You know what your benefit is called.
Your employees do, too.
But do customers use the same word?
Not necessarily.
Companies quickly develop their own language. Product names, abbreviations, technical terms, and internal terminology become so second nature that you almost forget that a potential customer might be searching for something entirely different.
And if the website uses only the company’s own terminology, it can make it harder to both understand and find.
What exactly is a keyword?
A search term is simply the word or phrase that a person types into a search engine.
It can cover a very wide range:
web design
or, more specifically:
Web Designer for a Manufacturing Company
It could also be a question:
Why is my website slow?
or a problem:
The contact form isn’t working
These last examples are interesting because they show that people don’t always search for the name of a service.
They are looking for the problem they are trying to solve.
What the company says and what the customer says aren’t always the same
This is particularly evident in companies with a high level of professional or technical expertise.
Internally, you might use the name of a specific process, machine, or technology.
The customer might be thinking more along the lines of:
- what is to be produced
- what materials to use
- how big the subject is
- what problem needs to be solved
- which delivery is needed
If the website uses only technical jargon, there is a risk of hiding a relevant service behind a term that a customer would never search for.
That doesn’t mean the technical term should be eliminated.
Often, the best solution is to use both.
An example from the industry
Imagine a company that offers a specific type of CNC machining.
Internally, it may be perfectly natural to describe the service in terms of machine type, process, and technical specifications.
But the customer might be searching for:
machining of large workpieces
CNC Milling of Steel
or:
custom machine shop
These are different ways of describing a related need.
A good website can therefore include technical terminology that demonstrates expertise, while also using the words a customer might realistically search for.
Start with the questions customers are already asking
You don’t always need an advanced SEO tool to come up with your first good ideas.
Start with the company itself.
What do customers ask about on the phone?
What words do they use in emails?
How do they describe the job when they request a quote?
What words does the employee sometimes have to “translate” into the company’s own jargon?
That is valuable information.
If several customers use the same term to describe a service, you should at least consider whether that term should also appear on the website.
Take a look at what people are actually searching for
Then you can take a closer look at the words.
Google itself can provide ideas through suggestions in the search bar and related searches.
SEO tools can be used to compare different keywords, view approximate search volumes, and get an idea of the competition.
However, search volume should not be the only factor in determining whether a word is relevant.
A keyword with fewer searches can be far more interesting if the person behind the search is looking for exactly what the company offers.
More specific searches can be valuable
There is a big difference between:
metal
and:
CNC Machining of Large Steel Workpieces
The first search is broad.
The second one reveals much more about what the person is actually looking for.
More specific searches often have lower search volumes, but in turn may be much closer to what a potential customer is actually looking for.
Therefore, finding the most popular keyword isn’t necessarily the goal.
The goal is to find the right search terms.
One keyword does not mean one sentence repeated ten times
Just because you’ve found a relevant keyword doesn’t mean you have to cram it into every sentence.
If the text sounds strange because the keyword appears in every other sentence, it doesn’t help the reader.
Instead, incorporate the main topic naturally into, for example:
- Page Title
- main heading
- relevant subheadings
- body text
- links to the page
- SEO Title and Meta Description
And use natural variations and related words where they make sense.
The text should still be written for a human being.
Each page should have one clear main topic
If a single page tries to rank for 15 different services, it quickly becomes unclear what the page is actually about.
It is often better to give the most important services their own pages.
For example, one page about web hosting could go into detail about hosting, backups, and operations, while another page could focus on web design.
This allows for more space to answer the questions specific to that topic.
And that makes the website easier to understand—both for visitors and search engines.
SEO Doesn’t Start with Google
It all starts with the customer.
What problem is this person trying to solve?
What words do they use themselves?
And what do they need to know before they can determine whether your business is relevant?
Once you have those answers, it becomes much easier to choose the right keywords and write pages that make sense to both people and search engines.
See also: Website Content—How to Avoid Sounding Like Everyone Else
The two things are closely related.
It doesn’t help much to find the perfect keyword if the rest of the text could still belong to any competitor.
Try searching as a customer
Forget the company’s own language for a moment.
Imagine that you don’t know the name of your product, service, or process. You just know what problem you want to solve.
What would you type into Google?
Then check the website.
Does it use the same words?
If not, you may have found one of the first places worth exploring further.
SEO doesn’t start with finding as many keywords as possible
It starts with understanding what the customer is looking for, what words they use, and what they need to know in order to choose you.
Once that’s in place, it becomes much easier to write pages that make sense to both people and search engines.
