Is it better to place a billboard in Times Square or on Lyons Avenue? The answer, of course, depends on whether a company is selling self-storage space in its Newhall-based facility or in its Manhattan-based facility.

Positioning your message in the appropriate space is critical to the success your marketing campaign’s success. Whether a billboard is on the side of the road or on the side of a Web browser, it is important to display your message in front of the correct audience.

One way to exercise this strategy on a business website is to use keywords your customers are searching within the text of the website, banner ads and SEO campaigns. This strategy requires knowledge of where your customers are searching for your business and what they are looking for.

Search giant Google offers a useful tool to find the number of “local monthly searches” for any given set of keywords. Google defines local monthly searches as “the approximate 12-month average number of user queries for the keyword for those countries and languages. It’s specific to your Keyword Match Type selection.” Country and languages are specific to the information selected by the user for the purposes of the search, and the default is likely set to United States and English.

Accessing this tool requires several action steps, but it is free to use. You will need a Google account. Start by visiting http://adwords.google.com. If you don’t already have an account for AdWords, you will need to sign up.

Once you are able to access AdWords, mouse over the Tools and Analysis menu and choose Keyword Tool. Then start entering your selected keywords and see the search traffic for your terms.

Here are the local monthly searches for Santa Clarita-related terms (as of Jan. 14):

* Valencia: 1,220,000 (also due to Spain and breed of oranges)

* Los Angeles County: 823,000

* Santa Clarita: 450,000

* Green Valley: 368,000 (a popular area name)

* Acton: 301,000

* Saugus: 201,000 (also a town in Massachusetts)

* SCV: 74,000

* Canyon Country: 74,000

* Newhall: 74,000

* Westridge: 74,000

* Castaic: 60,500

* Stevenson Ranch: 22,200

* Santa Clarita Valley: 9,900

* Agua Dulce: N/A (too few to register)

If you owned a self-storage facility in Newhall, consider that “Newhall” is searched about 74,000 times per month, while “Santa Clarita” is searched about 450,000 times per month.

This tendency often applies to other phrases as well. For example, the keyword phrase “Newhall Self Storage” does not show enough results to register, but “Santa Clarita Self-Storage” reports about 210 per month. This knowledge may be used to choose keywords and wording for the site.

In addition, the keyword tool will show related search terms to help business owners identify other search terms to optimize search results.

Determining how many users fit a specific demographic on Facebook is even easier. Simply visit http://www.facebook.com/ads and click on the “create an ad” button. Don’t worry — you won’t be charged for the ad to use the tool.

Start filling out the demographic information, and Facebook will display the estimated number of users to the right.

The following are the estimated numbers of users in the Santa Clarita area ages 13 and older (as of Jan. 14):

* Santa Clarita: 45,380

* Valencia: 22,340

* Newhall: 4,340

* Saugus: 4,800

* Canyon Country: 14,060

* Castaic: 5,260

* Acton: 2,620

* Agua Dulce: 880

* Westridge: 20

* Stevenson Ranch: 3,620

* Los Angeles: 3,808,980

* United States: 157,412,260

This information can help you decide where best to display your Facebook ad and enable you to position that ad in front of the appropriate audience.

Similar to Google and Facebook, others tools can help you find stats related to almost anything on the Internet and even related to the Santa Clarita area.

By taking some time to research and apply this knowledge to your website, you can help make your marketing campaigns more effective.

And as G.I. Joe would say, “Knowing is half the battle.”

Readers, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bcuda.

Readers can submit questions to: brian@geek2us.com.

Brian Cuda is co-founder of Conceptinet, a website design, development, hosting, social media and marketing firm located in Santa Clarita and can be reached at 661-338-0830  www.conceptinet.com. Mr. Cuda’s column reflects his own views and not necessarily those of The Signal.