What is a geographic modifier?

Website Design Houston is a geographic modified search term.

A geographic keyword modifier is the use of a geographic term in the beginning, end, or in the middle of a keyword term. For example, Upstream Marketing specializes in website design so my main keywords are website design. I could geographically modify the keyword by adding the term “Houston” to it, making it “Website Design Houston” or “Houston Website Design.”

Why would I use a geographic modifier?

Even though I design websites for companies all over the world, most of my business comes from the Houston area.  The keyword Website Design had over 6 million searches last month alone. The first thing most people think of is, I have to rank on the first page of Google for this keyword and the money will be flowing like a rain storm in Houston.

Wait just a minute…

Type in the search term Website Design in Google and view the number of results.

1,650,000,000

This number is a good indication of how many web pages have been found for the keywords Website Design.  Over 1.6 Billion.

I’m 1 in 1,650,000,000.  The odds of winning Lotto Texas are 1 in 25,827,165.

Having my website Upstream Marketing rank for the specific keyword Website Design would be almost impossible due to the number of competitors.

People searching online can add geographic modifiers for a state, city and neighborhood, I did some keyword research on the keywords Website Design.

– Web Design Texas (state modifier) – 12,110 searches last month with 173,000,000 results

– Website Design Houston (city modifier) – 9,900 searches last month with 77,700,000 results

– Website Design 77057 (neighborhood modifier) – 0 searches with 2,030,000 results

As you can see, as the geographic area gets smaller, the number of results gets smaller which means less competition. You also have to take into consideration the number of searches gets lower as well.

It might be easier to rank for Website Design 77057 but no one is searching for that term.

Geo-modifiers provide you the ability to target a specific city or neighborhood and this means a more targeted search and a quicker ROI for your website.  This is  extremely relevant if you are in a very competitive business.

Next time we will discuss how to pick the right geographic keywords.