Well it’s a long time since I wrote this post ( 29 June 2013 ) so well past time for an update.

There’s a high value in being found in search results when people are looking for your services and products. Fast market research can be done to make sure you’re not targeting the wrong areas.

Search Intention

Some search phrases are more often typed when people have an intention to buy and some aren’t. People searching for good jokes most often aren’t intending to spend money. To get an idea of a searchers intention, you should look at 3 things :

Are there paid Adwords ads displaying. If people are paying for ads on a particular term, they’re probably making money on it,Â demonstrating commercial intention.

The related searches at the bottom of the results.

The suggested terms that drop down as you search ( often called Google suggest ).

(2) and (3) are compiled from Google’s collection of data from millions of real user searches, and indicate searches made prior to or just after the search phrase that was types.

Some examples.

car services and car service suggestions had a place name after them, which shows that people are looking for people in their area. Related searches ( at the bottom of the results ) for car service were …

car service costs

car service checklist

repco car service

car service guide

car service deals

kmart car service

car service comparison

nrma car service

As you type metal fabrication, Google suggest shows metal fabrication sydney, metal fabrication newcastle and metal fabrication wollongong. The related searches were …

metal fabrication apprenticeship

metal fabrication wages

metal fabrication courses

metal fabrication apprenticeship wages

metal fabrication books

metal fabrication tools

boilermaker

welding

It doesn’t look from the related searches, like these people are searching for metal fabrication services. We could get a better idea by looking in your Google Analytics account, once it clocks up some statistics. steel fabrication is better for you as related searches are nearly all qualified by a place name.

Suggestions and related searches for heavy vehicle mechanic, mechanical engineering, fitters and boilermaker are all about apprenticeships and jobs, so probably not valuable.

mining equipment maintenance, has a low search volume and no adwords, but Google suggestion for mining equipment came up with maintenance. This shows there are a volume of people searching for it. Due to your location, and the value of a contract, this term would be good to be on page one for.

Search volume

It’s also best to go after terms that have a good volume of searches. Spending time to appear at the top of search results for a phrase that’s hardly ever searched for is a waste of effort. Get the search volumes from Google.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Type in the keyword phrases that are most relevant to your business and see how many people are searching. For a guage of Local searches, append the city name to the end of each term.

To beat the top 10 sites/competitors on page one. If the search term brings up the Local results, this is far easier to do than with straight organic results.

Unless a term has a huge number of searches, there is no value in being beneath page 1. The top 5 positions on page one get about 70% of the clicks.