Drilling Down into Geographic Keywords
August 2, 2006
When trying to reach a geographic audience, one must understand all of the geographic variations that searchers use to surf the web. Understanding these permutations will help target your online efforts at the appropriate geographic level.
If you play in the PPC (pay per click) arena, these are the types of keywords that will help you take advantage of the ‘long tail’ and drill down into very specific geographic queries. First, lets take a look at the geographic keywords, and then we’ll examine the implementation techniques.
State (California) State based keywords are most appropriate when attempting to reach an entire state. Often these keywords apply to someone licensed within a state (such as a lawyer), or for a national company looking to bring their presence into a more local level (i.e. Bestbuy). Within PPC, these keywords have a higher search volume than the majority of other keywords mentioned below, however, ensure that you can serve an entire state before bidding on them.
State Abbreviations (CA) Essentially the same notes as above. However, there are a few warning labels here. Oregon’s abbreviation is ‘OR’. This is one of those ‘short and not included in your search result’ keywords, and therefore will not help you target geographically. The purpose of using geographically qualified keywords is to reach searchers who are using these keywords to identify a region. The other abbreviation to stay clear from is Maryland’s which translates to ‘MD’. I’ve seen many
‘doctor real estate agents’. I doubt their getting their money’s worth on PPC.
Cities (San Jose) - Cities are the second most commonly used search qualifier (behind states). However, if you were to add up all of the city search volume versus all of the state search volume, cities would win. At present, this is the most common permutation searchers employ when looking for local services. Hence, real estate, restaurants, plumbers, events, etc should be focused around this keyword. If you live in a rather large city, it may behoove your marketing efforts to define your service
or delivery area within your ad copy.
Neighborhoods (Lincoln Park) - Generally, this is only appropriate for larger cities or neighborhoods where there is a deep identification with those who visit/live within it’s boundaries. For large cities, this is the most targeted keyword for service and hospitality industries. When someone is searching for ‘neighborhood restaurant’, they are looking for someone place nearby that either delivers or is a short car ride away. This is also a great set of keywords for real estate agents as those
searching for neighborhood real estate know exactly what area they’re looking to buy their next house.
Zip Codes (60606) - While the search volume on these keywords is still low, it is steadily growing. For some states, this can be a terrible keyword as the state may be divided into a scant number of zip codes. For more density populated areas, it can be a nice identifier as to a specific region. Zip code permutations are common to see from those who are just visiting or new to a geographic region and only have limited data (i.e. their hotel’s address) to work from. To someone in this condition,
a zip code usually infers that their search result is nearby.
Area Codes (773) - Quite simply, read zip codes above. Usually, the conditions of the searcher and area are strikingly similar.
Counties (Orange County) - Some states just seem to prefer county searches to cities. I’m not quite sure why this phenomena exists, but there is clearly a pattern within certain states. Therefore, this particular keyword seems to have two distinct users. The first is those who identify with their geographic area at the county instead of at the zip level. The other is when this is a more appropriate qualifier. For county government, ordinances, licenses, etc, there can be a high level of county
identification as to where their local information should lie.
Airport Codes (SFO) - Are you doing marketing for an airport hotel? Is your restaurant near the airport? Offer car rental services? These keywords are for you. High converting, very targeted traffic. I travel a lot, and if I’m stuck in a foreign city, this is my geographic qualifier of choice. There is little optimization at either the SEO or PPC level for these keywords (which could be because it is so targeted of a geographic area), and if your services fall into this region, ensure that your
website is showing for these keywords.
Regional Lingo (Bay Area) - The most difficult keywords for foreigners to identify. The ‘bay area’, ‘twin cities’, ‘triangle’, and ‘loop’, are very distinctive geographic qualifiers for the correct area (San Jose/SF, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Chicago for the above terms). Because they are keywords for local, there is often little national competition as one can’t just mix a DMA and keyword database to populate these particular keywords. Identify the local lingo of your target market and
use it to your advantage.
For PPC, the first exercise would be to create a list of the appropriate geographic keywords from the above list.
Next, create an IP targeted campaign with your major keywords in it. This campaign will not have geographic qualified keywords. Then, you’ll want take the keywords from the above (IP targeted) campaign and mix the with the recently created geographic keyword list. Finally, create a national campaign (shown to the entire country) and then use the geographic qualified keywords.
By leveraging both IP targeting and geographic qualified keywords, you can drill down on all of the keyword variations to reach your audience when they’re searching for services in very specific geographic areas.
Related Information:- How to Organize Keywords into Ad Groups
- Regional Targeting with AdWords
- Where to find Overture Keywords
- Google AdWords New Feature: Pause Individual Keywords or Ads
- Colorado Advertising
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