Local Keyword Research: How to Find the Search Terms Your Neighbors Actually Use

#Step one: List your services the way customers say them

Start with a plain list of what you do, in your customers’ words, not your industry’s. “Water heater repair” before “tankless hot water system service.” Then list every town, suburb and neighborhood you actually serve, each one by name instead of “the metro.”

In Denver, I used 6 trades (plumber, electrician, roofer, HVAC, dentist, landscaping) and Denver plus 11 suburbs, from Aurora and Lakewood to Highlands Ranch and Broomfield.

#Step two: Don’t skip the searches with no town in them

A lot of local searches never name a place. Someone types “plumber,” “emergency plumber” or “dentist near me,” and Google still shows businesses nearby. Google’s help page on local ranking puts it this way: “When a customer searches for a business or place near their location, they’ll find local results on Google Maps and Search.” Its own example is someone searching “Italian restaurant” on their phone.

The same page says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity,” and explains distance like this: “Distance refers to how far each business is from the customer who’s searching. If a customer doesn’t share where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location.”

That changes how you use these keywords. Writing “near me” all over your pages doesn’t move your business any closer to the person searching. The part you control is relevance, which means the service words. Put the no-town words (the service, the problem, the urgency: “burst pipe,” “same-day,” “emergency”) on your service pages and in your Business Profile. Save town names for the pages about the places you serve.

Distance also means the results shift from one part of town to the next. When I searched just “plumber” on Google Maps from six points around Denver in October 2026, only one business made the top 3 at more than one point.

To find your own no-town searches, go through the two lists in Step five (your Business Profile’s search terms and Search Console’s queries) and pull out every search without a place name. Those are your core service words. For a volume number, Keyword Planner counts searches “based on the month range as well as the location and Search Network settings you selected,” so checking a plain “plumber” with your area selected gives you a local number for it.

#Step three: Get Google’s own numbers for your area

Start with Google’s Keyword Planner, and set the location before you look at a single number. Google’s guide to refining keywords says you can “Enter a geographical location, including countries, territories, regions, and cities,” and a “Nearby” option gives you ideas for “locations that are near the location you entered.”

Two caveats, both from Google’s Keyword Planner help page. First, you need to “enter your billing information and complete your account setup to access basic features like keyword suggestions.” Second, “Keywords with very low search volumes, or keywords that are considered sensitive aren’t discoverable or forecastable.”

So a blank cell has two possible causes, and Google doesn’t say which one applies. In my Denver data, only two trade-and-town combinations came back blank in both word orders: dentist in Aurora and dentist in Lakewood. Every other suburb showed a dentist number, down to 70 for Englewood. The same Google page says its policies “often prevent results for keywords in sensitive categories like health or finance,” and dentistry is health care. My guess is that sensitivity is the more likely reason here, but it’s a guess. Either way, a blank isn’t proof that nobody searches.

#Step four: Look at the months, not just the average

By default, Keyword Planner shows searches “averaged over a 12-month period.” That average can hide big swings. In my Denver data (September 2025 to August 2026):

“Landscaping denver” had 480 searches in December 2025 and 1,900 in April 2026. If you run a landscaping business, that’s the same keyword carrying very different weight from one season to the next. Plan your content and your promotions around the busy months, and publish before they start.

#Step five: Use the searches that already find you

You already have local keyword data, and it’s free.

Your Google Business Profile. In your profile’s performance section, Google lists “Searches: The search terms people used to find your business.” These are real local searches, and they often include words you’d never think to target. Google’s performance help page notes the searches metric “is updated at the start of each month.”

Google Search Console. Its Performance report shows “what search queries are most likely to show your site.” One limit for local research: its location breakdown goes down to country level, so use it for the words, and your Business Profile for the local picture.

#Step six: See what local competitors rank and advertise for

You don’t need a paid tool to see who you’re up against. I’d start with these free checks.

Search your main keywords and take notes. Search each of your top keywords from inside your area. Write down which businesses show up in the map results and in the first regular results, then open their pages. Look at which services and towns their page titles and headings name. A service they all have a page for and you don’t is a gap. A town nobody has a page for is an opening.

Give Keyword Planner a competitor’s website. Google’s Keyword Planner help page says you can “Enter any website and Google will look for keywords related to the content on that site.” Put in a competitor’s service page and you get keyword ideas drawn from what that page covers. They don’t tell you which searches the page ranks for.

Look up their ads. Google says “You can use the Ads Transparency Center to search by advertiser name or website name and filter their search results by serving region and date” (My Ad Center Help). The Ads Transparency Center shows the ads a business has run, not the keywords behind them, but the ad text tells you which services they pay to promote. Ads show up on the map too. When I checked Google Maps for “dentist” from Aurora and from Centennial in October 2026, the first listing in each was a paid ad. When competitors pay for a search, it’s a sign the search is worth money to someone.

Use what you find to pick topics, not wording. Write your own pages, in your own words, about what you actually do.

#Step seven: Compare towns with Google Trends (carefully)

Google Trends can show interest by metro area. Just know what the numbers mean. Google says “Search term popularity is relative to the total number of Google searches performed at a specific time, in a specific location.” It’s a 0 to 100 scale for comparing, not a count of searches. Use it to see which of your towns cares more about a topic, then go back to Keyword Planner for volume.

#Step eight: Search every keyword before you build a page

A keyword can have plenty of searches and still be the wrong keyword. When I checked Google’s results for “what is aio” in October 2026, only 2 of the 9 organic results were about AI optimization. The rest were all-in-one computers and CPU coolers. The volume was real. The searchers just wanted something else.

Local searches have the same trap, plus one more. Google’s Search Console help notes that search results are “specific to the time, place, device, and recent history of the person searching.” Before you commit to a keyword, search it yourself, ideally from the area you’re targeting, and check that the results are local businesses like yours.

#Why keyword tools disagree (and what to do about it)

Paid keyword tools estimate search volume in different ways, and the gaps can be big. When I compared two keyword data sources on the same 219 keywords in October 2026, some numbers were far apart:

Those two rows are near the extreme end, not the typical case. Of the 113 keywords where both sources gave a number above zero, the median gap was 3 times, 11 matched exactly, and 12 were more than 10 times apart. The keyword this post targets is one of those 12: one source says 1,900 searches a month, the other says 170.

#Turn the research into pages

Once you have your list, I’d do three things with it:

• One page for each service you want to be found for, built around the words people use with no town name.
• One page for each town or suburb you actually serve, with real local detail, not a copy with the city name swapped.
• Your Business Profile categories and description matched to your main services.

Google says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity,” and its local ranking page defines the first one: “Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.” Your keyword research is how you make sure your profile and your pages match the words people actually use.

For how this fits into the full plan, see my local SEO guide. If you’d like me to run this research for your area, keyword research and competitor analysis are part of the strategy work when I take on local SEO, or get in touch.