Need Local Links? Use the Local Keyword Tool

A few weeks ago, Aaron Wall and Geordie Carswell launched a new PPC Training and Community Forum. This is an excellent place to learn about PPC for both newbies (like me) and experienced paid search marketers. With 50 (!) training modules, a very helpful and knowledgeable community and 11 very useful PPC tools, PPC Blog’s training center has a lot to offer. Link builders can learn a lot from doing PPC (and vice versa), so I’d highly recommend you to check it out. Just read the PPC blog, and you’ll get a feeling of what quality you can expect.

To prove that it’s not for PPC marketers only, I’ll highlight one of the tools from PPC Blog’s arsenal that can be used during a link building campaign as well.

The Local Keyword Tool

One of PPC Blog’s tools is the Local Keyword Tool, which you can use to create a large set of locally targeted keywords. However, you can also use it to create search queries that help you find local link targets. Just enter the zipcode of the region that you’re targeting (it currently works for eight countries, but this number will get higher) and a radius, and the tool will generate a list with relevant locations.

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After the list with zip codes, communities, counties, states, and state codes has shown up, you can enter two additional keyword groups. Try adding keywords relevant to your products or services (plumbing, flowers, lawyer) in the first one, and adding some additional keywords like resources, articles, listings or blog in the second one. The third column can be used for the locations.

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There you go: a very long list with search queries that you can use to find new local link targets. Not bad for a PPC tool, huh?

PS – For those of you wondering, yes, I will be updating this page soon, hopefully later this month…

Update: Darren Shaw of Whitespark.ca informed me about his Local Citation Finder Tool that is released on August 5th. The output of the tool will look something like this, which can be very useful for local websites.

Update 2: My buddy Arturo created this awesome keyword tool, which can also help you with the 2nd step listed above.