Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

These three words strike fear and trembling in most product owners.

  • Why does my product not appear in the first few results when using a search term?
  • How can I evaluate and influence my ranking?

These are two questions I get quite often, so let’s see if we can demystify some of the complexity of search and get to what you as a product owner can control.

We’ve all heard the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” For anyone that needs to market their products on a search engine, I can confidently say that as product owners, the power to influence that first part is in your hands.

SEO: The Pervasive Problem that Perplexes Product Owners

Today’s search engines like Google or Elasticsearch are extremely powerful with complex relevancy ranking algorithms that would give most users a migraine. Search engine technology can return with a high degree of accuracy targeted results related to the search terms input by the user, but quite often the issue is not the technology or the ranking algorithm. It is the poor quality of the product description ingested by the search engine.

An engine can only rank something based on the relevancy algorithm applied to the product description. The results ranked highest are those that have been well written and optimized for the target audience. Let me provide two use cases to help you think through this scenario.

Use Case 1: Changing the Product Name Doesn’t Change Customer Behavior

This is a scenario I see quite often as a company changes product names multiple times over the years. Just because you implement a new name doesn’t mean the customer stops using the old name. This means you better bridge the gap and help lead the customer to the right result.

Let’s take an example through the years of S/390 to zSeries to IBM z to z Systems. All of these names are mainframes. As a new name would be announced for a new line, there has to be an effort made to help align the customer thought process from the old name to the new and also use terms customers often use. If you analyze Google Trends, you can very quickly see that users still use the old terms, but the most heavily used term is Mainframe.


I could pick from dozens of product name changes over the years and demonstrate the same scenario. Users still use old product names along with the new and quite often will use a general term for the product instead of the official product name.

Armed with this information, you can effectively apply what the customer is expecting in your write-up and keywords to improve SEO. For example, a simple statement in about the product formerly being called something else will help the content be findable for users still utilizing the older name.

In addition, the other factor that becomes obvious in the Google Trends information is that Mainframe and far more popular of a term internationally than the official product name. Factoring this into the description and using the terms customers expect will also assist the user in finding the content via search.

Use Case 2: Using Descriptive Terms the Customer Doesn’t Typically Use

Quite often I see product owners center an entire title and description around a term that while it may be accurate, it is not what customers use to find the product. This requires some adaptation by the person writing the description to consider what a customer is expecting and meet them where they are. Let’s investigate a specific scenario.

I was reviewing some product content recently that was centered around Hyperledger, which is a type of Blockchain technology. The complaint was that when searching for Blockchain, the content was found several pages deep within the search with other competitive content appearing on page one. After some cursory investigation, I found that the title made no mention of Blockchain and entire description in fact only made a mention of the term several sentences and paragraphs into the short write-up.

Let’s bring Google Trends into the picture and see what it has to say. From this simple chart we can immediately see that Blockchain is searched far more than Hyperledger.


I also cross validated this with our own website search traffic and confirmed while Hyperledger is used, Blockchain present in the search terms was nearly 1,500% more than Hyperledger. My suggestion from all of this was to both enrich the description with better uses of the term Blockchain and attach that word to the product H1 title on the page to improve findability.

All of this tells us that proper use of terminology that customers expect can work wonders in getting the customer to your content quickly and effectively in the first few search results on a page.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

In both examples above, you can see they could have been addressed by properly considering your audience and adjusting the product description to improve search ranking. Just because a poorly titled product or poorly written description is added to the search doesn’t guarantee it will be findable. It needs to be thoughtfully crafted to properly use the terms a customer is entering into the search.

Go Forth and Improve Your Search Rankings!

Give this concept a try. Pick a page you own and consider what could be done to improve the overall content quality being fed into a search engine.

  • Is the title meaningful and does it convey what the user is trying to find?
  • Is the description well-crafted, accurately describing the concept on equal terms that a customer is expecting?
  • Rather than trying to change customer behavior, have you given thought to product name changes that should be represented?
  • Are there other key terms and phrases that can help enrich the content when used properly in the description?

Consider your audience. Be creative and improve your content. Make those search ranking algorithms work for you. While you may not be able to get a horse t drink, you can at least lead them to the water by making sure your content can be properly found and well ranked by search engines.