The words you write and how they apply to SEO

Years ago we had a client that was a chain of auto repair shops on the West Coast.   The copy they used was “We’ll mend your automobile”, and they used this all over their site.      Some Advertising Agency thought it was clever,  they paid tens of thousands of dollars for that catch phrase.

The problem is no one was searching for “automobile mending”  they were searching for “car repair”.

Google did autocorrect them to an extent.    Some individuals saw the company in some limited searches,  mostly because how how people linked to them with the word “car repair”.   The end result however is that they company was only getting a fraction, a tiny fraction of the attention they deserved.

This is a problem, a big problem specifically for that client.   They used the wrong words to describe their business.

Within a year their online leads increased by 4 fold.     In other words that minor switch from their old catchphrase to their new one fixed their online search engine optimization problem.

The words you write are important,  very important.    Don’t use industry insider terms, use the layman terms if you are in a B2C space.  Your clients don’t know,  and actually don’t care to know your industry terms.    In this case they just wanted their car to work.

Another problem is many companies describe their solution,  not the problem people are having.

This was the opening sentence for a local company.  “Our replacements give you years of trouble free service”  What people were searching however was “Windows are stuck”

The words “stuck” and even “Windows” were not in their copy,  in fact they referrered to their product as “replacements” .

A 100% miss!  The adjustment to the copy increased their sales dramatically.

You need to think before you write the words on your site,  the line of thought should be as simple as “what are my clients looking for”.