In Gerry McGovern’s most recent edition of his excellent New Thinking e-mail newsletter, he covers a bit of interesting territory regarding web content. Are the words people use to search the same words they want to see when they land on your website? Here’s what Gerry has to say about it: “The words that people search with may not always be the words they would like to read when they arrive at a webpage. Search needs to be understood as a particular type of mental behaviour. Once the customer arrives at a webpage, a whole new set of words may kick in. One set of words to bring customers to your website-another set to get them to complete a task.”

The example he uses is a search for cheap hotels. Now, if you were to do a search for cheap hotels, or even discount hotels, it doesn’t mean you want a crappy hotel. You just don’t want to pay more than you have to. So, searching for a cheap hotel doesn’t mean you want to land on a website that has a headline something like “Here’s a cheap hotel!”

This search vs. web words difference isn’t universal, but it is a good exercise to think about what you want a site visitor to do once you get them to your site:

• make sure they see the keywords or phrases that let them know they are in the right place
• help them complete a task by making it easy to find what they want, whether it’s watch a demo, download a white paper, get customer support, etc
• use the right words to make them comfortable as you guide them to complete a task