Seems like everyone is getting into paid search these days.
Take a look at Adwords and you’ll see why. After nearly 8 years Google has managed to make its setup process essentially idiot proof. Idiots can sign up and be running search ads in just a few minutes. Google even offers a Ron Popeil “set it and forget it” option for idiots with money to burn. Let’s just say that it’s never been easier to open your wallet, take out a couple hundo and hand it to Google for marketing expenses.
What this really means is that a decent share of voice is getting harder to come by and that we as search marketers need to be ready to respond with tactics that make their idiot heads spin - if they’re even paying attention in the first place. Take a look at my favorite query to see some idiots in action.
One of the best strategies for an effective paid search campaign is to go local. Here are 7 tips to get the most out of your local search campaign.
1. Think you’re local? Get closer.
It’s a pretty well known fact that people are lazy. If a customer has to drive some place to do business with your client, it’s probably not going to be much more than 10 or 15 miles, especially in urban areas like Miami. If your client is a nationwide retailer with multiple locations in a DMA like Miami, break down the targeting within the DMA into smaller, more local, campaigns. That means that Miami Beach, Aventura, Kendall, etc. should all get their own campaigns for targeting and reporting purposes. I can’t wait until we can do local IP targeting on the ad group level. Run a few locally targeted national accounts at the campaign level and you’ll see what I mean.
2. Let them find you 2 different ways.
It’s one thing to target local customers with a keyword like “Aventura computer repair.” But what about the customer who searches for “computer repair” from their lovely beachfront condo in Aventura? Make sure you’re running those generic terms with IP based targeting in addition to your localized keywords.
3. Build a dynamic landing page.
Create a landing page template which is capable of replacing text blocks with localized copy. The copy blocks should be written so that we can insert some location and it will still make sense. The location could be the city, the state, the county, or even the neighborhood. I like to make the page respond to query parameters like city= and state= so that even my URL has the location in it. Take advantage of all of the free tools like Google Maps to display the client’s locations. Make the page as local as possible.
4. Add those landing pages to the sitemap.
Once you have your dynamic landing page created and capable of dynamic insertion of the locations, take all of the URLs with the locations inserted (think yourdomain.com/repair.php?city=aventura&state=florida) and add them to the sitemap. The search engines will index those pages as well and before you know it you’ll be feeling the benefits of ranking in natural search for localized keyword searches as well as showing up in the paid placements - which is a good problem to have.
5. Use the location often in copy.
Since we’re taking the time to get as local as possible make sure to use the location in the ad copy. Use it in the headline, the body, and even in the display URL. Customers like to deal locally so use it to your advantage. Also, an IP targeted campaign which serves a local ad for a generic keyword search will show your target location below your ad in the results, so you’ve got the potential to show the location up to 4 times.
6. Build keywords programmatically.
Find out which keywords will drive traffic for your client: Google’s Keyword Tool, the new Search-based keyword tool, and Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool are good places to start. Once you have your basic list, save it. That’s going to be the basis for your IP targeted campaigns. The next step is to take your list and localize it. The key here is concatenation. We’re going to take our basic list and attach all of our location targets to the terms to build our localized keywords. I highly suggest you use some of the free tools available to get this part done. I’ve created a simple keyword builder to help you get it done. There are a couple of USPS databases which can help with this as well. Don’t be surprised if you end up launching 400k keywords when you’re done building.
7. Track everything by location.
Setting up a good local search campaign isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time to build the keywords, organize them, test, and get them all loaded into the engines. Since we’ve gone through all the trouble to compartmentalize our account structure, target our customers in multiple ways, and create copy and landing pages to speak as locally as possible to our customers, we need to get as much out of the numbers as possible. Based on the response to your campaign you can determine not only which markets to further invest in online but also where to spend in traditional local advertising like local radio, TV, and out of home.
There are plenty of other amazing references out there for local paid search. I recommend a fellow mick, Matt McGee. Check out his Small Business Search Marketing blog for a great place to start.
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Thanks for the great tips. We are about to launch a local search client and this is a huge help in crafting our approach. Keep them coming.
Good post. I would also add that you can make a lot of those long tail local keywords exact match and increase your quality scores. It’s all about relevance in local search and the long tail exact strategy will maximize it.