SEO for local business

I'm working on a website for a friend that runs a local indoor putt putt or mini golf where I live.

unfortunately I'm unsure how effective SEO will even be since I live in a small city.. (population for county in 2009 was around 48k)

i'm wondering how I should do my keyword research for a local business. I've seen the thread about keyword research but I'm assuming it would be a little different for local businesses.

do you normally try to rank for more keywords when doing local SEO since there could be variations.. IE: city + keyword , county + keyword , city state + keyword ..etcetc.

I'm also curious if the only keywords I should use are those with results shown in google keyword tool.. for example it doesn't show any results for "city mini golf" "city putt putt" .. but it doesn't say 0 monthly searches.. it's just NA.

I'm just a little confused on which local keywords I should be using for a local business such as a mini golf place.

any help and/or insight would be appreciated.

A trick I like to do is find the biggest city near me and put it in my keywords.

I live near Chicago so I have it pretty easy. I'll just target keywords like "Chicago (keyword here)" and hope to get ranked.

You'll have less competition because it's geo targeted but it could still potentially be harder depending on how many SEO companies are in the area

You can also target keywords for golf. Like City/Country + golf. Just make sure they know you're a mini golf course because if they show up with all their clubs and can't play a normal course they may be mad lol

hit me up on skype tomorrow and i'll show you a backlinking services thats for local seo if you want.

yea it would be cityname + keyword pretty much. to find out what is normally searched more use a city thats big near you to see what keyword string is searched most there

i'm more looking for keyword help then backlinking but thanks.

searching for the keyword with the nearest bigger city sounds like a good idea.. just sucks I can't see any REAL numbers before I test it for a month or so.

First ask your client what he wants to rank for, where does he want to attract his
customers from I would imagine there are not many indoor golf/putt putts around
so surely the competition for that alone can not be that strong.

I'm also curious if the only keywords I should use are those with results shown in google keyword tool.. for example it doesn't show any results for "city mini golf" "city putt putt" .. but it doesn't say 0 monthly searches.. it's just NA.

I'm just a little confused on which local keywords I should be using for a local business such as a mini golf place.

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I very much doubt if there are many searches for that business in your area.
If you are to be a local business consultant you have to think for the benefit of
the business not just that you can get paid for an SEO job.

You need to ask your client what he expects, what can he offer. SEOing
a business that no one searches for is doing him a dis service.
If I were you I would be sitting down with him and discussing whether it
would be worth ranking for other terms such as "Corporate fun days"
"Unusual birthday treats" do some brainstorming. I would also be looking
at social media like a facebook page to keep previous customers coming
back as well.

There was a BHW suggestion to use the free version of TrafficTravis for research.
It is an excellent tool.

There are a bunch of shares on here for optimizing Google Places listings. I have found it easier to get a biz listed on the first page of Google through Google Places, rather than organic SEO. Look at Places first, work on SEO for the long term.

carryorchid said:

There are a bunch of shares on here for optimizing Google Places listings. I have found it easier to get a biz listed on the first page of Google through Google Places, rather than organic SEO. Look at Places first, work on SEO for the long term.

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Good point.

he's not paying me anything to do this actually.. so that's not a problem. he's just a close friend and I'm building it for practice and so I can show other businesses results and add it to a portfolio.

I actually only really work on it when I work there on friday and saturdays.

but i'll take your advice for the other keywords then just 'golf' terms. sounds like a good plan.. a lot of church groups come in there so I could try using something like 'church party' .. i'll come up with something better then that.. but just as a general idea.

i was going to do the google places thing as well.. I have a few ebooks downloaded about google places.. just been trying to do the seo first.

thanks for the replies

All that means is that no one is buying ad space for those keywords, it does not mean that the term is not searched. In a small town that is not surprising. Does he have kids parties there? There are numerous things that are not golf related that you can rank for and bring business.

ezkim0x said:

i'm more looking for keyword help then backlinking but thanks.

searching for the keyword with the nearest bigger city sounds like a good idea.. just sucks I can't see any REAL numbers before I test it for a month or so.

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I am successful in SEO and that was the same advice I was going to give you. Copy what you see people doing in the bigger cities and hope to catch the residual rankings. How far are you from the closest big city? I know you aren't interested in backlinks (I am not selling or recommending any services) but they are great for getting listed quickly especially if the town is as small as you say.

the closest big city would be lexington, ky.. it's about 120-130 miles I think.

It's not really that I'm not interested in backlinks or anything else I'm just trying to do the keyword research and I have people PMing me or IM'ing me giving me their spill trying to sell me crap.. either doing the SEO for me.. blasting my link.. or whatever. someone even pm'd me about some mobile deal where I can get a bunch of mobile numbers from around the area and text them crap.

which I'm not trying to be negative and I'm sure some of the stuff could be good.. but I'm wanting to do this all myself so I can learn how to do everything in and out first. then later on I'll know what I'm actually hiring someone to do.. and can outsource.

I have the tools to do the offsite seo i'm just still in the onsite stages.. but i'll eventually need to start posting backlinks.

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also I had another question.. if you find a keyword in the google keyword tool that says it has no competition at all how easy would it be to rank for that keyword? .. as far as the backlinks I'm thinking you wouldn't need many at all would you?

Yea, I agree with oxo on the seoing of words with almost 0 cmpetition. It should be super easy t rank for that. If you want to offer him some true benefits you should consider some viral marketing campaigns via facebook and twitter. Get local people to "like" his facebook fan page and tweet about his place and share his URL to keep the locals reminded that the place is there and fun. Alot can be done with local business and social media... Maybe a facebook app on his page where you can print a coupon if you like the page etc... Identify his target market and go after those people directly instead of waiting for them to search for you.

P.S. I am helping a friend ramp up his local jumper business, which has more potential SEO benefits, but he's doing real well now that he's added a major social media component to his marketing efforts. He should also consider doing some cross promotional campaigns with other businesses in the area with a similar demographic. Seek out other entertainment venues and offer to exchange tweets and facebook promos, and even let that carry over to some offline opportunities. Get movie theaters to put some coupons for mini golf at the concession area in exchange for putting movie theater coupons on the sales counter for the mini golf, etc... Its far outside the scope of SEO, but I work in all areas of marketing and never allow myself to be locked in or labeled as strictly an "SEO GUY". I prefer, "Marketing Consultant"

Good luck,

The competition in the keyword tool is for advertising/adwords, not the competition on the search page. I always look myself at the actual results on big G, who are they, then you can use tools like SEO Quake or TTravis and see how strong they are, how many backlinks etc.

Some of my older clients listings were recently merged with their places listing, but they are both now number one. I would go through their g place carefully. Make sure you use the exact same street address, phone and keywords...be consistant....use either NE or NorthEast, but not both. Use all of the picture and video slots, hours of operation, etc. They let you put the info in, so use all of it. However, do not keyword stuff in the name of the place (I used "Insurance - CityName" once and got punched in the eye).

I realized that with local SEO,
it seems that I can rank pretty well without doing all those "link wheel" or "link pyramid" methods. My keyword is relatively easy tho, maybe thats why?

Is that true? or am I just experiencing some google dance here?

SEOfarmer said:

I realized that with local SEO,
it seems that I can rank pretty well without doing all those "link wheel" or "link pyramid" methods. My keyword is relatively easy tho, maybe thats why?

Is that true? or am I just experiencing some google dance here?

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I'm not sure.. but that's what I'm guessing.. I was wondering the same thing.

since there may not be any competition for a local keyword.. it seems like once you do onsite seo all you really gotta do is wait for google to scrape your site.. or if the competition is really low then you don't have to do very much of the backlinks.

ezkim0x said:

I'm not sure.. but that's what I'm guessing.. I was wondering the same thing.

since there may not be any competition for a local keyword.. it seems like once you do onsite seo all you really gotta do is wait for google to scrape your site.. or if the competition is really low then you don't have to do very much of the backlinks.

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Yeah. So I am glad someone thinks the same too - since i am new to SEO.

I'm new to SEO as well though.. so I wouldn't take my word on that.. it's just a guess. but it sounds right.. right? haha

If you are looking for build a local business so you should build your official website. With optimized your website you can increase your sales and boost your business. One thing I realized that SEO is not only useful for E-commerce business but at my point view SEO can be great for all kind of business website. Lots of benefits and profits you can get with SEO. SEO is such wonderful method which is very useful for attracts your costumers.

We are mostly doing SEO in Los Angeles area, and here are many many small cities that we have to do SEO for. It's about 50 main cities and every time for each website we write "Keyword + city" articles. About 50 of them. Make sure you have h1 "Keyword + City" Title on each.
If you can do it for at least 20 cities will be great. There are many articles writing service if you can't write 20 articles "About the same thing" lol