Case study · Search · Customer language · Website
People asked for it
by the hour.
People were searching for a meeting room they could rent for a couple of hours. The business offered exactly that. The pages just never said it, so Google sent those people somewhere else.
Problem
People searched for meeting rooms “by the hour”, and the room pages never said it.
Solution
The pages now use the customers’ own words, in three languages, with the city in the title.
- 8
- meeting room pages, none saying “by the hour”
- 3
- languages updated: English, Spanish, Italian
- 0
- new pages built: the existing ones were enough
Context
The business rents meeting rooms in Málaga, by the day and by the hour. It had eight dedicated room pages on its website, in three languages.
The problem
Search data showed people looking for things like “meeting room rental by the hour” and “space for rent by the hour”. Google was sending them to the homepage, far down the results, instead of to the room pages that actually answered the question.
What I found
- None of the room pages mentioned hourly rental, the exact thing people were searching for.
- The homepage linked to the rooms with “catering option”, not with what customers were asking about.
- Later, a second look showed the room pages’ titles didn’t even say “Málaga”, while the homepage did. So for “meeting rooms Málaga”, Google picked the homepage every time.
Before changing anything, I checked with the owner that hourly rental is really offered. It is. The site just never said so.
What I did
- Said it on the pages: hourly rental now appears in the room pages’ text and descriptions, in English, Spanish and Italian.
- Linked with the customer’s words: the homepage now links to the rooms as “hourly rental, with catering option”.
- Put the city in the title: “Hourly Meeting Room Rental in Málaga”, the phrase people actually type.
The right pages already existed. They only needed to speak the customer’s language. A new page would have competed with them.
Outcome
The room pages now say what people search for, in all three languages. Whether they win those searches over the homepage is being measured in the search data, week by week. I’d rather wait for the numbers than claim them early.
What I'd do differently
Read the search words before writing the pages, not after. The customers had been telling us what they wanted all along.
“If customers have to translate your website into their words, most of them won’t.”