Tools tell you volume, difficulty, and intent.

They can’t tell you whether the homeowners in your market search “heating repair,” “heater repair,” “furnace repair,” or “boiler repair” when the cold snap hits.

That’s the gap most local keyword research never closes.

The tool data is real, but it can only validate what you already know about your market. If you don’t bring local knowledge to the table first, you’re just looking at numbers without context.

Backlinko interviewed me about how I actually do this for my FourHorse Digital clients.

Not the theory, the actual process I run across home services, professional services, and every kind of local business in between.

We covered:

• The questions I work through before opening any tool
• Why I push back on clients chasing the wrong keyword categories
• How I handle markets where the data shows zero searches but customers are clearly there
• The page architecture I build off the research
• Where AI fits into local search right now

It’s how local keyword research actually plays out when there’s a real client on the line.

Read it here: Local SEO Keyword Research: 5 Steps + Free Template