Why customers cannot find you even though the page describes your work
Because you are describing it in your words and they are searching in theirs. Google does not know what your business does; it only knows what your website says. If your homepage says “quality workmanship you can trust” but never says “boiler repair in Swindon”, you will not appear when someone searches for boiler repair in Swindon, however good you are at it.
This is the most common problem on local business websites, and it has nothing to do with technology. It is wording. Businesses describe themselves in general terms — “a wide range of services”, “the local area”, “all aspects of the trade” — because it feels professional and keeps every option open. General words match nothing.
The other half of the problem is the opposite: precision in the wrong vocabulary. An electrician writes “domestic electrical installation condition reports undertaken”; the landlord types “EICR certificate”. A tree firm writes “arboricultural services”; the homeowner types “tree surgeon near me”. Both are specific. Only one is specific in the language of the person with the money.
The good news: this is the cheapest meaningful improvement you can make to a website. No new pages, no code, no subscription — you are changing sentences you already have. Reckon on half an hour per page, starting with the homepage.
What you need before you start. Access to edit your website, or whoever edits it for you. A list of your main services. The towns you actually work in. A browser, for the research below. That is the lot — every research method in this guide is free and none of them needs an account except Search Console, which is also free.
What Google actually says about writing for search
Google says to write for the reader and to expect that different readers use different words — and it says nothing whatsoever about keyword density. Its SEO starter guide, last updated 10 December 2025, has a section headed “Expect your readers’ search terms” which reads: “Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, some users might search for ‘charcuterie’, while others might search for ‘cheese board’.”
That is this whole guide in one paragraph, written by Google, about a cheese board. Your trade has its own charcuterie problem, and the rest of this page is about finding it.
The same section adds a reassurance worth holding on to: “don’t worry if you don’t anticipate every variation of how someone might seek your content. Google’s language matching systems are sophisticated and can understand how your page relates to many queries, even if you don’t explicitly use the exact terms in them.” You are not building a dictionary. You are making sure the obvious words are on the page at all.
The two things Google tells you not to do
Google’s spam policies, last updated 28 August 2026, define keyword stuffing as “the practice of filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings in Google Search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, unnaturally, or out of context.” It gives three examples, and the middle one is aimed squarely at local trades: “Blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for.” If your footer carries forty town names, that is the policy you are on the wrong side of.
Its helpful content guidance, last updated 10 December 2025, adds a warning against writing to a length: “Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t.)” The same page tells you to aim for “people-first content” rather than “search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings”.
Notice what is missing: a percentage. There is no published keyword density target anywhere in Google’s documentation and no number of mentions you are meant to hit. Advice built on “aim for 1.5% density” is folklore, not guidance.
How to find the words your customers actually use, for free
Five sources, all free, and between them they give you more real phrases than you can use. The first three take ten minutes.
1. Google UK autocomplete
Start typing your service into Google and read the predictions. Google’s own help page states that “autocomplete predictions reflect real searches that have been done on Google”, which is why this is evidence rather than a hunch. Two habits make it far more useful than most people realise:
- Expand with the alphabet. Type your service then a space then a, read the list, then b, and so on. Each letter surfaces a different set of real searches.
- Expand with modifiers. Add cost, near me, how much, best, emergency, uk, who does. These reveal what stage the searcher is at, which tells you what the page has to answer.
Here is what came back on Google UK on 15 September 2026. Nothing is edited; these are the predictions as returned.
| You type | Google predicts (top few) | What that tells you |
|---|---|---|
| tree surgeon | tree surgeon near me · tree surgeon · tree surgeon salary · tree surgeon cost | Customer word. Lead with it. |
| arboricultural | arboricultural · arboricultural association · arboricultural survey · arboricultural meaning | Trade word. People are looking up what it means. |
| end of tenancy | end of tenancy cleaning · end of tenancy cleaning prices · end of tenancy cleaning near me | Price is the second thing they want. |
| fused spur | fused spur socket · fused spur switch · how to wire a fused spur · how much to install a fused spur | The customer’s name for the part. |
| fcu electrical | fcu electrical meaning · fcu electrical symbol · fcu electrical connection | Your name for the same part. Nobody outside the trade knows it. |
| eicr | eicr certificate · eicr meaning · eicr certificate cost · eicr testing | Widely searched but not understood. Use it and explain it. |
I ran the same check across twenty ordinary UK trade terms, from boiler repair and damp proofing to mobile hairdresser, man and van and garden clearance. Nineteen of the twenty returned at least one “near me” prediction — block paving was the only exception — and thirteen returned at least one cost, price or “how much” prediction. Whatever else goes on a service page, the town and some honest indication of price are what people are typing.
2. The “People also ask” box
Search your service and scroll. The cluster of questions partway down the results page is what Google calls a related questions group; its own documentation for site owners says of these features: “While you can’t control what shows up here, it can be helpful to pay attention to the related search queries when you’re thinking about topics you could write about for your site.”
Open one question and two or three more appear. Ten minutes of that gives you the real worries in your trade, phrased by customers. They become the subheadings on your service page, or a short guide of your own.
3. Related searches at the foot of the results page
Scroll to the bottom. Google describes a related searches group as “a cluster of related searches that other people have done”. This is where you find the neighbouring jobs you do but never mention — the roofer who discovers people searching for fascias and soffits, the cleaner who discovers oven cleaning.
4. Your Search Console query report
This is the only one that tells you about your site rather than the market. In Google Search Console, open the Performance report and pick the Queries tab. Google’s help describes that dimension plainly: it “groups your data by the search query users typed”. Those are the exact words people typed when your site appeared.
Read it two ways. Sort by impressions and look for phrases with many appearances and almost no clicks: you are showing up and being passed over, usually because your title does not match the question. Then scan for phrases you have never written on your site at all. People are finding you in spite of your wording, and putting their words on the page properly usually moves you up. One caveat from the same help page — “even if a query appears in your list, you might not see your site in results if you run the same query in Google Search”, because results vary by time, place, device and history.
5. Your own enquiry emails and phone notes
The best source is already in your inbox. Open your last twenty enquiries and read only the customer’s first sentence — theirs, not your reply. “Hi, our drive is looking tired, do you do the black tarmac stuff?” is not how you would describe resurfacing, and it is exactly how the next person will type it. Write down the nouns they use for the job, for the problem, and for where they live. Nine times in ten it matches what autocomplete predicted, which is a useful sign you are not chasing a ghost.
You do not need a paid keyword tool for this. Paid tools give you search volumes, which matter if you are choosing between two whole business strategies. For deciding whether your page should say “tree surgeon” or “arboricultural services”, the free sources above answer it in five minutes and the answer is not close.
The “meaning” test: is your trade word the customer’s word?
Type your trade word into Google and look for the word meaning in the predictions. If it is there, the public does not know the term. On 15 September 2026 that test came back positive for “eicr meaning”, “fcu electrical meaning”, “arboricultural meaning”, “balayage meaning” and “fascias and soffits meaning”.
What it does not mean is delete the word. EICR is searched heavily in its own right — “eicr certificate”, “eicr certificate cost” and “eicr certificate for landlords” all come back as predictions — so an electrician who drops it loses the landlords who do know the term. Balayage is the same: a real search, and a word plenty of people are looking up.
Use both, in the customer’s order. Lead with the plain description and put the trade term next to it: “Electrical safety checks for landlords — an EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report) for rented homes in Basingstoke.” That one sentence can match “electrical safety check”, “EICR”, “EICR for landlords” and the town, and it still reads like English.
Before and after: real rewrites across eight trades
Every “after” below uses wording that came back in Google UK autocomplete on 15 September 2026, and every one is still a sentence you would say to a customer standing in front of you.
| Trade | What the website says now | What the customer types |
|---|---|---|
| Electrician | “Domestic electrical installation condition reports undertaken.” | “EICR certificates for landlords — electrical safety checks in Swindon.” |
| Electrician | “FCU supply installed to client specification.” | “Fused spur fitted for a new cooker, boiler or shower.” |
| Tree work | “Arboricultural services for domestic and commercial clients.” | “Tree surgeon in Bath — felling, crown reduction and stump removal.” |
| Hairdresser | “Balayage and ombré specialists.” | “Balayage — soft blonde highlights that grow out without a hard line.” |
| Damp specialist | “Damp proof course injection carried out to industry standard.” | “Rising damp treatment, including injected damp proof courses.” |
| Cleaner | “Vacate and reinstatement cleans for the lettings sector.” | “End of tenancy cleaning — prices from the room count, not the hour.” |
| Driveways | “Resin bound surfacing systems installed nationwide.” | “Resin driveways in Chippenham — what they cost per square metre.” |
| Anyone | “We offer a wide range of services throughout the local area.” | “Boiler repairs, bathroom plumbing and central heating installation across Swindon, Marlborough and Chippenham.” |
The pattern in every row is the same: a vague or internal noun becomes the job as a customer names it, and a place appears. That is the whole technique.
Where the words go on the page, in order of weight
Start with the main heading, because it carries more weight than any other line on the page and it is usually the most wasted. “Welcome to our website”, or just your business name, tells Google nothing. Google’s helpful content guidance asks directly: “Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?”
Then work down in this order:
- Main heading (the big one at the top). Say what you do and where: “Plumbing and heating in Swindon”, “Family-run dog walkers covering Bristol and Bath”. Your business name lives in the logo.
- Opening paragraph. The first forty words are what a search engine and an AI assistant will most readily quote. Name the trade, the main services and the base town.
- Section headings. One per service, in the customer’s noun. These are what the “People also ask” research feeds.
- Body text. Naturally, wherever the job comes up.
- Page title and meta description. Different from the heading and worth their own half hour — see how to write a good page title.
A structure that works for almost every local service business: a heading of [main service] in [main town], then an opening paragraph along the lines of “We’re a family-run [trade] based in [town], covering [town], [town] and the surrounding villages. We do [service], [service] and [service], and most of our work comes from repeat customers.” Adjust it until it sounds like you. It is a starting point, not a script, but it guarantees the essentials are there.
Do not hide the words in images. If your services are listed in a graphic, on a photo of your van, or inside a designed banner, search engines mostly cannot read them. Try selecting the text with your mouse. If you cannot select it, treat it as invisible and put the same words in real text on the page.
The line between specific and stuffed
The test is whether you would say the sentence out loud to a customer. “We provide boiler repair Swindon services for boiler repair customers in Swindon” fails, and it fails against Google’s own published definition of keyword stuffing, not against a matter of taste.
Three habits that cross the line, all of them common on local trade sites:
- The town list. A paragraph or footer naming thirty places. This is the exact example Google gives — “blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for”. Name your base and a handful of real areas. If you genuinely serve many towns and want to be found in each, a proper location page per town is the legitimate way, and each one has to have something different on it.
- The service string. “Plumber, plumbing, emergency plumber, local plumber, plumbers near me” run together as a sentence. Customers read this as a machine wrote it, because one did.
- The invisible list. Words hidden in white text, behind an image or off-screen. Google treats concealed text as a separate spam issue from stuffing, and it is the oldest trick in the book.
Read the finished page aloud before you publish. Every sentence should be one you would happily say in a customer’s kitchen. Natural and specific is the target, and one clear mention beats five forced ones.
Does this help AI assistants recommend you?
Yes, and there is no separate technique for it. Google states plainly in its documentation for site owners that “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary”, and that to be eligible as a supporting link a page must simply be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.
The mechanism explains why plain wording matters more here, not less. An assistant answering “who can repoint a wall near Bath?” needs a page that says something it can repeat. “We’re a family-run bricklaying firm covering Bath and the surrounding villages, and repointing is most of what we do” is quotable. “Quality craftsmanship since 2005” answers nothing the question asked.
Google also describes AI Overviews and AI Mode using a “query fan-out” technique — issuing several related searches across subtopics to build one answer. That rewards a page covering the neighbouring questions in ordinary language, which is exactly what the “People also ask” research gives you. For the fuller picture on assistants, see getting your business into ChatGPT.
What to expect after you change the wording
Expect impressions before clicks, and expect it in weeks rather than days. Google re-reads changed pages on its own schedule and promises no timescale — its documentation on recrawling is explicit that requesting a crawl guarantees nothing about when, or whether, a page is reindexed. Treat any “within 48 hours” claim with suspicion.
Correction. An earlier version of this guide said Google usually re-reads changed pages “within days to a couple of weeks”. That was an estimate, not a published figure, and Google does not publish one. The honest version: it varies by site, and Search Console’s URL Inspection tool will tell you the date your page was last crawled, which is the only number that applies to you.
The sequence that usually follows a wording fix: the page starts appearing for searches it was invisible for, impressions in Search Console rise first, and clicks follow as those appearances climb. Give it a month before you look properly, two or three before you draw conclusions.
Then do the rest. Homepage first, then one service page at a time. While you are at it, make your Google Business Profile services list use the same words as the site, because customers see both and Google reads both. And when your existing pages say what you actually do, the bigger step is a dedicated page for each main service — the wording skills from this guide carry straight over.
Common questions
- What keywords should I use for my website?
- The words your customers already type, which you can read straight off Google UK autocomplete, People also ask and your own Search Console query report. For a local service business that is usually a plain service name, the same name with a town after it, the same name with near me, and the same name with cost or prices. You do not need a paid tool, and you do not need a long list.
- How do I find out what people are searching for on Google?
- Type the start of a phrase into Google and read the predictions. Google's own help page says autocomplete predictions reflect real searches that have been done on Google, so the list is evidence, not opinion. Then scroll a results page and read the People also ask box and the related searches at the foot. If your site is live, Search Console's performance report shows the exact queries your pages appeared for.
- Is keyword density a ranking factor?
- No. Google publishes no target density and none of its documentation mentions one. What it does publish is a spam policy against keyword stuffing, which it defines as filling a page with keywords to manipulate rankings, and a warning in its helpful content guidance against writing to a particular word count because you have heard Google prefers one. Density percentages are SEO folklore, not Google guidance.
- How many times should a keyword appear on a page?
- As many times as normal writing about that job would use it, which is usually two to five on a short page. There is no published number. Say the service in the main heading, once in the opening paragraph, and again wherever it naturally comes up. One clear mention in a sentence you would say out loud beats five forced ones, and forced repetition is the exact thing Google's spam policy names.
- What is keyword stuffing and why should it be avoided?
- Google's spam policies define keyword stuffing as filling a web page with keywords or numbers to manipulate rankings, often appearing in a list or group, unnaturally, or out of context. One of its own examples matters to every local trade: blocks of text that list cities and regions a page is trying to rank for. It is a spam policy, so it risks the page being demoted or dropped, and it reads badly to customers too.
- Should I use trade words or the words customers use?
- Use the customer's word first and the trade word alongside it. Google's own SEO starter guide makes the point with a food example: some people search for charcuterie, others for cheese board. The quick test is to type your trade word into Google and see whether the predictions include the word meaning. When they do, as with EICR and arboricultural, searchers do not know the term, so define it rather than leading with it.
- Will this help AI tools recommend my business?
- It helps, for the same reason it helps Google, and there is no separate trick. Google states there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode and no special optimisations necessary, only helpful, people-first content on an indexed page. An assistant can only repeat a claim it can read, so a sentence naming the job and the town is quotable and a sentence about quality craftsmanship is not.
- Why isn't my website showing on Google search?
- Wording is one of several possible reasons and the cheapest to rule out. If your pages never name the service in the words people type, there is nothing for Google to match, however good the work is. But a page can also be unindexed, blocked, brand new, or beaten by stronger local competitors. Check in Search Console whether the page is indexed at all before you assume the problem is the writing.
Related guides
Sources, all checked 15 September 2026. Google Search Central, “SEO Starter Guide” (page states last updated 10 December 2025) — the “Expect your readers’ search terms” section and the charcuterie / cheese board example. Google Search Central, “Spam policies for Google web search” (28 August 2026) — the definition of keyword stuffing and its examples, including blocks of text listing cities and regions. Google Search Central, “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content” (10 December 2025) — the self-assessment questions, the word-count answer and search engine-first content. Google Search Central, “AI features and your website” (10 December 2025) — no additional requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and query fan-out. Google Search Central, “Visual Element gallery” — the related questions group (People also ask) and related searches group. Google Search Help, “How Google autocomplete predictions work” — predictions reflect real searches. Google Search Console Help, “Performance report (Search)” — the Queries dimension and the warning that results vary by time, place, device and history. Autocomplete data: 108 seed and expansion queries run against Google UK autocomplete (suggestqueries.google.com, hl=en, gl=uk) on 15 September 2026; the twenty-trade tally and every prediction quoted above comes from that run and can be repeated by typing the same phrase into Google. Two things could not be established from a primary source and are deliberately given as no figure above: how long Google takes to recrawl a changed page, and how many queries Search Console withholds from its Queries tab. Google publishes neither.