Geographically Specific Keywords

[afulton]

I am working on keyword research for a medium sized hospital in a small town.. is it better to go with general keywords like "health care center" in hopes that Google is going to look at the IP of where the user is searching and rank my site or use geographically specific keywords using the city name.. as I said, it is in a smallish city and no search results are showing up using the Google Keyword Research tool.

Thanks for your help!

[jsteele823]

Target everything you think people would search for if they were looking for services provided by your facility.

Once some of them start hitting SERPs, you'll start seeing traffic trickling in through Google Analytics.

Start targeting those terms, as well as those similar to them.

Continue to build on that.

[afulton]

But, as an elderly user (their largest demographic).. would I be more likely to search for "miami hospital" (just an example of a city name) or just "hospital" hoping that Google would automatically pick up on hospitals located in close proximity where I am performing the search.

There are like a million searches a month for these keywords.. It would be nearly impossible to rank this small town clinic/hospital for such a general keyword as hospital.. UNLESS I knew Google was only going to show that user results nearby.. does anyone have any experience or success with this? In this scenario is a one word keyword or long tail keyword better, or a combination of both?

[localoptimizer]

I've been doing that stuff for a long time. If you are using google's keyword tool try using phrases like New York hospital, or San Francisco hospital, etc.

The same kinds of packages of keywords with or without geographic descriptors that apply for big cities will also apply to your smaller town.

If the hospital is regional you might want to add state names with hospital or if its regional portion of a state you might want to test with those. In fact add all popular regional terms. Some searchers will end up using them.

[jsteele823]

If your target demographic is the elderly, you should probably target Miami hospitals instead of Miami hospitals.

Just sayin'

[Test-ok]

I am working on keyword research for a medium sized hospital in a small town..

How many Hospitals are in this small town? if it's one or two...I'd pretty much go after the name of the Hospital with the word Hospital...It's a type of business thats a specialty and if it's in a small town...most everyone will already know it by name..I wouldn't worry too much about excess keywords, that should be covered in the content and if the content tells what they do you'll have those words covered. I doubt most people don't search to find a hospital, they know where the closest one is and any others in their area.
And if I were to search for a hospital in a small town..I'd search Hospital + town name.

[afulton]

If your target demographic is the elderly, you should probably target Miami hospitals instead of Miami hospitals.

Just sayin'

Haha, touché.