Local SEO: best practice to remove "near me" appendage when using Rank Tracker in Ahrefs? Or not?

[Syrinj]

After I've gotten a hefty list of KWs and played with "near me" terms for local research, now it's time to plug the ones I want to target into my project's rank tracker with the understanding that the rank tracker is tracking them "per keyword per location." I'm using Ahrefs, but I'm assuming this probably applies to SEMrush, too.

With that in mind, when plugging them into the rank tracker, should I dispose of the "near me" appendage at the end of those terms before doing so? I assume this is best practice since the location is already taken into account in the rank tracker? Just want to make sure I'm on the right track with this.


This assumes the following is true (I don't know if it is or isn't which is why I'm asking for others' experience):

e.g. Let's say I'm a user in Ocean City, MD performing a Google search for "landscaping company," and it returns local results (not including paid and map-packs).

I couldn't just reproduce the exact same SERP by performing a search for "landscaping company near me?"

In other words, Google wouldn't treat these as more-or-less the same query?

This page from Ahrefs itself contributes to my understanding:

In Rank Tracker, it's crucial to state the location with which Ahrefs will help you track your keywords. Different locations will reflect different keyword ranking positions.

Thanks!

 

[zelch]

if you compare, the SERP is different.
I use this tool to get the local results, as a person sees them where they are.
https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker/