newb starting campaign for a local business

dxszzcylm

editing this since nobody has responded yet to make questions a little clearer:

I'm working on a website for a friend that runs a local indoor putt putt or mini golf where I live.

unfortunately I'm unsure how effective SEO will even be since I live in a small city.. (population for county in 2009 was around 48k)

i'm wondering how I should do my keyword research for a local business.

do you normally try to rank for more keywords when doing local SEO since there could be variations.. IE: city + keyword , county + keyword , city state + keyword ..etcetc.

I'm also curious if the only keywords I should use are those with results shown in google keyword tool.. for example it doesn't show any results for "city mini golf" "city putt putt" .. but it doesn't say 0 monthly searches.. it's just NA.

I'm just a little confused on which local keywords I should be using for a local business such as a mini golf place.

any help and/or insight would be appreciated.

dxszzcylm

You are on the right track; you should optimize for all of those keywords. Also, think about what people will be searching for when they come to your area.

Maybe they will search for "fun things to do in *YOUR CITY*", or "tourist attractions in *YOUR CITY*". Try to think like a tourist. What would you search Google for if you were coming to a new city and looking for something to do?

Good luck!

dxszzcylm

well.. I understand what you're saying.. and it's good advice.

but I don't think much tourists really come to this town haha.

dxszzcylm

Hey, I'll ressucitate this thread

Instead of just doing SEO for him, do the following:
Get your friend to get email addresses + birthdays of his clients and give them to you, or lend him an iPad or something to capture this information.
then you can do customer reactivation like once a month, for birthdays, etc.
If he's got money, you can also set up a putt putt website, where people can register their score, and see their statistics and stuff for example.

Also, set up a client referral system,

If there are no tourists in your area, focus on bringing the customers back: customer reactivation is way less expensive than customer acquisition.

dxszzcylm

good ideas.. thank you.

i just need to sit down with him and start brainstorming out of the normal box. he's a pretty smart guy, so i'm sure he can come up with some ideas too.

i got a site with wordpress setup already.. just haven't done anything with it.. as it's hard to get motivated when he's not paying for it. just something i decided to do for him since we're friends, and i work at the putt putt place twice a week to help him out. i just wanted to do it first to get the hang of doing work for local businesses, and so I could use him as a reference or in a portfolio. but he's also the kinda guy that if this venture actually brought in more customers.. he'd end up throwing me a bonus.

dxszzcylm

Hi,

Lots of great tips here. I would also recommend you to setup a simple Mobile optimized site so that you can get double listings for your keywords (regular search and mobile search).

You can also setup a Facebook page of the Mini Golf place and have a promo setup like this for example:

"Come and play Mini Golf and if you "like" us or "Join" us on facebook you'll get a free soda or 10% off or whatever you'd like.

Since it's a small town, I assume that many of the people who "like" or "Join" the facebook page has LOTS of friends within that same town, that all see that they were there and that they liked it.....

Just my 2 cents.

Good luck!

/KillerTomato

dxszzcylm

Facebook was one thing I should have mentioned!
Thanks KT