Local SEO keywords: which ones should your business track?

Start by tracking 12 to 15 local SEO keywords: your top three services on their own and with “near me”, your top services with your main towns, a few emergency or problem searches, and your business name. Pull them from your invoices, your Business Profile search terms and Search Console, then read each type differently.

Five search types, five different questions

A tracking list is a set of tests. Google says local results come mainly from three things: relevance, “how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for”; distance, “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching”; and prominence, “how well-known a business is”. Each search type below leans on those three in its own way, so a mixed list shows you where the weak spot is.

The third column is a working reading. Google publishes the three factors, not how they weigh on any one search type.

How many keywords should you track?

Twelve to 15 is a sensible start for one location with three main services. Google’s help pages on local ranking, Search Console and the Business Profile report give no number, so this is a working rule, and the published advice is opinion too. OneLocal suggests the “top 10-15” secondary keywords. Portent’s rule, republished by Wallaroo Media, is “one to four keywords around a single topic per page”, about 22 for a site with five services and three blog posts.

Our test is simpler: would you act if this line moved? If not, cut it. Build the count like this:

• Three services alone, three with “near me”: 6 lines
• Top services with your main towns: 4 to 5 lines
• Emergency or problem searches you really take: 1 to 3 lines
• Your business name: 1 line

That comes to 12 to 15. Each extra service you want more of adds two or three lines.

Manual checking keeps the list honest. On the nine-point routine, 14 keywords is 126 look-ups a month. Six keywords is 54. Keep your map grid to the five to eight keywords that matter most.

Start with your invoices, not a keyword tool

A keyword tool knows what is searched in bulk. Your invoices know what you get paid for. Keyword Planner itself describes its figures as “estimates on the number of searches a keyword gets each month”, and Google said in 2021 that “around 15% of queries on Google Search each day have never been seen before”. No database of past searches is complete, so treat volume as a tie-breaker.

Take 12 months of invoices and do three things:

1. Sort by what each job type earned, not by how many there were. Your three services come from the top, minus any you would rather do less of.
2. Note the town on each job. Your town keywords come from where the work really is.
3. Add how customers describe the job on the phone. You may invoice “torsion spring replacement” while the caller says “my garage door won’t open”. The caller’s words go on the list.

Then check that each line has a page or a profile section that answers it. If [service] [town] has no page behind it, you are tracking a number you have not tried to move. Whether that job earns a page is the question in how many service pages your website should have.

What your Business Profile search terms show

Open the performance report and go to Searches. Google calls it “the search terms people used to find your business”, and Google’s developer documentation for the same data says the keywords come from “search or maps”. Read it before you write your list, with three limits in mind:

• It is monthly. Google says the metric “is updated at the start of each month” and “might take up to 5 days to show up”. Pick a long date range, so one odd month doesn’t shape your list.
• A term appears “whenever your Business Profile appears for a certain search”. That counts an appearance. It says nothing about a call.
• Low counts blur. The developer documentation says a value can come back as a threshold, meaning the true number is below it, so don’t rank small terms by tiny differences.

Only verified profiles get this data. Set aside any lines with your business name, then look for job words, especially problem phrases that never occurred to you.

What Search Console adds, and where it goes blind

Search Console covers your website. Its Queries tab shows “the search terms that led to your site”, and the Pages tab lets you see them one page at a time. Set the date to the last 16 months, so seasonal jobs are not missed, then sort by impressions. Lines with impressions and few clicks are searches where Google already considers you. Those are the first candidates for your list.

Its gaps matter for a local business:

• Rare searches can drop out of the table. Google omits queries that “aren’t issued by more than a few dozen users over a two-to-three month period” from the Queries table, though they still count in the chart totals unless you filter by query. A search for your service in a small town can sit below that line.
• Maps is not a filter. The report’s search types are web, image, video and news. And Joy Hawkins’s test, reported in January 2023, found local pack clicks missing from Search Console while Business Profile stats recorded them. Treat Search Console as your website’s view, and the Business Profile report as your combined Search and Maps view.
• Average position blends everyone. Google says results “are specific to the time, place, device, and recent history of the person searching”. A position of 8 averages many searchers in many places, so it can’t tell you how you do in one town.

A worked starter list for a made-up business

Hollow Creek Garage Doors is invented for this post, and so are its towns, Alder Falls, Birchton and Cedar Ridge. It is not a customer and these are not results. The table shows method only. Imagine a two-van company in Alder Falls whose invoices show repairs, new door installs and opener repairs as its top earners.

That is 14 lines. For its monthly map grid, this company might keep six: the three “near me” lines, emergency garage door repair, and repair in Birchton and Cedar Ridge. The hometown and brand lines rarely need a grid.

Swap in your own trade and the shape holds, but the words change. A dentist’s emergency line is a tooth, a roofer’s is a leak, and a salon may have none. Leave out any row that doesn’t fit how your customers buy.

Reading the results search type by search type

Compare each line with itself over time, then compare the types. The pattern between them says more than any single position.

Take that last row most seriously. Google’s guidance on Search traffic says “you shouldn’t focus too much on your absolute position”, and calls impressions and clicks “the measure of success for your site”. For a local business, add calls and paid jobs from your invoices. A keyword that climbs and pays nothing is a line to replace.

When to change the list

Leave the list alone for at least a quarter. That is our working rule, not Google’s: a line you swapped out last month gives you nothing to compare. For reading a dip, Google’s debugging guide separately suggests “Compare last 3 months year over year” and checking whether it is one “that happens every year”.

Once a quarter:

1. Pull the newest Business Profile terms and Search Console queries.
2. Add anything that names a job you want and can answer with a page.
3. Drop work you stopped doing, and lines that climbed without producing a call.
4. Keep your core service, “near me” and brand lines. They are your long-term record.

Write the date next to each new line, so nobody reads two months of history as a trend. On an active credit plan, LocalBiz runs a monthly website rank scan from each saved location for the keywords you pick; the details are in pricing.