I’ve been watching a site, as have many of us in Manchester, focused on ranking number 1 on the Google for the term “SEO Manchester” It’s quite a remarkable effort. The domain is young but keyword rich and it doesn’t have great link equity. Yet it ranks. I’m in two minds whether to link out to it as it’s doing well enough already, thank you very much. But you can see some good technique in play from the chap who delivered it. However, the question that you must ask is, is this a useful term or a vanity term? Do people actually use the term “SEO Manchester” to find search engine optimisation services? It’s an issue that we come up against constantly with clients: understanding the terms that your (potential) clients are actually using to find services like yours as opposed to the terms that you imagine that they use. Clients often want vanity terms. The great thing about what we do is that we can measure and test supposition against actual results. What do we think potential client around Manchester will use to find search engine optimisation services? What do they actually use? and crucially, what converts into an enquiry? It’s the conversion that matters most to us. In many ways, selling rankings is a disservice to the client. A ranking in itself is useless. A meaningful conversion is everything and a relevant search ranking that leads to that conversion has purpose.

Using Googles External Adwords tool, we can get some data as to what is used to find a broad range of SEO services. Here’s a completely inexhaustive list using a small set of seed terms with no regional qualifier:

Interestingly, SEO doesn’t appear in any phrase until position 9. Internet Marketing appears to generate the most queries. Whether it converts into enquiries is another matter. It is a familiarity of terminology and perhaps a vanity of our own industry that we want to be King of SEO in Manchester. But does the potential client care?