“On Maui” or “In Maui” ?

maui Over the course of the past few years I’ve spent a lot of time talking to and working with business owners here on Maui … or is it in Maui? If you’re kamaaina, you would say, “on Maui” if you’re from the mainland you would say, “in Maui” So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is this; if you’re trying to attract customers from the mainland and you’re building web pages and blog posts using the term “on Maui,” your mainland prospects are going to have a very hard time finding you in the search engines. If you use the term “in Maui,” you’re going to sound like an outsider to kamaaina, but you’re going to make it very, very easy for mainland visitors to find your website and blog.

What about the other islands?

What’s true for Maui is also true for Oahu, Hawaii, the Big Island, Kauai, Lanai and Molokai. If you’re trying to attract off island visitors to your website, don’t force them to use the term “on” when they’re going to use the word “in.” It pays to pay attention to the words and phrases your customers and potential customers use to find you.

In order to prove my point, I did a keyword search using Market Samurai for the keyword phrases

real estate on Maui / 11 searches per day
real estate in Maui / 33 searches per day

There are three times as many people using the term “in” then there are using the term “on.”

If you don’t know what people are searching for …

If you don’t know the words and phrases your prospects are using to find the products and services you’re selling, they will never find you. You need to know these keywords to:

Select an effective domain name
Title a web page
Title a blog post
Create content for your website or blog
Create the text for your links
Write the text for your ad campaign
Select the keywords for your ad campaign
and more

The really cool thing is that once you know the exact words and phrases people are using to find your website, you can create separate web pages, blog posts, articles, and ad campaigns for each group. For example.

Working example

I created a video training program to help people write and give a dynamite acceptance speech. After I did my keyword research I discovered that there were just as many people searching for the terms “thank you speech” and “award speech” as there were people searching for the term “acceptance speech.”

Knowing that, I was able to create three separate web pages, ad campaigns and landing pages making it easier for people to find me on the search engines. You can do the same thing.

Keyword Research Tools

There are some wonderful keyword tools available to do this research. You can find my list of favorite keyword tools in the Resouce section of the site.

If you would rather have IMA of Hawaii run a keyword search for you, the fee is between $75 and $197 based on your needs. Learn more about the IMAHawaii Keyword Research Service or contact us at 808-891-0449 to talk about your project.

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