Free Local Keyword Tool

If your running any regionalized search engine marketing campaigns or looking to dive national keyword costs down, this new Free Local Keyword Tool is for you.

I have spent endless hours custom building local campaigns for regional and national clients. The process of building large local keyword lists (that is putting local designations on keywords such as cities or states) is quite cumbersome. Generally, you must start by building your list in a spreadsheet. Depending on how many keywords you would like modify with local extensions, the whole process can take several man-hours to create a targeted keyword list. The end result can literally shave hundreds of dollars from your search campaigns while driving quality traffic. For example:

Adding “Minnesota” to:
“Home loans”
“Refinance loans”
“Mortgage loans”

Translates into:
“Home loans Minnesota”
“Refinance loans Minnesota”
“Mortgage loans Minnesota”

The above example can save money and increase targeting if you wish to target specific geographic regions. However expanding this list to 50 states and major cities poses a problem for most due to the shear amount of effort involved. After all, 50 states x 3 keywords = 150 keywords. Doing more keywords would raise that number almost exponetially. You get the picture…

Yahoo! Benefits
This comes in extremely handy when doing local search campaigns for Yahoo! that actually provides more coverage and benefits than using their local sponsored match product. Simply use the above example and the Local Keyword Tool as a guide to build a keyword list that you can upload in their regular sponsored search engine. The benefits you will receive by doing so are:

• More regional coverage through larger keyword lists
• Keyword bidding automation (if you have a program to do so)
• State matching (Yahoo!’s local sponsored search does not support states or abbreviations)
• Better conversions (Visitors go right to your landing page versus going to a business listing.)
• Increased bid control (know exactly what you are paying for)

What about Google?
Google does offer a great regional program for targeting, which in my personal opinion is far superior to Yahoo!’s. Google’s system uses IP addresses which act as area codes for targeting individuals in specific geographic regions. This in effect makes it easier to target individuals because searches do not need to add a state or city to see an ad. Instead, the searcher can use generic terms such as “home loans” and still find your regional site. This alone general increases your regional traffic by 10x. The fact of the matter is that only 2% of searches use local designations on their searches. The bulk of searchers use generic words even looking for local services.

This is not to say that Google’s targeting system has limitations. For some localized companies, this system is not optimal. Take a regional airline for example that does not support travel to all 50 states. Using Google’s IP targeting would cause a conflict in that most travelers do not want to fly within their state! In this case, a local searcher from Minnesota could be displayed an ad and may want to fly to California, but the airline does not charter there.

Thus in this above example, it would be beneficial to generate localized keywords via city and state extensions.

The Ultimate Local Keyword Tool
This new Free Local Keyword Tool is an absolute time saver. If you wish to target a radius around a city, simply enter your keyword list you want to modify and a zip code. How easy is that!

If you wish to create a more custom list using cities and states of your own, just enter them in the field provided. Lastly, this tool also gives you the ability to add prefixes or suffixes to your keyword list with ease. This is great if you would like to expand your keyword list to include action words such as “buy” or “download”.

More Regional Focus
I encourage you to use these concepts as you find that they will greatly increase your success rate with your local clients. I believe that this is extremely important given that more and more local advertisers everyday are pulling out advertising expenditures from traditional media outlets such as print and radio to invest into the Internet. Employing the strategies above will allow you to take advantage of this growing trend. You’ll love the extra income and your clients will love the results!
[tags] keyword tools, local search, pay per click advertising [/tags]