Local SEO Chapter 1 – Market Research

This is a fundamental chapter of this entire course on Local SEO. If you perform market research incorrectly, you dramatically limit the effectiveness of all the future action steps in this series. So pay close attention, as it is the number one mistake I see people making online.

You may be wondering what the mistake is because you are thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute I have done my market research, I have been in the business for years!” That’s great but it is important to understand that the Internet is an entirely different beast when it comes to market research because you have to know what people are searching for online.

The good news however is that Google (The king of online search) gives you this information freely through their Google external keyword tool.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Now the Google keyword tool is great because it shows you the number of times people are searching for things online but unfortunately it doesn’t tell you the level of competition you will be facing.

For example the keyword insurance will get many millions of searches per month but unfortunately because of the level of competition on this keyword it is not likely that a local business will get the top spot on Google even if they were investing tens of thousands of dollars per month on SEO with a top company.

So it is important to pick your fights online and go for the keywords that bring decent exposure for your business.

The best way of choosing these keywords in my opinion is to use a tool called Market Samurai. This tool pulls in data from the Google keyword tool but goes a step further by providing SEO competition filters. These filter help you to mine out the golden keywords in your industry that you will have a great chance of ranking for on Google.

I cannot recommend it enough plus they have a free trial you can try here.

Once you have downloaded their software I would recommend you go through their training DOJO as they call it to learn exactly how to use the tool. I have also just published a video below on Market Samurai showing you the KISS – HIT tips I have developed when using Market Samurai.

So how about it, did I (KISS) keep it super simple? Let me know your questions and comments below.

PS: Remember more step by step tutorials are contained in the members area. You can request membership here.

Next chapter can be viewed here. 

Course Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Market Research
Chapter 2: Optimising Your Website
Chapter 3: Off Page Optimisation
Chapter 4: Social Factors
Chapter 5: Measuring Google Local Success
Chapter 6: Getting a helping hand
BONUS Members Chapter (Contains Cheat Sheet)