A local business in Bilbao or any municipality in Euskadi running Google Ads systematically makes the same mistakes: overly broad geographical targeting, generic keywords that attract irrelevant national traffic, a daily budget insufficient for the sector’s level of competition, and conversion tracking that is non-existent or poorly configured.
This guide explains how to do it correctly so that every euro of budget brings real customers to your area.
The geographic targeting that 90% get wrong
The most common error is selecting “Spain” or “Basque Country” as the target location when the business can only serve clients within a 20–30kilometre radius. Every click from someone in Madrid searching for your service is money wasted.
The correct targeting for a local business: the main city plus a radius in kilometres that matches your actual service area. For a restaurant in Bilbao centre, that means Bilbao plus perhaps 10–15 kilometres. For a mechanic’s garage in Getxo, it’s Getxo plus the neighbouring towns.
A lesser-known but highly effective element: segmentation by location intent vs physical presence. Google allows you to distinguish between users who are physically in your area and users who are searching for things in your area from somewhere else. For most local businesses, the first option is the right one.
Keywords with a local modifier
Generic keywords such as “plumber” or “Japanese restaurant” are expensive and draw traffic from across Spain if segmentation is not set up correctly. Keywords with a local modifier are cheaper and more specific.
Examples of effective local keywords for Euskadi: “emergency plumber Bilbao”, “Japanese restaurant Indautxu”, “mechanic garage Getxo price”, “self-employed accountant Vitoria”. Search volume is lower, but purchase intent is far higher and competition — and therefore CPC — is significantly lower.
Searches in Basque are also an opportunity: they have less advertising competition than their Spanish equivalents and reach a very local, loyal user segment. “Sukaldari Bilbon”, “autogilua Getxon” are examples of Basque queries with real traffic and almost no competition.
Ad extensions for local businesses
Ad extensions are additional pieces of information that appear with the advert and increase CTR at no extra cost per click. For local businesses, there are three critical extensions.
Location extension: shows the business’s physical address and the distance from the user’s location. Increases CTR by between 10% and 20% for local searches. Requires a verified Google Business profile linked to the Google Ads account.
Call extension: displays the phone number directly in the ad. For searches from mobile, the user can call directly without visiting the website. For businesses where the call is the most valuable conversion, this extension is essential.
Opening hours extension: shows opening hours. Especially useful for businesses where opening hours are a deciding factor: clinics, restaurants, shops.
The minimum budget by sector
One of the most frequent mistakes in local Google Ads is an insufficient budget. With a daily budget of 5€ in a sector with a CPC of 2€, you have enough for two or three clicks a day — insufficient to gather useful data for optimisation and with high daily variability.
The CPC ranges for local sectors in Euskadi are: plumbers and renovations (1,50-4€ per click), restaurants and hospitality (0,30-1€), mechanical workshops (0,80-2€), professional services such as gesторías and advisories (2-5€), clinics and health (1,50-4€).
The minimum recommended budget is the average sector CPC multiplied by at least 20-30 clicks per day to have sufficient data. For a plumber with a CPC of 2€, that is 40-60€ per day as a minimum budget for a campaign to learn properly.
Conversion tracking for local businesses
Conversion tracking is what tells you which keywords and which ads generate real customers, not just clicks. Without it, optimisation is blind.
The most relevant conversions for a local business: contact form submission, phone call from the ad, phone call from the website, visit to the “how to find us” page, and time on site above a threshold (signal of interest).
The phone call is especially important for local businesses because it is frequently the most valuable conversion and the hardest to track. Google Ads has a native call tracking feature that assigns a temporary phone number to the ad and records calls as a conversion.