Choosing Your Keywords: Think Like a Neighbor, Not a Contractor

An earlier post on this blog explained how the keyword plans work — the watching, the sources, the twice-a-day delivery. This one is about your half of the system: the list itself. Because matching is literal, the words you choose decide which jobs you ever hear about. A great list on the cheapest plan will out-earn a sloppy list on the biggest one. The plan details are on our plans page; this is the field guide to filling yours in.

The matching rules, in one breath

Keywords match whole words only, exactly as written. No wildcards, no partial credit: plumb matches neither plumber nor plumbing. Letters and spaces only, so multi-word keywords like water heater and burst pipe work fine. You can enter up to 25 keywords; your plan uses your top ones in the order you list them — the top 5 on Starter, the top 10 on Plus, all 25 on Pro — and matches them against asks inside your radius. Everything below follows from those rules.

Think like a neighbor typing with wet hands

Homeowners in a hurry don't write ad copy. They write the emergency, the symptom, and the trade — in that order. "Pipe burst in the basement, need a plumber." "Anyone have a roofer for a leak?" "Musty smell in the basement, who does mold testing?" Your list should cover all three vocabularies: the trade name (plumber, roofer, electrician), the service (water heater, roof replacement, panel upgrade), and the problem (burst pipe, leak, no heat, musty smell). Problem words are the ones contractors forget — and they're the words in the most urgent posts.

Word forms are separate keywords — budget for them

Because matching is whole-word, every form is its own line: roof, roofs, roofing are three keywords. So are plumber and plumbing, remodel and remodeling. That feels expensive on Starter's 5 slots, and it is — which is why order matters more than coverage. Put the form your customers actually use most in your area at the top; neighbors asking for help say "roofer" and "roofing" far more than they say "roofs." If a core service has three live forms, it may genuinely deserve three slots — those are three doors into the same job.

Order is strategy, not paperwork

Your top keywords are your working set, so rank by value, not by alphabet. Slot one should be the word attached to your most profitable, most wanted work. On Plus and Pro the tail of the list is cheap experimentation space: seasonal terms, a synonym you're testing, the adjacent service you keep getting asked about. And revisit the order as the year turns — the list is a living document, and the pros who treat it that way keep their matches relevant while everyone else's list fossilizes in January.

Keywords times radius equals your real territory

A keyword only matches inside your radius — 30 miles around your center ZIP is included with every plan, 50 miles is +$20 a month. That interaction is your noise control. Broad problem words (leak) inside a 30-mile radius are a manageable stream of real jobs; the same word across 50 miles can flood a small shop. Tighten with specificity before you shrink the map: roof leak instead of leak keeps the territory and drops the plumbing posts. The For Contractors page walks through the list and the radius together at application.

Questions & Answers

Stephen George writes for Nail the Match.