A little over a month ago I wrote about the difference between words people search with and words marketers prefer to use on a website. I came across a good example of this on the Bell Canada site a few days ago. Well, actually, this is a little bit of a different case. In this case, the words I was using to search didn't connect with the words the company was using to describe the information I was looking for.

I was trying to find out what the boundaries are for local calling in my area. I went to the website and started browsing around their support area. I checked all of the likely areas through the navigation and couldn't find anything. That was the first problem. Then I tried to search for various permutations of "local calling boundaries." No luck. Finally, while digging through their support information I realized that they refer to local calling stations. Then I did a search for that and found the information I needed under "Service Areas and Calling Zones."

This an example of a long-tail search. I was looking for very specific information buried deep on the company's website. They probably posted it without thinking about how people were going to find it. Even if they did some SEO work, they wouldn't bother doing any keyword research on a page like this.

The lesson here is that the words people search with may be different than the words your company uses and may also be different from the words your marketing team would prefer to use. (Never mind that in many cases people won't understand your corporate lingo to begin with!) In order for the information to be found on a search, the words people are searching with have to appear in the document. As in my example, people may recognize what you mean when they see it, but you have to make sure they can find it on a search as well.

You could also get more search traffic just by diversifying the words you're using to describe certain information (without going overboard, of course!). How often do you go to a search engine and wonder what words to type in to find the information you need? If you put some effort into thinking about the different words people would use to search for your information, you could get much better results for long-tail searches.