Keywords for small business: using the words customers search

A keyword is simply the words a customer types into Google when they need you. For a local business, the right keywords are usually plain: the service in your customers' words, plus your town or area. "Furnace repair Lansing." "Dog groomer near Plano." Your job is to make sure each important page on your site uses those words naturally, in the places Google and people read first, without cramming them in.

Your words versus your customers' words

The most common keyword problem on small-business sites is not missing keywords. It is using the trade's words instead of the customer's.

A few examples of the gap:

A plumber writes "drain line remediation". The customer searches "clogged drain".
A dentist writes "restorative dentistry". The patient searches "crown for broken tooth".
An HVAC company writes "climate control solutions". The homeowner searches "AC not cooling".
A lawyer writes "estate planning". Many clients search "how to make a will".
A salon writes "chemical services". The client searches "perm" or "hair color".

Your professional terms are not wrong, and they can stay on the page. But the customer's version needs to be there too, usually first. The quickest way to find out what your customers say is to listen to how they describe their problem on the phone. How to find what customers search for covers the tools for checking that.

The formula for local businesses: service plus place

Most people looking for a local business type two things: what they need and where. Sometimes they type the place, such as "roofer Bend Oregon". Sometimes they type "near me", and Google fills in the place from their phone's location.

So for each main service you offer, your site should say, clearly and in normal sentences:

What the service is, in the customer's words.
Where you provide it, with real town names.

You do not need to write "near me" anywhere. Google works out "near me" from the searcher's location and your business address or service area. Writing "best plumber near me" on your page does nothing useful and reads strangely.

One page, one main topic

Each important page should be about one main thing, with its own keyword. This is why a separate page for each service matters.

Here is how that might look for a small landscaping company:

Home page: landscaping in Greenville, SC (the business as a whole)
Lawn care page: lawn mowing and lawn care in Greenville
Hardscaping page: patios, retaining walls and walkways
Tree and shrub page: shrub trimming and small tree removal
Contact page: name, phone, address, hours, service area

If the home page tries to cover every service in one long list, Google has to guess which one the page is really about. If each service has its own page, each one can match the searches for that service. Writing a page for each service you offer explains how to build them.

Where to put the keyword on a page

Once you know a page's main words, use them in these places:

The page title. This is the line in the browser tab and usually the blue headline in Google's results. Example: "Lawn Care in Greenville, SC | Upstate Yard Co." Keep it under about sixty characters so it does not get cut off. Page titles and descriptions covers how to write and change them.
The main heading on the page. The big headline at the top. "Lawn care for Greenville homes" works.
The first paragraph. Say what the page is about in the first sentence or two, the way you would answer a customer.
A few subheadings, where they fit naturally. "How often we mow", "Lawn care prices", "Areas we cover".
The page address. For a new page, a short address like /lawn-care/ is better than /page-id-1234/. Do not change existing addresses just for this, though, unless you forward the old ones.
Photo descriptions. The short text that describes each photo (called alt text) can mention the service when it actually describes the photo: "Freshly mowed front lawn in a Greenville neighborhood".

That is all. You do not need a keyword in every sentence.

What keyword stuffing looks like, and why to avoid it

Keyword stuffing is repeating the same phrase so many times that the page reads badly. For example:

"We are the best roofing company in Dayton. Our Dayton roofing company offers roof repair in Dayton and roof replacement in Dayton. Call our Dayton roofers for Dayton roofing today."

Nobody talks like that, and Google has treated this as spam for many years. It can make a page less likely to show, not more. Worse, a customer who lands on it sees a page that looks like it was written for a machine.

A better version says the same thing once, naturally:

"We repair and replace roofs across Dayton and the surrounding towns, from Kettering to Huber Heights. Most repairs are done the same week."

Google understands that "AC repair", "air conditioner repair" and "air conditioning service" mean nearly the same thing. You do not need a separate page for each variation. Use them naturally across the page, the way different customers would phrase it.

Related words also show Google you know the subject. A water heater page that mentions tank and tankless models, gas and electric, pilot lights, leaks, and the usual brands reads like it was written by someone who fixes water heaters. That is the kind of page Google is trying to find.

Words that do not earn a place

Some keywords are not worth chasing for a small local business:

Very broad words like "plumbing" or "insurance" on their own. They are too general, and people who search them may want a definition or a national company.
Words for things you do not offer. If you do not do commercial work, do not write about it to catch the searches. The calls you get will be ones you turn away.
Towns you do not actually serve. A list of forty towns you rarely visit does not help anyone and can backfire with Google.

What to do this week

Write down your five main services in the words customers use on the phone.
Check that each one has its own page, or note which ones are missing.
For each existing page, look at the browser tab. Does the title say the service and your town?
Read the first paragraph of each page. Does it say what the page is about, in plain words?
Read one page out loud and rewrite any sentence that sounds stuffed.

If your current site has one page trying to say everything, you can see your site rebuilt first, with a page for each service in your customers' own words.