Search Engine Optimization for Waterloo Region

If you’re looking to increase the effectiveness of your website, one of the most important things you can do is fine tune its “Search Engine Optimization”, or as it’s usually called, “SEO”.

Search Engine Optimization for businesses in the Waterloo Region amounts to carefully “optimizing” the content and “meta content” of your web pages, blog posts and social media posts. Let’s talk about that.

The Role of Search Terms (Keywords)

One of the most important things you can do is to understand how search engines like Google and Bing work. For the most part they work with search terms or what are called “keywords”. These are the terms people enter into Google, etc. to get information on things they are interested in.

For example, if you are interested in finding out if there is someone in your town or city who does kitchen remodeling, you would search for something like “kitchen remodeling” or “kitchen renovation”.

Let’s say you are starting a unique kitchen remodeling company and want to focus on projects in the Waterloo Region. That includes Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Elmira, St. Jacobs, Conestogo, Maryhill, Wellesley, New Dundee, and other small communities in the Region.

If you have a website called, for example, “Ted’s Kitchen Renovations” you want people to find your website when they search for the services you are offering. In other words, you want your site to be “search friendly”.
(I’ll just refer to “Google” but mean to include search engines generally.)

That means you should put some serious thought into defining and using the most appropriate keywords – the terms that search engines will identify with your website when people search for a service like yours.

And that means once you have decided on your most important keywords you should embed them in various ways in your web pages, blog and social media posts.

What Keywords Should You Use?

1. First you need to get a clear idea of how to describe your service.

2. Second you need to identify who you are trying to reach (your target market).

3. Third you need to get a clear idea of the most commonly used search terms people in your target market tend to use when looking for your type of service.

Tips for Clarifying Your Service in Terms of Keywords

1. Begin by making a list of the most important services you want to promote. Try to boil these things down into two or three word descriptions. For example, for our kitchen remodeling service the list might look like this (I got this from ChatGPT):

Kitchen renovation
Custom kitchen design
Kitchen remodeling services
Kitchen makeover
Modern kitchen remodel
Contemporary kitchen renovation
Traditional kitchen redesign
Cabinet installation
Countertop replacement
Kitchen flooring upgrade
Backsplash installation
Kitchen island design
Appliance installation
Lighting fixtures for kitchens

2. Next, narrow your list down to the one or two that you think are the best representatives of your business.

Let’s say you choose
-kitchen remodeling services
-modern kitchen remodel
-kitchen makeover

3. Now let’s test these for the likelihood that they will come up in searches. Do some searches for your keyword possibilities and see what comes up.

4. Go to a service like ahrefs.com or Google’s keyword analysis tool and see what are the keywords in your group that have the most potential*.

(*The next article in this series will include a description of how to use a keyword analysis tool.)

Finally, in this article let’s address the question “Is it important to stipulate my location or service area in my keyword usage?“

“Localizing” Your Keywords

To score high in searches local providers of services have a competitive advantage over more regional or national ones. This is because you are only competing for search ranking with other local providers in your niche. And there are usually only a few of them.

On the other hand, if you provide a service where you are serving a regional or national market you will be competing against hundreds – even thousands – of other service providers. They will be spread all across the service area you are working in, and they will all, at least potentially, be competing for Google ranking just like you.

But this article is primarily about ranking in Google for local services. And the question we are asking is a fairly simple one. “Is it important to embed my location/service area in my keyword usage?” For example, should I always say “kitchen remodeling in Waterloo” or “kitchen remodeling in Cambridge”.

So let’s do a simple test.

When I do a Google search for “kitchen remodeling services” the first page of Google results shows a few “sponsored” listings, a couple of generic articles and videos about modern kitchen design ideas, and a number of non-sponsored local companies. The specific listings (rather than the generic articles) are all of local companies. There are none from, say, Toronto or Albuquerque even though I have not specified my local area (Waterloo Region).

If I click on the link to “More businesses” I see 20 listings pointing to websites. Two of these are “sponsored” and the rest are not. (What “sponsored” means is that this company has paid to have their listing come up above the others.)

In this list of 18 non-sponsored companies they are all local. Google apparently has assumed that someone looking for “kitchen remodeling” is looking for a local supplier.

The conclusion I draw from this is that once you have clearly identified in your web pages and postings that you are a “local” company (serving a specific location) it is redundant to embed your service area in your keywords every time you use them.

In other words, you can focus on “kitchen remodeling” without always having to say “kitchen remodeling in Kitchener”. But, as I’ve said, this assumes you have made it clear elsewhere in your page/article/post that you service the Kitchener area market.

Of course if your company is open to doing projects or selling products across a wider geographic area, then you should clearly say that.

As I’ve said, in the next article in this series I will look at keyword analysis tools and try to answer the question “How do we select the most appropriate/effective keywords?”

In the third article in this series I will address the question “What are the most effective ways to embed keywords?”

Rick Hendershot, Cross Town Promotions