--- title: "What your neighbours search on Google before hiring you (and how to find it out for free)" description: "Your customers don't search the way you think. Discover for free the exact words they use on Google and where to put them on your website so they find you." date: "2026-10-25" category: "Local SEO" keywords: "what people search on google, local business keywords, customer searches, appear on google for free, keywords for my website" portada: "/portadas/portada-lo-que-buscan-tus-vecinos-en-google.webp" --- A plumber in Telde once told me: "I know exactly what people search, they search *plumber*." He searched that. His customers typed things like *my bathroom is flooded*, *unblock drain price* or *emergency plumber Sunday*. His website had the word "plumber" once, in the logo. He had gone two years without a single call coming from Google. This is not a problem of his trade. It is the most common problem of small business websites: the website speaks the owner's language and the customers search in theirs. And there is no way to get it right by intuition, because nobody knows how another person searches until they see it written down. The good news is that those words are in plain sight, for free, and you can find them out in under half an hour. This is how it is done. ## The problem: you describe your trade, they describe their urgency You think in categories: plumbing, climate control, full renovations. They think about the specific problem, at the specific moment: the boiler making a strange noise on a Friday night, the electricity bill, the quote they need before Friday. Google does not guess. Google compares words. If your website does not contain the words the person types, you don't show up, no matter how good you are at what you do. There is no more mystery to it: it is a match of terms, plus a series of trust signals that come afterwards. That is why the right question is not "what can I do?", but "what would someone in my city type at eleven at night with this problem?". ## Where the real words are (and it costs nothing) ### 1. The search engine tells you as you type Open Google on your phone and start typing your trade, without pressing search. The suggestions that appear are real searches from real people, ordered by frequency. Try three versions: - Your trade on its own: *locksmith*. - Your trade plus intent: *emergency locksmith*, *locksmith price*, *cheap locksmith*. - Your trade plus your city or neighbourhood: *locksmith Telde*, *locksmith near me*. And the trick almost nobody uses: add one more letter at the end (*locksmith a*, *locksmith c*, *locksmith p*) and you will see new branches open up. Do it on a desktop browser too, which sometimes suggests differently from the phone. ### 2. The related searches at the bottom Search your trade, scroll to the bottom of the results page and look at the "Related searches" block. They are queries Google considers similar to yours. There are usually questions there of the *how much does it cost*, *what do I need*, *how often* kind that are gold for a website, because they are literally the doubts that stop a call. ### 3. Search Console: what people are already searching you for If your website already exists and has Search Console installed (it is free), go to **Performance → Search results** and look at the **Queries** tab. That is the list of what people typed into Google before seeing your website. The most valuable data is not the clicks. It is the queries with many impressions and zero clicks: it means you show up, people are interested in that topic and your title does not convince them, or you are on page four. Each of those queries is an article or a section you are missing. If you don't have Search Console, that is the first thing to set up. Without it you are driving at night with the lights off. ### 4. The Google listing: how people find you In your Google Business Profile, the performance section separates three things: direct searches (people search your name), discovery searches (people search your trade and you appear) and brand searches on Maps. If discovery is almost zero, your listing is badly categorised or it is missing services. And if 90% are direct, only people who already know you can find you: you are not capturing anyone new. ### 5. Ask whoever calls you This is common sense and almost nobody does it. When a call comes in, ask: "how did you find us?". And if it was on Google: "what did you type?". In two weeks you will have the three expressions that bring you the most, told by the person who wrote them. It is worth more than any paid tool. ## The three searches a customer makes (and what each one needs) Almost everything typed falls into one of these three baskets: 1. **"What is it / how is it done".** *Why does the drain smell.* This is someone with the problem, not yet decided. They don't want a quote, they want to understand. You don't sell here: you explain, and you earn the trust for the next visit. 2. **"How much does it cost / quote".** *Price to change boiler.* They already know what they want and they are comparing. This person needs numbers, timelines and a guarantee, not a paragraph of philosophy. 3. **"Near me / urgent / today".** *Emergency plumber near me.* They want to call right now. This is the one that pays the bills and the one that is served worst: if your phone is not visible when the page loads, they have gone to the next one. Your home page can mostly serve the third one (service, area, phone, button). The other two are served with pages or articles. And you don't need to have it all on day one. ## The classic mistake: speaking in the language of the trade Every trade has a vocabulary the customer doesn't use. You say *climate control*, they write *air conditioning*. You say *continuous flooring installation*, they write *remove the old floor*. You say *comprehensive asset management*, they write *property manager*. Practical rule: trade words can stay on the website, but they cannot be the only version. Write each concept twice, once technical and once in street language. That is the difference between a website that looks like a catalogue and a website that answers. ## Where to put those words on your website With a list of ten expressions you can already do a lot, with no tools and no budget: - **In the home page title**, the one you see in the tab and in Google: service + city, in normal language. - **In the first paragraph**, in a sentence that reads well. If it sounds forced, it doesn't work. - **One section per service**, with the name the customer uses as the heading. - **In the Google listing**, in the description and in the list of services. - **In the frequently asked questions**, with the doubts from the "related searches" block. What doesn't work is repeating the word twenty times. That is detected as noise and doesn't help: the website has to sound like a person, not like a list of terms. ## A half-hour exercise 1. Write down ten ways a customer would ask for what you do, the way they would tell a friend on WhatsApp. 2. Type seven of them into Google and note what the search engine suggests. 3. Keep the three that repeat most and the three that look most like "urgent" or "price". 4. Check whether those words appear on your website today. If they don't, you already know what to change this weekend. If you want the general framework, it is in [what local SEO is and how it works](/blog/en/seo-local-que-es-y-como-funciona). And if what worries you is your position, [why your competitor shows up before you on Google](/blog/en/por-que-tu-competencia-sale-antes-en-google) has the rest of the story. ## If you would rather have someone look at it Discovering the words is the easy part. What is hard is rewriting the website so it uses them without sounding like a robot, and deciding what stays on the home page and what goes to a separate page. We always start there: looking at what people in your area search for, seeing what you say on your website today and proposing the specific changes. If you want, [request a free design proposal](/solicita-web/en) and we will tell you which words to use, which sections are missing and what doesn't need touching, with no commitment.