Why I Killed Our 'Messer' Keyword Strategy (And What We Do Instead)

I think keyword research — the old “find a high-volume phrase, write around it, repeat” ritual — has become the most misleading starting point in industrial B2B marketing. It’s an odd confession for a content manager who lives by rankings and organic sessions, but after what I now call the “Messer incident,” I stopped letting keyword volume stand in for market demand.

In September 2022, I was mapping content for Messer, our industrial gas and cutting-equipment brand. I wanted to understand what engineers were typing when they looked for our kind of hardware. Instead, my SEO tool looked at the word “messer” and recommended:

professor messer practice exams free
messer haare schneiden
henry contract
dutch van der
how many fumbles does henry have

Five rows. Five completely different audiences. Every row had monthly volume, every row claimed low keyword difficulty, and none of the rows belonged in the content plan of an industrial gas and cutting components supplier. My gut said this was noise. The spreadsheet said it was opportunity.

The spreadsheet lost, but only after a $3,200 agency engagement showed me how real the trap is. The agency spent two weeks building a content strategy around similar “brand adjacency” terms. The strategy survived one review meeting before we killed it. The money was wasteful, but the lesson was cheap at that price.

Why the word itself is not your audience

Search engines stopped being word-counting machines years ago. Between 2019 and 2023, they got much better at understanding what a word means — which entity is involved, what the user’s location is, what format would answer the question. “Messer” is a good example because it was never one entity in the first place.

• “Messer” as an industrial supplier. That’s the entity our sales team represents: engineering managers, maintenance leads, purchasing professionals looking for gas equipment and cutting nozzles.
• “Messer” as a public figure or surname. That includes Professor Messer, the well-known IT certification trainer. The query professor messer practice exams free is about studying, not about industrial gas.
• “Messer” as the German word for knife. That meaning drives searches like messer haare schneiden — cutting hair with a blade. It’s a real interest, but it has nothing to do with our technology.
• Terms that share no entity at all. Queries like henry contract, dutch van der, and how many fumbles does henry have ended up in the same report because search tools aggregate patterns, not meaning. A fan checking fumble statistics is not entering a B2B buying journey.

That last group is the one that convinced me. If a keyword doesn’t point toward a person with a problem we solve, a first-page ranking is just a first-page ranking in the wrong library.

An irrelevant visit is not a small lead. It’s a cost.

Some marketers argue that broad, ambiguous terms can be used for brand awareness: attract the traffic, introduce the brand, and hope a few visitors convert later. I have mixed feelings about that argument because I used to believe it.

Part of me still likes the idea of squeezing value from a big-volume report. Another part remembers what happens when an industrial brand publishes content about exam vouchers, hairstyling, and sports statistics: the page gets a bounce, the domain looks confused, and the sales team loses trust in marketing. Per FTC guidance (ftc.gov), advertising claims need to be truthful, not misleading, and substantiated. I apply the same logic to SEO titles: if a page promises professor messer practice exams free but the real goal is selling gas equipment, the page is a misleading ad, not a content strategy.

But exact-match keywords can still be valuable

Let’s not overcorrect. I am not saying keywords are dead. If a plant engineer searches Messer cutting nozzle, that’s a high-intent query, and we absolutely want to be there with a specification sheet, a sizing guide, and a clear way to contact applications engineering.

The difference is intent. We now validate intent before we check volume. For example, Messer cutting nozzle replacement tells us exactly what the visitor wants: product fit, compatibility, and procurement next steps. That’s a term worth writing for.

A query that simply contains our brand name, or a word that resembles our brand name, is not automatically a topic. That distinction didn’t matter as much in 2018. It matters enormously in 2025.

What we do now before approving a content brief

Since Q2 2024, our team has used a short checklist before any content project is approved. I won’t pretend it’s sophisticated.

• We start with real questions from sales calls, RFPs, and applications engineers — not with an SEO export.
• We ask who is searching and what their job is. If the answer is “someone studying for an IT exam,” the topic doesn’t move forward.
• We ask whether the page would satisfy the search intent honestly. Would a visitor finish the article and think, “that supplier understands my plant” — or would they wonder why they ended up there?
• We only use keyword volume afterward, to prioritize a topic that already passes the intent test.

That checklist has caught 47 content ideas in the past 18 months. A few of them looked attractive on paper because they carried the word “Messer.” None of them represented a buyer we actually serve.

The fundamentals haven’t changed

The search industry has evolved from matching strings to understanding entities and intent. B2B content planning should evolve in the same direction. What hasn’t changed is the hard part: knowing your customer’s problem, answering it better than anyone else, and making sure the right person can find that answer.

Bottom line: a keyword is not a strategy. A customer with a problem is. If you are an industrial brand and your SEO tool recommends professor messer practice exams free or how many fumbles does henry have, don’t ask how to rank for it. Ask why you are letting a word-list decide who your customers are.