 

Use keyword tools

There are a variety of free and paid keyword research tools on the market today, each with their own strengths, including:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Semrush
• Moz
• Ubersuggest
• Google Trends for seasonal or regional differences

It’s important to know that keyword research tools typically cannot accurately report true local search volumes. If you’re marketing a business in a major city, like Los Angeles or Seattle, tools may be able to provide reasonable estimates of the popularity and competitive keyword difficulty, but if you are promoting a company in a smaller town, these tools may yield little or no data for phrases like “Thai restaurant Mendocino” or “emergency plumber Monterey.” 

Because of this, it’s a longstanding local keyword research best practice to enter unlocalized search phrases into these tools. For example, research the core phrases “Thai restaurant” or “emergency plumber” without geographic modifiers, and then add city names and other modifiers back in when you are ready to optimize your assets.

Analyze competitors

Once you have a starter list of keyword phrases in hand, research your top local and organic competitors for these phrases. Document:

1. The appearance of keywords in the business titles top competitors are using on their Google Business Profiles. Google’s algorithms are strongly biased towards ranking brands well in their local results when their names closely match users’ search phrases.
   
   This, unfortunately, leads spammers to stuff their titles with keywords, despite this being a violation of the Guidelines for representing your business on Google. If you discover that your business name is putting you at a competitive disadvantage, you may need to consider rebranding via a DBA. For example, look at the business name of this restaurant, which explicitly includes the phrase “Thai restaurant” in its title:
   
   
   
   
   
   It could have a ranking advantage over a business you’re promoting that is just named “Lemongrass” or something else of a generic nature.
2. Use Chrome extensions like GMBSpy or GMBEverywhere to get a full list of the Google Business Profile categories your top competitors are using. Categories should typically be seen as part of your local keyword list.
3. Carefully study the justifications that are appearing in the local packs for your top competitors when you look up your important local keywords. These bonus snippets of text in local packs stem from a variety of sources, and can look like this:
   
   
   
   
   
   The first business has a justification from a review talking about the number of layers of gold, while the other two justifications are of the “Seen by shoppers” and “Sold here” varieties.
   
   Read our complete tutorial on the Current state of Google local justifications and pay attention to the keywords that trigger them as well as their sources, such as Google Business Profile Reviews, Google Merchant Center, Google Business Profile Services, Google Business Profile Menus, and more.
4. Pay close attention to how keywords have been incorporated into the optimization of the landing page each of your top competitors link to from their Google Business Profiles. Look at the presence of keywords in their title tags, main body text, image alt text, and other elements. 
5. Use SEO tools to spot competitor keyword gaps. This can help you to identify potentially powerful search phrases that your nearby competitors have overlooked. Simply enter up to three domains in this tool, and select “Organic keywords” from the dropdown to see how your keyword profile compares to those of your closest competitors.
   
   
   

Explore review sites, local directories, and AI-generated results

In addition to the above keyword research practices, you can find further search phrase information from the following sources:

• Reviews: whether on Google Business Profiles or major review sites like Yelp, Angi, TripAdvisor, neighborhood sites like Nextdoor or local business directories for specific industries or communities, reviews are filled with clues to how consumers talk about local businesses.
  
  Google offers a handy summary of the most commonly referenced topics in reviews within their system. This feature is called Place Topics, and it is located above the expanded reviews section of Google Business Profiles and looks like this:
  
  
  
  By clicking through on the tabs of a competitor’s Place Topics, you can discover whether local consumers have positive or negative feelings about prices, for example, clueing you into whether it might be a good idea for the business you’re promoting to emphasize its competitive pricing to put you at an advantage. 
• Attributes: most local business directory sites offer some form of attribution. Look at how this list of Yelp attributes for a Thai restaurant hints at the many different things a customer could possibly want to know about a nearby eatery:
  
  
  
  
  
  Many of the above phrases could be useful in enhancing your keyword strategy and optimizing your digital assets. 
• AI-generated results: if AI environments like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews cite sources in their responses to your important search phrases, pay attention. Here, for example, we can see an AI Overview being returned for a customer trying to understand the cost of having a bathroom remodeled in San Francisco: 
  
  
  
  
  
  Though we are still in the early days of AI, emerging wisdom is that, in order to be returned as a result, your business needs to be widely cited by third-parties as a relevant authority on the topic. For example, if a Thai restaurant you’re marketing discovers that it needs to be known for “vegan Thai food in San Francisco,” then its brand needs to be widely cited next to these words in a variety of publications.
  
  You can read more about this theory of AI plus proximity in AI, Local Business Reputation, and Finding Your Magic Words. Note the phrases that are bringing up your competitors and which publications are citing them as having a strong relationship to these terms.

Where and how to use local keywords

On-page optimization

Once you’ve chosen the keywords you want to focus on, basic on-page optimization starts with incorporating these terms in natural language in:

• Title tags
• Meta description tags
• Headers (like H1, H2, H3, etc)
• Main body content

Don’t be concerned about using specific keywords repetitively. Just cover the topic of any page thoroughly while being sure to make mention of your keyword phrases. If the page reads as if it were written by a robot, it won’t be a high-quality publication for human use. Write for your community using the search phrases you’ve learned that they use.

Local landing pages

Depending on the business model of the company you’re marketing, you may have the opportunity to craft a variety of local landing pages on the website, including:

• Location landing pages for multi-location brands
• Department landing pages for multi-department brands
• Practitioner landing pages for multi-practitioner brands
• City landing pages for Service Area Businesses that serve multiple cities

Each page represents an on-page SEO opportunity, and your discovered keywords can naturally occur in a variety of landing page elements, including:

• Core contact information
• Driving directions
• Reviews/testimonials
• Image alt text
• Schema markup
• Video transcripts
• Real-time inventory
• Service descriptions
• Special offer descriptions
• Any other text on the page

Image optimization and technical elements

Don’t overlook the vital role images play in Google SERP visibility these days. Make your photos optimally intelligible via:

• Alt text
• Image file names
• Schema markup

Additionally, your internal linking practices have the power to let Google and human visitors know which of your website pages are the most important. When a page you’re creating has a natural relationship to another page on your site, link to it with your keywords in mind.

Google Business Profile

In optimizing Google Business Profiles (GBPs), there are about a dozen listing fields that are believed to impact rank, but it’s important not to confuse GBP optimization with on-page optimization because it’s not as straightforward as that. 

We’ve covered how Google is biased towards surfacing businesses with titles that closely match search language, and how you may need to get a DBA if you determine that your business name is holding you back. 

Beyond this, you want to think about how keywords in various GBP fields might be surfaced by Google in their local results for searchers. Make full use of elements like:

• Reviews, services, products, and menus that get pulled into the local justifications we’ve covered
• Photographs that provide an image-based version of core keywords (like products and services)
• Video that provides a film-based version of core keywords (again, like products and services)
• GBP attributes (like Indigenous-owned, wheelchair-accessible entrance, or outdoor dining) that match intents you know are important to your local community
• Categories that closely match the core intents of your audience

Common local keyword mistakes to avoid

While using keywords to optimize your digital assets is an SEO best practice, it’s also possible to go overboard and end up with parts of your online presence looking spammy and untrustworthy to the public and of low quality to search engines like Google.

Don’t:

• Keyword stuff your GBP title.
• Try to create additional GBPs to represent your keywords unless Google’s guidelines say you are eligible for more than one listing.
• Use keywords repetitively in any of the content you publish—if your text content sounds robotic, it will not meet its goal of assisting visitors in trusting your business and choosing it for a transaction.
• Fill your site with thin, duplicate content in which you’re switching out a few keywords on each page—this will send a signal of low quality to Google.
• Focus solely on broad/head keywords like “Thai restaurant near me.” Pay attention to the longer tail ways in which people now search for things on social media sites, via voice assistants, and in AI. If you discover that people in your community are searching for “Thai restaurant open late night near me that serves breakfast all day,” then your SEO strategy should include developing trustworthy content around these long-tail needs.
• Be afraid to experiment. Keyword research tools are not perfect and tend to represent averages instead of the diversity of all communities. Some words and phrases may be more popular with your unique audience than others.

Going beyond keywords: context and relevance

Always remember that keywords are just small stepping stones in your journey to communicating relevance and value to both Google and the searching public. A complete local SEO strategy takes into account the signals Google’s own documentation refers to as:

• Relevance: The relationship Google believes exists between the words a searcher uses based on their intent and the content published by your business
• Distance: The proximity of your business location to a searcher when they search
• Prominence: The degree to which your business is cited, discussed, and linked to by third party sources in the context of its overall digital footprint

While you can’t control where searchers are when they search (and may need to consider moving locations if your address is holding you back), the other two factors are ones you can significantly influence. Appropriate optimization, based on the findings of your keyword research, is part of the picture, but a complete local SEO strategy will also include:

• Management of all your local business listings for accuracy so that they are deemed trustworthy by both humans and search engines
• Review acquisition, response, and analysis to build a trustworthy reputation over time
• Social media participation so that you are present and being helpful in online communities where your brand is being discussed
• The acquisition of unstructured citations (mentions of your business) and links via a variety of activities including content publication; being featured on third party publications including websites, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and video channels; and participating in your local community via sponsorships, event involvement, scholarships, and similar efforts

Keywords matter. But your larger goal is to become locally known for topics on which the business you’re marketing is recognized as an authority, whether that’s serving the best Thai food in town, providing skilled accountancy services, or running a fantastic pet grooming business. 

Measuring results and adjusting

It’s important to know that keyword research is an ongoing task that requires measurement and adjustment over time to ensure you’re focusing on the right keywords to grow your local rankings. New trends in searcher behavior, new lines of products or services at the business you’re marketing, and new features created by Google and other search engines and applications may mean you need to find new keywords or rethink your current ones. These practices can help you in your work:

• Use Google Search Console to track local impressions and queries and experiment with optimization to see if it impacts these metrics
• Use GBP Insights to catch any drops in clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, and clicks-to-website that could indicate your business is somehow failing to present itself as a relevant answer via its title, categories, reviews, and other features
• Monitor performance in both local and organic results
• A/B test different headings, descriptions, and CTAs with local intent in your on-page SEO
• Continuously monitor the outputs of AI to see whether you’re putting in the necessary work to be seen as a relevant source by these programs

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You’re ready for local SEO keyword research and optimization

Local keywords are unique in that they take location into account, as well as the products, services, brands, and features searchers are seeking. A mixture of consumer surveys, tools, and analysis of the results search engines currently display in response to search phrases can help you identify strong keywords for any local business. These can then be implemented across the brand’s digital marketing assets in a natural manner, avoiding seeming robotic or spammy. 

For best results, local keywords should be viewed as just one component of the larger local search marketing picture, the core goal of which is to connect the brand you’re promoting with the local community it wants to serve.