I was reading online that in an internet study conducted last year by Piper and Jeffries, 50% of all searches conducted on Google and the like, have “Local Intent.” This means the consumer is being more specific with their search and attributing it to a certain city, state, zip code, etc. For Example:

Universal Search Term: “relocation companies”

Local Search Term: “Chicago relocation companies”

In the report they focused on the fact that while someone might put in “relocation” and only the big companies across the nation will come up, a localized search like “Chicago relocation” evens the playing field. With more detialed search criterias, a local company is more likely to appear in the search results than before.

Real estate searches in general seem to be fairly localized but I think this is a good time to take a look at your content and see if you are maximizing this trend. Localizing your website and blog will help your SEO and help you rank higher on the search results.

Think Local!

1. Define your localized keywords. For example: if you already know that people are searching Chicago real estate or Chicago homes, what else could they be searching that relates to real estate? Come up with a list of about 5 other terms. Perhaps, ”moving to Chicago” or  ”relocation company Chicago”
2. Use your website to create localized keyword content. Stick those defined keyword terms in the content you have for your website. Be appropriate, don’t flood the page; a keyword term every paragraph or so will be plenty. Beefing up your website content ultimately helps with your search engine optimization making your site a likely candidate to show up in a search for that term.  
3. Use your blog to create localized keyword content. Active Website encourages all of our Enterprise Network Members to create and maintain a blog. Sometimes there are not enough pages on the website to accommodate all the topics, so we use blogs to expand and build on a theme. For example, if your broker website does not have a dedicated page to relocation, you could start your own blog to show all of your knowledge and tools available to home searchers. For an example, visit Rubloff’s Chicago Relocation Blog. Creating localized keyword content for a blog is very similar to doing so on a website however you have the free range to use the terms more often. Think about it; each day you blog about moving to Chicago and somehow incorporate that simple term into your writing. – even a quick this should make moving to Chicago an easy decision. Within no time your blog will be gaining search engine recognition and who knows, it could even end up on the first results page of Google for the searched term “moving to Chicago.”

So get started on defining those localized keyword terms that you want to attract visitors from and get them incorporated into your website and blogs. This can not only help make your website more visible but it makes you the percieved expert on the topic and location.