Keyword Research.

Keyword research answers the question of which words people use when searching for an offer. That is often not the language a company uses internally. A plumbing business talks about 'pipe flushing'; customers search for 'blocked drain'. A fiduciary firm offers 'tax advice for private individuals'; people search for 'have my tax return done'. Research brings these two languages together.

Three things are assessed for every term found: search volume (how often is it searched for?), keyword difficulty (how strong is the competition?) and search intent (does the person want to know something, compare or buy?). A term with little volume but clear buying intent and a local reference is often more valuable to an SME than a high-volume term mainly used by people looking for information.

The data sources have limits you need to know. Tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Sistrix estimate search volume from panel and click data. For Switzerland, with its small market, these estimates are particularly uncertain. In our own comparisons, SEMrush volumes in three competitor exports were a factor of 3 to 30 higher than the values in the Google Keyword Planner. Building a strategy on them means planning for visitors who never come. Cross-checks with the Keyword Planner and, where available, your own Search Console data are therefore mandatory.

The end result is not a long list but an assignment: which term is served by which page, which terms are bundled into a content cluster, which long-tail keywords are covered as sections or FAQs on existing pages, and which terms are deliberately not tackled?