Local keyword research: find what your customers actually type.

Step 1 - List your money jobs

Not every service - the jobs you want more of. An electrician: panel upgrades, EV chargers, emergency repairs. Write down your top 5 highest-value services. Each one becomes a keyword cluster and usually its own page.

Step 2 - Attach intent and geography

Every service has three search modes: the emergency ("water heater leaking"), the research ("tankless water heater cost"), and the branded/urgent ("24 hour plumber [city]"). Multiply your 5 services by these modes and your city or service towns - you now have 30-45 real keyword targets. Notice how "cost" and "how long" searches are the research phase of your biggest jobs - those pages close the customers who read them.

Step 3 - Verify with the free sources

• Google's own autocomplete: type the service, note the suggestions - they're real searches
• "People also ask" boxes - each is a question your page should answer
• Your GBP insights: the actual queries that found you last month
• Your phone log: the exact words customers use when they call - that's the vocabulary for your pages

Step 4 - Map keywords to pages, one to one

Each primary keyword gets one dedicated page: "emergency plumber [city]" → emergency page, "water heater replacement [city]" → water heater page. Two pages targeting the same phrase cannibalize each other; zero pages targeting it means you don't rank. This mapping is the blueprint Clearwater Plumbing used to go from zero to 15+ ranking keywords in 4 months.