Local seo for supersmall city

[markovald]

I have a client that has a service in una supersmall city and when i search the service+city (example "plumber+verysmallcity" on Keyword Planner i find 0 searches.

There is a way to know how much people of this city search simply "plumber" on Google?

If i can't now, in this cases it make sense to do seo? I have just to do "standard seo" to gain the first page for all the country? (i live in a small country, it's not impossible to achieve the first page).


Thank you for your help!

[aakk9999]

I am no expert at local searches (you may try Local Search Forum [webmasterworld.com]) but I think that here it is more important that you have your other local signals sorted out properly - address, google map, etc. because even when people just search "plumber", Google will serve them local plumbers, depending on their location.

Regarding how many peolle simply search for "plumber", you may try Adwords for a period of time and then in Google Analytics look by geographical region to find how many paid searches for "plumber" were done by visitors from the area around this super small city.

[jrs79]

markovald - I agree with aakk999 about using AdWords to test search volume. Google is not good at providing volume when you get that granular. I have encountered this many times.

[tangor]

You might also do some general searches for "anyservice supersmallcity" and see what kind of returns you get. Not all local searches will be valid because the area is so supersmall. In those cases you put up an ordinary website, coded properly, forget any SEO games (because they won't work at that small scale) and move on to the next project.

[JS_Harris]

Just to add to the discussion. If the city is so small as to get internet service provided by a large city not too far away be careful about setting up for that small city only. You may need to expand your marketing to include the larger neighboring city as well or risk not being found by either.

I'm not only suggesting that people may look in the larger city for services, I'm also saying that search engines might consider your area part of that region. Perform a reverse lookup for your IP and take note if it tells you that you are based in the larger city nearby. That might be a sign that the smaller city has been aggregated into the larger one. Don't ignore local, but do include an area larger than just your city limits or you risk not getting found.

Search engines get some areas notoriously 'wrong'. example: Ottawa is the capital of Canada and is located in Ontario Canada. Across the river is Gatineau which is located in Quebec. Searches for 'gatineau + local services like pizza' will show you local results from all over Ottawa, and in the wrong language since Quebec is french and Ontario english.