Nowadays, everyone’s always making noise about getting online so your business can be current. But as a business owner, you have to approach any marketing trend with an appropriate amount of skepticism. While this doesn’t mean you have to be overcritical, it does mean you have to do the necessary research before making your final choice. To help make the decision easier for you, here are some tips in determining whether or not your business can benefit from local SEO.

Are People Searching for You?

One of the easiest ways to tell whether or not you can benefit from local SEO is asking yourself a simple question – are people searching for your product or service online? If the answer is yes, then ranking in local search results will help you.

As much as it’s worthwhile to get local SEO when people are searching for your product or service, it won’t be worthwhile if you only operate locally and no one’s searching for you at all. But truth is, people search for most common kinds of businesses online. According to statistics released in 2012, 85% of consumers use online search to find local businesses. But this figure is clearly out of date by now. If more recent statistics were available, there’s a good chance that even up to 95% of customers might already be using local search to find businesses.

MAnd the businesses people search for can be almost anything you can think of. There’s really no limit to what people might search for online. But just to be safe, you might want to do some research.

Can You Benefit From Knoxville Local SEO?

There are multiple ways to do keyword research in order to tell whether or not people are searching for your business online. One of the easiest ways is to use Google and type in “Knoxville” together with the first two or three letters of your industry.

For instance, when if you have a dental practice, you can type “Knoxville de” into your Google search bar to see whether or not “Knoxville dentist” is a common search. If it pops up under the list of suggestions, your business can definitely benefit from local SEO.

However, if you would like to get an estimate of how many people are searching for your business, you can install a free browser extension like Keywords Everywhere on your browser for a more exact way of researching keywords. While the tool only provides a rough estimate, and not an exact figure, it’s easily accessible and can help you see what search volume you can expect for your industry.

The good news is that we saved you some effort by researching search volumes on some industries for you. The list we made is pretty long, but if you look at it, you’re sure to find something similar to your own industry. The list is arranged alphabetically, so you can skim it to find your industry more easily.

Below are some of the local searches people are doing in Knoxville, as well as the estimate given by Keywords Everywhere for how many people are searching for your local business every month. These estimates were provided by the keyword tool after typing “Knoxville” followed by the relevant keyword:

• Apartments: 3600
• Auto parts: 260
• Bowling: 360
• Car rental: 320
• Car dealerships: 260
• Dentist: 560
• Dermatology: 2900
• Electrician: 110
• Estate sales: 480
• Furniture: 1000
• Food delivery: 390
• Hair salons: 390
• Hotels: 12,100
• Livestock: 390
• Locksmith: 210
• Movers: 170
• Nail salons: 170
• Orthopedic: 1300
• Pawn shops: 320
• Pediatric dentistry: 1600
• Pet stores: 170
• Photographers: 390
• Restaurants: 9900
• Real estate: 1600
• Salons: 220
• Store: 140
• Taxi: 720
• Tires: 210
• Used cars: 720
• Venues: 110
• Vet: 390
• Wedding venues: 590

Keep in mind, that these are the monthly search volumes on only one keyword variation searching for your industry. What this means is that if we simply turn the words around and search for “salons Knoxville” instead of “Knoxville salons”, we find that the keyword tool estimates an additional 140 searches are being made for salons, but with the business type listed first and location listed second.

If we were to add up the amount of people searching for your business every month using different variations of the same search, there’s a good chance that more than 1000 monthly searches are performed for all the industries listed. This becomes especially apparent when you consider the fact that these figures only represent the volume of monthly searches using, not only just one keyword variation, but also just one search engine.

What is reasonably noticeable from the list, however, is that people love searching for entertainment, health professionals, real estate, accommodation and restaurants. This means that these are the industries that can expect the largest amount of exposure from having a local SEO strategy.

But that doesn’t mean other businesses won’t benefit. This is especially true if you own a business where you build a relationship with your customers and get repeat business from them. This can be true for businesses such as mechanics, plumbers, handyman services and other contractors, as well as businesses like cleaning or gardening services.

At the end of the day, your best shot at knowing whether or not local Knoxville SEO can work for you is to try it yourself and to whether or not you get any results. All the information provided in this post was simply an experiment to show you the potential of Internet marketing for your Knoxville business, but once customers can easily find you online, you’ll have an advantage over competitors in your industry, no matter what you do.