Keyword Research for Local Businesses, in Plain English
Forget the jargon: keyword research is answering three questions about how customers search. The plain-English method, free tools included, with a worked example.
Keyword research is answering three questions: what do customers type when they need you, which of those searches mean money, and which can you realistically win? Agencies wrap this in software and jargon, but the logic is plain, and for a local business you can get most of the way with free tools and one honest afternoon.
Question 1: what do they actually type?
Start with what you know: every phone call is a keyword (“do you do gas fitting?” means people search “gas fitter cairns”). Then let Google finish your sentences, type your trade and watch autocomplete, then check the “People also ask” and “Related searches” boxes. Write down everything real. You will have 30-50 candidates in an hour.
Question 2: which searches mean money?
Sort by intent, not volume. The four buckets:
| Intent | Example | Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | “burst pipe cairns”, “emergency electrician” | Gold. Ready to pay now. |
| Job-ready | “bathroom renovation cairns”, “roadworthy certificate” | Gold. Comparing, then booking. |
| Researching | “how much does a bathroom reno cost” | Silver. Future customers, blog territory. |
| Never-buying | “how to fix a tap yourself” | Bronze at best. DIYers. |
A term with 90 searches a month and buying intent beats a term with 900 and none. Our client data proves the point: “roadworthy certificate cairns” is not a huge-volume term, but it books cars into Cairns Auto Works every single day.
Question 3: which can you win?
Search each shortlisted term incognito and look at who ranks: if the results are directories and thin template sites, that term is winnable; if it is wall-to-wall funded national brands, park it and win the flanks first. In Cairns, more money terms are winnable than owners assume, several we track have surprisingly weak competition, which is exactly why year-one results like CPE climbing into the top two for “earthworks cairns” happen here.
Turning the list into a plan
Each money keyword gets a home: buying-intent terms map to service and suburb pages (the structure), research terms map to posts like this one, and the whole map becomes your build order, highest intent, most winnable first. That keyword-to-page map is the first deliverable of every campaign we run.
The free-tool stack
- Google autocomplete + People Also Ask: the raw list.
- Google Keyword Planner (free with any Ads account): rough volumes.
- Search Console (if your site is live): the searches you already almost-rank for, the cheapest wins available. (How to read it.)
Paid tools add volume history and difficulty scores, useful, not essential at the start. We run the paid stack for clients and share the raw data, which is where numbers like the ones in our SEO Cairns guide come from.
Your first keyword map costs nothing: write down the ten phrases a customer would actually say on the phone, add your suburbs to each, and type them into Google to see who owns them today. That list, honestly assessed, is a better starting strategy than most paid audits.