You’re searching like an expert, not a customer

Most business owners approach keywords the same way. They sit down with their web designer or their SEO person, they’re asked what phrases they want to rank for, and they come up with a list that sounds very professional and very logical and very much like how they’d describe their own business to a peer at a networking event.

And that list is almost completely useless.

Is that you?

Look, this doesn’t happen because you’re bad at your job, far from it. It’s because you’re too close to your own business to see it the way a stranger sees it. You know too much. Your customers, the ones who haven’t found you yet, know nothing. And those two things are not speaking the same language.

Want to listen instead of read? I have you covered:

Why your keyword assumptions are probably wrong

When you sit down and brainstorm what people might search for, the answers you come up with are shaped by three things: how you talk about your business internally, how you describe it to other business owners, and how you imagine your ideal client would refer to you.

None of those is the same as how someone who has never heard of you, has a problem that needs solving, and has just opened Google, would phrase a search.

That person isn’t thinking about you yet. They’re thinking about their problem. They’re searching in problem language. Panic language, sometimes. They’re not going to use your industry’s terminology because they don’t know it – and they don’t need to. Google is where they go to figure things out, not to confirm something they’ve already decided.

The proximity problem – you know too much about your own business

This isn’t a criticism – it’s almost inevitable. The longer you’ve been in your industry, the more fluent you become in its language, and the harder it gets to remember what it was like not to know any of it.

Your customers are not fluent. They are, at best, functional. They know they have a problem. They know roughly what area it’s in. They do not know the correct term for the solution, and they’re not going to Google it before they’ve worked out what it is.

This proximity problem is why I always recommend business owners ask someone outside their industry how they’d search for their services. Your partner. A friend who definitely doesn’t know what a fractional CMO is. Their answers will probably make you wince a bit. Write them down anyway, because those are the words your customers are using.

Industry language vs customer language – what the gap looks like in practice

Let’s make this concrete, because abstract explanations of this problem are everywhere and they don’t land the same way examples do.

• You’re a financial planning consultancy for high-net-worth individuals. Your customers are searching “financial advisor near me,” “how do I stop wasting money,” and “do I need a financial advisor or can I just use my bank.” They are not typing your company description into Google.

• You’re an HR consultant. Your customers are searching “do I need HR if I’ve got five staff,” “how to fire someone legally UK,” and “HR support for small business.” Not “human resources consultancy.”

• You’re a cybersecurity firm. Your customers are searching “how do I know if my business has been hacked,” “do small businesses need cybersecurity,” and “what happens if customer data gets stolen.” Not “managed cybersecurity services.”

The pattern is the same every time. You’re thinking in industry language. Your customers are thinking in problems, questions, and mild panic.

I’m not saying the more formal phrases are worthless – some of them are actually what people search for. But there’s almost always a gap between what you think people search for and what they type, and that gap is often where your SEO is quietly disappearing.

Why targeting only “final decision” phrases is harder than you think

There’s another layer to this, which is about where in the buying journey someone is when they search.

The phrases business owners tend to prioritise are what I’d call final decision phrases. “HR consultant Bristol.” “Financial advisor Edinburgh.” “Cybersecurity company for small business.” These are searches from people who already know what they need and are looking for someone to provide it.

That sounds ideal, right? The problem is that everyone else in your industry is trying to rank for exactly the same phrases. These are the most competitive, most fought-over searches in your space.

But the people at the beginning of their journey – the ones with questions, confusion, and a vague sense that something needs fixing – are often completely uncontested territory. Nobody’s fighting for “do I need an accountant if I’m self-employed” the way they’re fighting for “accountant Sheffield.”

And there’s a real advantage to showing up early. If you answer someone’s question properly before they’ve even decided they’re ready to buy, you’re not just a company that appeared in a search result when they went looking. You’re the people who already helped them. That’s a different starting point for a conversation.

If you want to go deeper on this, my post on the SEO search intent problem hiding in your website copy gets into how to check whether Google actually agrees with your interpretation of a phrase – which is a separate problem worth knowing about.

The “that’s not exactly what we do” trap

Something I come across constantly is business owners dismissing keyword opportunities because the phrase doesn’t perfectly describe their service.

“We don’t just do accountancy for self-employed people, we do full business accountancy.” OK. But if a self-employed person lands on your website because you’ve answered their question, and discovers you also do everything else they might ever need, you’ve got a client. Stop being precious about it, FFS.

“We don’t just fix computers, we offer comprehensive IT support.” Right. And your customer is currently Googling “laptop keeps freezing fix.” Meet them there.

The question is never “does this phrase perfectly describe us.” The question is “do the people typing this phrase need what we offer.” If yes, you should be there.

How to find out what your customers actually search for (no tools needed)

This is the bit I want you to actually do, because it takes about twenty minutes, costs nothing, and will almost certainly make you swear at least once.

Open Google. Go incognito (so your own browsing history doesn’t skew what you see). Think about the main thing you sell – not what you call it, but what problem it solves.

Start typing the beginning of a question someone with that problem might ask. Something like “how do I…” or “do I need…” or “what’s the difference between…” and then the general area of your business. Don’t finish the sentence. Watch what Google suggests.

Those suggestions come from real searches by real people. Screenshot them.

Then complete the search and look at the People Also Ask section. Expand every single question. Screenshot those too. These are literally Google showing you what your audience is asking – for free, in real time.

Scroll to the bottom of the results page and look at the related searches. More data. More free. More real.

You now have a list of actual questions that actual people are typing into Google right now. Go and check whether your website answers any of them. If it doesn’t, you’ve just found your next few pieces of content – not a blog about your company, not a post about National Whatever Day, but content that gets you in front of people who need you before they’ve decided who to call.

When you’re ready for a keyword tool

If you want to go further, there are tools that make this process much more thorough. I cover keyword research properly in the non-wanky SEO course, but the free tool I’d point you to first is Also Asked, built by Mark Williams-Cook, who is one of the few people in this industry I’d recommend without hesitation. You put in a phrase and it maps out the questions people are “actually asking” around that topic. It’ll change how you think about content.

For checking search volumes and finding related phrases, Ahrefs has a free keyword generator worth bookmarking too.

But before any tool, the most useful thing you can do is honestly interrogate your own assumptions. Because you have them. Everyone does. The keyword list you came up with off the top of your head is shaped more by how you think about your business than by how your customers search for it.

That gap is where your SEO is going.

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Know your keywords but struggling to make them work on the page? Then you need my now free on-page SEO toolkit.