The $855 Keyword Mistake That Taught Me About Search Intent

If your keywords don’t share one search intent, you don’t have an article—you have word salad.

In April 2025, our company paid for a single blog post targeting six unrelated search queries: “derrick,” “is derrick groves captured,” “derrick williamson,” “woolly bear,” “lewis,” and “how much is simparica at costco.” After 30 days, that post had 11 organic visits, an average time on page of 42 seconds, zero conversions, and exactly one comment: “Is this the right company page?”

The lesson: Search intent matters more than keyword count. A page that tries to answer six entirely different questions answers none of them.

Some context: I’m the office administrator for an oilfield equipment manufacturer in West Texas. We build derricks—the tall steel structures that support drilling rigs—plus masts and drawworks. I manage purchasing, roughly $400,000 a year across 30 vendors, and I report to operations and finance. Marketing isn’t my day job. But when our marketing director went on leave in March 2025, the website content project landed on my desk because I was the one signing the agency invoices.

The keyword list that should have raised red flags

The agency’s SEO contractor delivered a spreadsheet with 47 keywords. The first few were fine: “derrick for sale,” “oil derrick cost,” “used drilling derrick.” Then came the rest:

“is derrick groves captured”
“derrick williamson”
“woolly bear”
“lewis”
“how much is simparica at costco”

I should have stopped there. I didn’t.

It’s tempting to think a keyword is a keyword—if you mention a term often enough, Google will reward you with visitors. But a keyword is only the surface of a search. The intent underneath is the real story. “Derrick” to our business is a $2 million piece of engineering. “Is Derrick Groves captured” is a true-crime question about a person none of us had heard of. “How much is Simparica at Costco” is someone trying to price flea medication for her dog. Those are not the same human.

Most people focus on search volume and completely miss search intent. The question everyone asks is “how many searches does this keyword get?” The question they should ask is “what is the searcher actually trying to do?”—buy a derrick, get a news update, or save a few bucks on dog medicine.

What the writer delivered

The agency handed the brief to a freelance writer. Two weeks later, we received a 2,400-word draft titled “Everything You Need to Know About Derricks.” I wish that had been accurate.

• 600 words about drilling derricks: heights, load capacities, maintenance schedules. That section was actually decent.
• 300 words about a man named Derrick Groves. The section read, “The question everyone is asking is whether Derrick Groves has been captured. As of recent reports, the status of Derrick Groves remains under investigation.” No connection to our industry whatsoever.
• 400 words about woolly bear caterpillars and winter weather folklore, framed as a “supply chain risk” for the oil patch. Caterpillar stripes have nothing to do with drawworks lead times.
• 200 words about the name “Lewis.” It opened with “Lewis is a common English surname and given name” and then went nowhere.
• 150 words in FAQ format: “How much is Simparica at Costco?” Answer: “We don’t sell pet medication, but prices vary by dosage.”

Wish I was joking.

Here’s the twist: “Derrick Williamson” wasn’t garbage. That’s the actual name of our sales manager. The contractor’s tool had scraped it from our team page. He’s a real person, and a good one. The other four keywords? Pure noise.

What it cost us

We published on April 14, 2025. Google Analytics after 30 days: 11 organic sessions. Maybe 12—one might have been our own CEO checking whether it was live. Average time on page: 42 seconds, give or take. Zero conversions. The single comment, from a dog groomer in Oklahoma, was “Is this the right company page?” She had googled “how much is simparica at costco,” landed on a page about drilling equipment, and had the decency to tell us.

Total out-of-pocket: $720 for the writer, plus $135 for 500 printed flyers with a QR code pointing to the post—$855, in round numbers. Local print shop, three-day rush. For reference, online printers quote roughly $80–150 for 1,000 flyers, and local shops run $150–300, based on publicly listed prices from January 2025—verify current rates. The rush premium is real.

I knew I should have pushed back on the keyword list before approving the draft. But I thought, “what are the odds the writer actually uses all six?” The odds were 100%.

We also didn’t have a formal editorial review process. A five-minute read by anyone outside the agency would have killed the Simparica FAQ. The third time a project needed that kind of check, I finally created a one-page content checklist. Should have done it after the first time.

The surprise wasn’t that the article flopped. The surprise was that the worst piece of content we’d ever published became an internal joke—and, eventually, a useful example of why intent-based content planning matters.

How we fixed it

In May 2025, after the marketing director returned, I sat down with her and Derrick Williamson—the human, not the keyword—to clean up the mess. We split the remaining budget into two focused pieces:

1. “How Much Does an Oil Derrick Cost?”—1,400 words covering new vs. used equipment, load capacities, and delivery lead times. It now ranks on page one for “oil derrick cost” and brings in 3–5 qualified leads per month.
2. “Woolly Bear Season: Folklore vs. Real Winter Planning for Drilling Sites”—we salvaged the caterpillar research into a seasonal piece about weather folklore and actual site preparation. It gets shared every autumn. Not many leads, but at least it’s about our industry.

We deleted the Derrick Groves section and the Simparica FAQ. Nobody has asked about them since.

SEO has changed since we started publishing. What was common practice in 2020—stacking keywords, inflating word counts, writing for robots—doesn’t work in 2025. The fundamentals haven’t changed: write something a human being finds useful. But the execution has transformed, and so has the price of lazy keyword planning.

When one article with multiple keywords actually works

I’m not saying you can never combine keywords. “Derrick,” “oil derrick,” “used derrick,” and “derrick for sale” all point to the same need: someone wants to understand or buy a derrick. Those belong in one article.

The line I use now: if the same person would want both answers, keep them together. If not, write two posts. A dog groomer and an oilfield procurement manager have almost no overlap—even when both of them are looking for a deal.

If you’re the admin who got dragged into content

See the keyword list before you approve the brief. Don’t let an agency summarize it for you, because the gaps live in the details.

Ask your sales team whether the keywords match real customer questions. They’re the ones on the phone with buyers; they know what’s real.

Get a second reader on the final draft. Our receptionist would have flagged “Simparica” ten times faster than I did, because she reads every page before it goes live—now.

To be clear, this is one project with one agency. I’m not claiming every multi-keyword article is doomed. But if you’re about to green-light a post that’s supposed to rank for both “derrick” and “simparica at costco” in the same breath, do yourself a favor: pick one topic, write it well, and let the dog groomers buy their flea medication in peace.