In today’s article, I’m going to show you how to do some first-class keyword research that will help you generate more leads.
In just three clicks you’ll have access to a customised dashboard that will reveal some of the most common local keywords directly associated with your business which you can use to create targeted local content for your website and attract more customers.
If you’re a small business owner and are trying to attract more local customers to visit your website you need to create content that ranks in Google local Search Results.
The best approach for this is to do keyword research to identify what people are searching for, for a business like yours and in your location. Then create content pages on your website accordingly.
The trouble is, unless you live in a big city, if you use some of the most popular keyword tools available on the market, more often than not, most of the keywords you search for will return ZERO results, leading you to believe it’s not worth trying to rank for them.
It doesn’t mean no one is searching for those keywords. It just means the tools are not sophisticated enough to capture all possible keyword data.
There are however two tools that will give you specific keyword data for which your website appears in search results.
They are both free and they are both from Google.
To access more keywords just click on “see more” which will give you access to the full list.
In this example, it looks like 24/7 emergency electrician near me triggered this Electrician’s Google listing 16 times.
But if I search for this keyword in Ubbersugest or Ahrefs which are two major keyword research tools, it tells me nobody is searching for this phrase, which clearly is wrong.
The second free tool you can use is called Google Search console.
If you’re serious about your business being found on Google and never heard of Google search console, I recommend you sign up and verify your website as soon as possible.
If your website was built by professionals who are worth their salt, they should have already set this up for you. If you don’t know, just ask them.
Although both Google My Business insights and Google search console give you access to granular keyword data that are directly linked to your business and can’t really be found anywhere else, the way data is being measured on both tools is slightly different.
I won’t go into too many details in this article about the differences between them but ideally, you should look into both when doing some keyword research.
I simply came across a great article written by a fellow SEO specialist called Andy Simpson, who designed this wonderful dashboard and I decided to share it with you guys.
The article in question can be found on brightlocal.com.
This dashboard enables you to discover questions directly from the mind of your prospective customers in relation to the products you sell or the services you provide using interrogation words such as, what, where, when, why, near me etc…
Instead of rattling on, let me show you how it works.
This will open a new window in Google data studio where you’ll find a default dashboard.
Click n# 2, open the default data drop-down option.
Click n# 3. Select the Google search console profile for your business.
Now all the tables should be populated with the Google Search console data linked to your business and filtered by question keywords.
It is possible you don’t see any data loading up. If this is the case, log out of all your Google accounts and log back in again with the account linked to Search console.
If there is still no data showing, it is because there are no questions to show.
Once the tables have been populated you can start mining the keywords.
For this question, my client’s website appeared 563 times in search results in the last 12 months but only received 8 clicks.
This is likely because the average position for the website for this phrase is 10.3.
Since this very question is not even on the page itself, adding it to it will likely improve its average ranking which in turn could get more traffic and generate more leads.
But you can also use this keyword research to come up with brand new ideas to create additional pages of content on your site.
Using this dashboard and the search console profile for my very own website, ranking academy, it looks like it would be a good idea for me to create a couple of additional pages.
One to help people figure out where they rank on Google and another one on how to choose a business email address as in both cases the related keywords seem to be getting a lot of impressions.
As you can see there are plenty of options and obviously, it will be up to you to determine how you use the data.
But don’t limit yourself to your website. Use your research to craft content that can also be directly integrated elsewhere such as your Google my business listing FAQ section for example.
Although it won’t help you rank, it will help answer questions potential customers may have and improve conversion rate as a result.
Remember, the success of your business is not just based on rankings but also on customer experience.
You could stop watching this tutorial right here if you feel you have enough data to work with.
But if you can spare another few minutes of your time, you can turn this report into gold and turn it into hyperlocal keyword research by finding out queries that are directly related to the locations your business serve.
This is how you can do this.
Although it looks similar to the previous one, in this one you can’t select the data source.
Instead, we are going to connect the report directly to the Google search console profile.
To do this, follow these steps:
Instead of creating a new page from scratch, you can copy an existing one. Just follow these steps
If you are targeting a wide area and neighbouring boroughs or towns, you can also add them to the report.
Just go back to the edit mode of the report, duplicate the table and change the filter appropriately with another location name.
Don’t forget to add a title to the table so the report is clear.
Once you’ve closed the report if you need to access it again just go to datastudio.google.com and Sign in with your Google account.
Your report should be listed in the main window. Open it up and update the time range to get fresh data.
I think what Andy has produced here is simply awesome and I doubt very much any keyword tools out there will be able to match this especially considering it’s all free.
There is more you can do with the report so if you are interested in finding out what else is possible I recommend you give the whole article a read.
Google My Business Insights
You can find the first one in your Google My Business dashboard. Log into your account and from the left-hand side menu click on insights. Click on the “see new profile performance”. Scroll down. You should see the top five searches that have triggered your Google my business listing.
To access more keywords just click on “see more” which will give you access to the full list.
In this example, it looks like 24/7 emergency electrician near me triggered this Electrician’s Google listing 16 times.
But if I search for this keyword in Ubbersugest or Ahrefs which are two major keyword research tools, it tells me nobody is searching for this phrase, which clearly is wrong.
The second free tool you can use is called Google Search console.
Google Search Console
Google search console helps you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your website presence in Google search results. It’s packed with extremely valuable information, including keywords that trigger your web pages to show in Google search results.
If you’re serious about your business being found on Google and never heard of Google search console, I recommend you sign up and verify your website as soon as possible.
If your website was built by professionals who are worth their salt, they should have already set this up for you. If you don’t know, just ask them.
Although both Google My Business insights and Google search console give you access to granular keyword data that are directly linked to your business and can’t really be found anywhere else, the way data is being measured on both tools is slightly different.
I won’t go into too many details in this article about the differences between them but ideally, you should look into both when doing some keyword research.
Use a Local Keyword Pre-made Dashboard
Today however I will only be using data from the search console using a pre-made dashboard that can be generated in three clicks. I’d love to be able to claim I have come up with this dashboard myself but sadly this is not the case.
I simply came across a great article written by a fellow SEO specialist called Andy Simpson, who designed this wonderful dashboard and I decided to share it with you guys.
The article in question can be found on brightlocal.com.
This dashboard enables you to discover questions directly from the mind of your prospective customers in relation to the products you sell or the services you provide using interrogation words such as, what, where, when, why, near me etc…
Instead of rattling on, let me show you how it works.
Step By Step Dashboard Set Up
First Log in to the Google account associated with your Google Search Console profile. As already mentioned, if you haven’t created a Google Search console Profile yet, you’ll need to create one. Click N#1, Once you’re logged in, go to Andy’s article and scroll down until you get to Dashboard one section and click on the link “The What, Where, Why, How and more…”
This will open a new window in Google data studio where you’ll find a default dashboard.
Click n# 2, open the default data drop-down option.
Click n# 3. Select the Google search console profile for your business.
Now all the tables should be populated with the Google Search console data linked to your business and filtered by question keywords.
It is possible you don’t see any data loading up. If this is the case, log out of all your Google accounts and log back in again with the account linked to Search console.
If there is still no data showing, it is because there are no questions to show.
Once the tables have been populated you can start mining the keywords.
Mining the local Keyword Results
The data is split into three different pages that can be accessed from the left-hand side menu. One for what where why when, another one for how are, can and near me and one for who, is, and do. Each table contains the same set of metrics:- Query, also known as keywords or key phrases,
- The number of impressions, which is How many links to your site a user saw on Google search results.
- The number of clicks, which is the Count of clicks from a Google search result that landed the user on your website.
- The click-through rate which is the number of users who click on one of your website links divided by the number of time it appears in Google search results.
Creating New Content Based On the Local Keyword Results
I personally always add FAQ related content to my client’s web pages and in seconds I can see an opportunity here for the question “why is my electric underfloor heating not working”.
For this question, my client’s website appeared 563 times in search results in the last 12 months but only received 8 clicks.
This is likely because the average position for the website for this phrase is 10.3.
Since this very question is not even on the page itself, adding it to it will likely improve its average ranking which in turn could get more traffic and generate more leads.
But you can also use this keyword research to come up with brand new ideas to create additional pages of content on your site.
Using this dashboard and the search console profile for my very own website, ranking academy, it looks like it would be a good idea for me to create a couple of additional pages.
One to help people figure out where they rank on Google and another one on how to choose a business email address as in both cases the related keywords seem to be getting a lot of impressions.
As you can see there are plenty of options and obviously, it will be up to you to determine how you use the data.
But don’t limit yourself to your website. Use your research to craft content that can also be directly integrated elsewhere such as your Google my business listing FAQ section for example.
Although it won’t help you rank, it will help answer questions potential customers may have and improve conversion rate as a result.
Remember, the success of your business is not just based on rankings but also on customer experience.
You could stop watching this tutorial right here if you feel you have enough data to work with.
But if you can spare another few minutes of your time, you can turn this report into gold and turn it into hyperlocal keyword research by finding out queries that are directly related to the locations your business serve.
This is how you can do this.
Make Your Keyword Research Hyperlocal
Make sure you are still signed into the Google account associated with the search console profile you want to pull the data from. Go back to the article and this time scroll down to the dashboard n#2 section and click on the link right below it.
Although it looks similar to the previous one, in this one you can’t select the data source.
Instead, we are going to connect the report directly to the Google search console profile.
To do this, follow these steps:
- Click on the three dots in the top right-hand side of the window and select the make a copy option. A pop-up window will open.
- From the new data source choose the “create new data source option”. A new window will open from which you can select Google Connectors.
- Choose the search console connector. You should now see a window with all the Google search console profiles associated with the Google accounts you are logged into.
- Select the appropriate one.
- From the table column, choose site impression and then web.
- From the top right-hand side, corner click on connect. A new window will open.
- You should see a button called to add to report, just click on it.
- On the next window, you should see a pop-up.
- In the “new data source field” your Google search console profile should be displayed. If it does just click on copy report.
Customising the Hyperlocal Keyword report
Let’s now have some fun and customise it to bring some of those hyperlocal keywords results. By default, you should be in the edit view of the dashboard. To change it back to the report view, just click on the view button. Just like before, you’ll have access to the three different pages filtering the keyword data with question words. Let’s start our customisation by changing the name of this report. Just click on edit and give your report a meaningful name. In this example I’m just going to add my client’s business name, obviously, you can call your report whatever you like. Now I really want to understand how well this business is doing for the locations he is trying to rank for and see if there are any obvious opportunities. To do this I need to add a new page to this report.
Instead of creating a new page from scratch, you can copy an existing one. Just follow these steps
- From the page drop down select one of the pages, hover on it, click on the three dots next to it and choose the duplicate option. You should see a copy of your page at the bottom of the dropdown.
- Click on the three dots next to it and rename it.
- Delete all the tables but one from the page.
Adding Your Targeted Location
My electrician is located in a borough of London called Bexleyheath. I want to find out how well he is doing in that location and if there are keywords opportunities I might have missed. To do this I will filter the data accordingly
- Firstly I’m going to change the name of the table to the location name, Bexleyheath.
- The next step is to change the filter that currently applies to this table.
- Click on the table itself. On the right-hand side window, in the data column, scroll down until you get to the filter section. You should see the current filter is set to “what”. Just delete it and click on the “add a filter” option.
- At the bottom of the filter click on create a filter.
- In the first drop-down make sure the “include” option is selected.
- In the second drop-down select the option query. In the third drop-down select the option “contains”
- In the value field, just add the location name you are targeting, for this example, I’ll use “Bexleyheath” and click save.
- Click on view to come out of the edit screen and, voila.
Using The hyperlocal Keyword Research Results
Based on this example it seems my client is doing pretty well for “emergency electrician in Bexleyheath” but no so well for “electrician in Bexleyheath“. Clearly a great opportunity right there.If you are targeting a wide area and neighbouring boroughs or towns, you can also add them to the report.
Just go back to the edit mode of the report, duplicate the table and change the filter appropriately with another location name.
Don’t forget to add a title to the table so the report is clear.
Once you’ve closed the report if you need to access it again just go to datastudio.google.com and Sign in with your Google account.
Your report should be listed in the main window. Open it up and update the time range to get fresh data.
I think what Andy has produced here is simply awesome and I doubt very much any keyword tools out there will be able to match this especially considering it’s all free.
There is more you can do with the report so if you are interested in finding out what else is possible I recommend you give the whole article a read. 
