Thinking that he was able to check my profile, thinking he knows what I can’t and being able to clarify my job scope and responsibilities, we go ahead.
I have to check the website content, also get keywords that he think he should rank, competitors, and details that will help me find relevant keywords that we could target – and also, I’m not using this kind of products, not also very familiar, not even aware on how things are in his market in his country.
A day after, he wants the list of keywords that I’ve scoured without waiting for my official report with details – search volume, competition, and even the explanation. Since he asked, and I even insist for him to wait, but then he wants the list right away, so I gave it to him. Few seconds later he was so angry, because he finds the keywords I gave him is not relevant – and note the words I used, are basing from his own words and the words he used on the website. He was also triggered because he wants me to be online when he’s awake, and we have never talked about night differentials, if he just mention that he wants me to work night shift, I won’t accept the project at all – let’s talk about this on the other time.
Anyway, I tried to explain and tell him not wait for the report, but he fired me right away. He’s thinking that the keywords I just gave him are made up. That I made it up. Did I?
In this blog post (I know the intro was quite long), let me answer that question. Since he didn’t want to listen, and I would like to assume others are assuming this too – that keywords are made up by us (SEOs).
Who makes the keywords?
If you ask if your SEOs are the one making the keywords, or if even Google have to do with those keywords, let me answer you right away, NO. We’re not responsible for it.Then who makes it? The answer is actually simple, the ones who making it up are the search engine users, the Googlers, the researchers, YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS.
Search engines like Google is simply gathering all the keywords that they enter on that text area and click “I’M FEELING LUCKY” button to start to search the Google database, or just hit enter. Once they do that, Google then records the word(s) they use, and match it to the content of the websites that have that word(s) and display all the website links that are relevant to that word(s). That then word or set of words they used, are what we call the keywords.
I’ve been planning to finally go to Thailand this year, hopefully if I’ll get more clients I’ll be able to push through this vacation since I’m only getting it twice this year. So I did a bit of keyword research about the destinations for my blog, and vlog, so I thought let’s use those keywords as a sample for this explanation.
#
|
Keyword
|
Search Volume
|
Number of Results
|
1
|
bangkok thailand
|
18,100
|
104,000,000
|
2
|
thailand bangkok
|
1,600
|
442,000,000
|
3
|
bangkock thailand
|
30
|
102,000,000
|
These are just few differences of how users enter keywords, they might misspell it, and they might switch it, or use the proper one. This tells you that your SEO specialist, that I am not making things up.
These data is from Google by the way. I am not making this up, you can check it yourself. Go to Google, enter the keyword and you’ll see about similar number for the number of search results – since it can change any time due to the growing number of websites build every day.
Can I make my own keyword?
Sure! I have a client before that made up a keyword, and now he’s known for that keyword. First thing that comes to people’s mind when you say those words, it’s him.
But my question is, are you your client? SEOs purpose is to be found. Is it supposed to be knowing your customers, and if you have what they’re looking for, we’ll offer it to them.
I don’t discourage you to make up your own word. And no, I won’t make up a word for you. My words are based on the people of the internet.
If you want to know more detail and discussion about keywords and which among these keywords you should choose, then do visit this blog again, follow me on my social media accounts to get the updates!
But let me know what you think. Hopefully I answered the question. Did i?
And oh, about that client. I happily let him go. Clients with huge trust issues are really difficult to work with. So, I didn’t mind at all on letting him go.