Derrick, Derrick Van Orden, and the Keyword List That Didn't Know What It Wanted

There's no single right answer to the question, 'What do I do with a bad keyword list?' Sometimes you add qualifiers. Sometimes you delete half the list. Sometimes you throw the whole thing in the trash and start over. I know because I've done all three, usually in that order.

I've been handling B2B search content for six years. I've personally made and documented 31 significant keyword mistakes, totaling roughly $12,000 in wasted budget. Now I maintain the pre-publish checklist for our team. In 2023, that checklist did not exist yet.

I handle content for a B2B manufacturer. The product category is a steel structure called a derrick. So our brand name is also a dictionary word, and that creates a constant stream of search ambiguity. Someone handed me a keyword list that included the following:

derrick, derrick van orden net worth, derrick family chiropractic & massage, groves charges, miranda, hawk vs

I spent two hours trying to find an angle. I nearly did. That was the scary part.

Trust me on this one: a keyword list is not a content strategy. It is a set of guesses. Sometimes they are good guesses. Sometimes they are a random export from a tool that thinks 'derrick' and 'hawk vs' belong in the same meeting.

Why the List Broke My Brain

Here's why the list hurt: 'derrick' is a real product name in our industry. It is also a common noun. It is also a first name. Derrick Van Orden is a U.S. Representative from Wisconsin. Derrick Family Chiropractic & Massage is a business that helps people with back pain, not a supplier of drill rigs. 'Groves charges' could be a legal filing, a news story, or something entirely different. 'Miranda' is the warning you hear in every cop show. 'hawk vs' is ... I still don't know. Maybe a bird comparison. Maybe a sports debate.

There is no semantic thread that connects those queries. If you try to connect them, you end up writing a page that no human wants to read. Search engines can usually tell. More importantly, the human who asked for the page can tell too.

Scenario A: The Homonym Trap

A homonym trap happens when your keyword list contains the same word but no supporting context. 'Derrick' alone is a perfect example. If you sell derricks, you can't stop at 'derrick.' You need a qualifier that tells search engines and humans which derrick you mean.

Before you write anything, ask: would I be comfortable showing this page to a structural engineer? For a page targeting just 'derrick,' probably not.

The counterintuitive fix is to stop trying to rank for your own brand term's short form. I know, it sounds backwards. In 2021, we published a post called 'What Is a Derrick in the Energy Industry?' It got about 43 visits in a month. Most of those people typed 'derrick' into Google, saw our photo of a steel tower, and left. They wanted something else.

What worked was a post with a long, ugly, specific title: 'How to Inspect a Derrick Before Work at Height.' That page brought actual requests from people who manage drilling operations. The long tail was slower, but it was real.

So for the homonym trap, the answer is qualifiers. 'Drilling derrick,' 'derrick height,' 'derrick load capacity,' 'derrick inspection checklist.' Not 'derrick' by itself.

Scenario B: The Famous-Name Problem

If your keyword list includes a real person's name, like 'derrick van orden net worth,' you're in a different situation. This isn't ambiguity. It's a completely separate search intent. A person looking for a politician's net worth is not looking for industrial equipment. They are looking for a biography, a financial summary, or a news page.

I wish I had tracked what happened when we accidentally left a similar name in an ad group. It ran for 36 hours before anyone noticed. The clicks that came in were not buyers. One person searched the brand name, saw an equipment ad, and clicked because they thought the company was related. They weren't happy. No sale, a tiny bit of brand damage, and a lot of awkward questions.

Here's the advice: do not create a page for this. Don't write 'we are not affiliated with Derrick Van Orden.' That page would exist for no one. Just remove the keyword and, if you have to explain why, send the person a one-line answer: there is no connection between the query and our offer.

What most people don't realize is that a name match is not a demand signal. A search for 'derrick van orden net worth' does not mean the searcher has a hidden need for a drilling derrick. It means they are curious about a person. Let the search engine connect them to a news article.

Scenario C: The Random Orphan Dump

And then there are the terms that make you wonder if someone pasted the wrong spreadsheet. 'Groves charges.' 'Miranda.' 'hawk vs.' I still don't know what 'groves charges' refers to, and I've accepted that. 'Miranda' is about legal rights. 'hawk vs' is someone comparing a hawk to something. None of these are a match for an energy equipment blog.

The temptation in a content meeting is to be clever. You think, maybe we can write a comparison article: 'Hawk vs Eagle: What It Teaches Us About Derrick Safety.' No. No, we cannot.

Here's something vendors won't tell you: a keyword export is often a big pile of partially related terms. The tool collects everything it can, because missing a real keyword is worse than including a few bad ones. Your job is to filter, not to find a home for every phrase.

I don't have hard data on how many conversions come from orphan terms like 'miranda' on an industrial site. But I can tell you anecdotally that in four years, zero buyers have said, 'I found you because of miranda.' Not one.

So the advice for this scenario is simple: delete them. Don't put them in a content plan. Don't put them in an ad group 'just in case.' Delete the noise and spend the time on a phrase that actually describes your product.

How to Tell Which Scenario You're In

You don't need a data scientist. You need three questions, and they take about ten seconds.

1. Does the keyword describe the thing you sell or the problem it solves? 'Derrick' alone? Probably not. 'Derrick inspection'? Yes. 'Derrick Van Orden net worth'? No.
2. Could a person who searches this realistically become a customer? Someone looking for chiropractic massage? No. Someone looking for a legal rights explanation? No. Someone looking for oil field equipment maintenance? Maybe, if that's your offer.
3. Would you be embarrassed to show the final page to an engineer? If the answer is 'yes,' stop trying to make the keyword work.

If you answered no to all three, the keyword is not part of your strategy. It's part of a problem that someone else's keyword tool created.

What I Did Wrong (and What I'd Do Now)

In 2023, we had two hours to approve a topic list. Normally I would have mapped each keyword to a stage of the buying journey and checked the search intent. There was no time. The marketing director was waiting for the spreadsheet.

I sent it along. A copywriter, doing exactly what was asked, tried to connect 'derrick van orden net worth' to 'drilling derrick' by explaining that the word 'derrick' was the common link. It produced one of the most painful sentences I have ever read. I still think about that sentence.

Calculated the worst case: we publish a page that ranks for nothing and confuses everyone. Best case: a few Slack emoji reactions. The expected value said wait a day and fix the list. But the deadline felt urgent. The deadline, in hindsight, was not a life-or-death situation. We could have asked for another day. The world would not have ended.

Now we keep a checklist. It has caught 41 bad keywords in the past 18 months. The first question on the checklist is simple: what would a human expect to find after clicking a result for this phrase? If the answer is not our product, we cut it.

One more thing: when a deadline is tight, I've learned to pay the certainty premium. In March 2024, we blocked three hours to review a keyword list before sending it to a writer. The project was delayed by one day. That one day cost us less than the day we would have spent fixing a page about 'derrick family chiropractic & massage' on an oil-field equipment blog.

As Google's Search Central guidance puts it, create pages for users, not for search engines. Source: developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content. A keyword list full of mismatched intent is a search-engine thought, not a user thought.

Bottom Line

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for a messy keyword list. The right move depends on the scenario. A homonym needs qualifiers. A person's name needs deletion. An orphan batch needs triage.

What I want you to remember is this: don't let a weird keyword list talk you into writing a nonsense page. The goal is to help the person on the other side of the screen. If a keyword can't do that, it doesn't belong in your content plan.

And if someone hands you 'derrick, derrick van orden net worth, derrick family chiropractic & massage, groves charges, miranda, hawk vs,' close the laptop. Take a walk. Revisit the list tomorrow.

Trust me on this one.