Here is a question worth sitting with for a minute: when your ideal client types something into Google at eleven o’clock at night, what exactly are they typing?
Not what you wish they were typing. Not the industry terms you use internally. Not the product name from your brochure. What are they actually typing?
Because here is the thing Google never tells you: specificity wins. Every time. A broad keyword is a crowded highway — hundreds of websites competing for the same eyeballs, most of them bigger, older, and better-funded than yours. A specific, location-layered keyword is a side street that leads directly to your door. And on that side street, you might be the only one.
This is local SEO in plain English. And it is one of the highest-leverage things a salesperson, agent, or service professional can do to get found by the right people — without spending a dollar on ads.
Why Broad Keywords Are Working Against You
Let me tell you about a mistake I watched a mortgage professional make — and she probably has no idea she made it.
She was sharp, well-presented, clearly knew her stuff. She was posting video content regularly, which put her ahead of most people in her market. But the content? No specific phrases. No location. No pain points named out loud. She was talking about how great she was instead of talking about what her clients are searching for.
That is the most common SEO mistake in sales: writing for yourself instead of your client. And it kills your search traffic before it ever has a chance to start.
Search engines are not reading your blog to assess your credentials. They are crawling it looking for language that matches what someone just typed into a search bar. The closer your words match the client’s words — the specific words, the location words, the pain-point words — the higher you show up. The further away your words are from theirs, the lower you go. And page two of Google might as well be page two thousand.
“It’s all about the words your client is looking for — the things they type into Google when they have a problem and need a solution.” — B
The Ladder: From Good to Great to Unbeatable
Here is how location-layered keywords actually work in practice. Think of it as a ladder. Every rung gets more specific — and more valuable.
Start at the bottom: “homeowners insurance.” That is a massive, national-level search term. You are competing with Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, and every insurance comparison website on the internet. You are not going to win that fight.
Move up a rung: “homeowners insurance Michigan.” Better. Now you have added a state. You have eliminated the national competitors who do not serve Michigan. But there are still hundreds of agencies in Michigan with more domain authority and more years of content behind them.
Move up again: “million dollar home insurance Grosse Pointe.” Now you are talking. You have named a price point. You have named a city. The person typing that phrase has a specific house in a specific place and a specific need. And the number of websites competing for that exact phrase? Dramatically smaller.
Go to the top rung: “high-value home coverage Grosse Pointe Shores.” Now you are speaking to a specific neighborhood with specific people who have a specific problem. At this level, you might be the only one. And when someone types that exact phrase and your article shows up — you win the conversation before it even starts.
“‘Million dollar home insurance’ is good. ‘Million dollar home insurance Grosse Pointe’ is better. ‘High-value home coverage Grosse Pointe Shores’ is even better — because now you’re speaking to a specific neighborhood with specific people who have a specific problem.” — B
Build Your Keyword List — The Right Way
You do not need a fancy tool to start. You need to think like your client and do two things: translate your industry language into their plain language, and layer in every location relevant to your market.
Step One: Translate.
You might call it a BOP policy. Your client calls it business insurance. You might call it a HEPA filtration system. Your client calls it an allergy air filter. You might call it an HSA-compatible health plan. Your client calls it a lower-cost insurance option with a savings account attached.
Whatever the gap is between your professional language and your client’s plain language — that gap is where your keywords live. Write in their language, not yours. Always.
Step Two: Layer in location.
Here is what a real keyword list looks like for a metro Detroit insurance agent specializing in high-value properties. This is not theoretical — this is an actual working list:
Grosse Pointe • Grosse Pointe Shores • Grosse Pointe Farms • Grosse Pointe City • Lakeshore Drive • Shelby Township • Macomb Township • Troy • Rochester Hills • Oakland County • Macomb County • million dollar home insurance • high-value property coverage • water backup insurance • vacant property insurance
Every one of those location terms is a version of the same blog article that hits a different part of the territory. The article about million-dollar home insurance in Grosse Pointe Shores is not the same article as the one about million-dollar home insurance in Shelby Township — even if they say essentially the same thing. To Google, they are different pages. Different search hits. Different people finding you.
Build your own list. City names. Neighborhood names. County names. Streets if they are iconic enough in your market. Add the plain-language terms for what you sell. That is your keyword foundation.
The 60-Second Move That Turns One Blog Into Ten
Here is the move that most salespeople never think of — and once they see it, they cannot believe they were not doing it already.
Write one blog targeting one city. Get it right. Publish it. Let it live on your site for three or four months. Then drop it back into Claude or ChatGPT and say: rewrite this for Shelby Township instead of Grosse Pointe.
Sixty seconds. New blog. New page. New search hits from a completely different part of your territory.
One article becomes two. Two becomes five. Five becomes ten. Each one indexed by Google. Each one sitting on your site working for you around the clock. Each one pulling in a different searcher from a different neighborhood who has the same problem and needs the same solution.
And here is the thing most people worry about that is not actually a problem: they think they are repeating themselves. They are not. The person in Grosse Pointe Shores who finds your article has never seen the Shelby Township version. The person in Troy who finds your article has no idea there is a Macomb County version. They are all seeing it for the first time. You are not recycling. You are reaching.
“Hey Claude — here’s a blog I wrote about [topic] for [City A]. Please rewrite it targeting [City B] instead. Keep the same structure, tone, and keywords, but update all location-specific references. Add any relevant local details if you know them.”
Teaching AI What It Does Not Know About Your Market
Here is the most powerful part of this whole system — and the step most people skip.
AI is smart. But it does not know your market. It does not know that in the Grosse Pointe area, sewage backed up into basements when the city pumps failed — and that for a multimillion-dollar home, a $5,000 water backup policy is basically a bad joke. It does not know that the HVAC client’s real pain is not the cost of the new unit — it is the kid with asthma who cannot sleep through the night.
You have to teach it those things.
The best way to do that is with vendor and carrier PDFs. Every supplier, every carrier, every partner you work with has marketing materials — usually written by lawyers, dry as dust, boring as a warranty card. But the facts are in there. Upload those PDFs to Claude or ChatGPT, give it your client’s specific pain points and location, and ask it to connect the dots and write a blog article that speaks directly to those pain points in plain language.
If you do not have vendor PDFs — if you built what you sell yourself — talk to your best repeat clients. Ask them why they keep coming back. Write down their exact words. Those words are your keywords. That is your content. It came straight from the source.
“Ask your best clients why they keep coming back. Write down their exact words. Those are your keywords. That’s your content. It came straight from the client’s mouth.” — B
The Bonus That Multiplies Everything: Link Credibility
Here is something that takes the local SEO strategy to the next level — and it involves people you probably already know.
Think about who else is chasing your ideal client. If you write insurance for first-time homebuyers, who else wants that same person? The mortgage lender. The real estate agent. The home inspector. What if each of you wrote a blog from your own area of expertise — and you published them in a way that points back to each other?
Suddenly the first-time homebuyer searching Google finds an article about MSHDA loans, one about what to look for in a home inspection, one about getting the right homeowners insurance, and one about the best neighborhoods in St. Clair Shores to raise a family. All on sites that point to each other. All pointing at each expert individually.
Google calls this link credibility. The more quality websites that point to yours — and that you point back to — the more Google trusts you. And the more Google trusts you, the higher you show up in search results. Not just for one keyword. For all of them.
Your blog does not just sell your product. It builds a neighborhood around your ideal client — and you are the one who lives at the center of it.
“Your blog doesn’t just sell your product. It builds a neighborhood around your ideal client — and you’re the one who lives at the center of it.” — B
Start With One Article. One City. One Pain Point.
You do not need to build the whole system tonight. You need to start with one thing: the next article you were going to write anyway, with one city name added, in the language your client actually uses.
Pick your best-fit location. Pick the pain point your ideal client loses sleep over. Write in their language, not yours. Add the city name to your headline, your first paragraph, and naturally throughout the article. Publish it. Watch what Google does with it over the next ninety days.
Then take that same article, drop it back into AI, and ask it to rewrite it for the next city on your list. Sixty seconds. Another door. Another page. Another person who needed exactly what you offer and found you instead of your competitor.
“Your clients are searching for you right now. Someone is typing your ideal client’s exact pain point into Google at this very moment. The question is whether they find you — or they find your competitor.” — B
The answer is up to you. And now you know exactly what to do about it.
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This post is adapted from Salesperson’s Platbook by B, available now. If this resonated with you, reach out to DBG to learn how we help salespeople build a local content strategy that puts them in front of the right clients at the right moment.