One of the important attributes of good keyword analysis is to ensure that you are selecting keywords that are used by your target audience and not "industry jargon". 

One of the typical examples of this dilemma is the "cheap flights" versus "discount airfare" comparison.  A few years back, the travel industry spent a lot of time optimising web sites for keywords and phrases like "discount airfare" as they felt that this phrase most accurately reflected what they offered.  The problem was that most consumers searching for "discount airfare" were not using this phrase at all - and were using phrases like "cheap flights".  So - be aware of the language of your target audience.

I was thinking about this in our industry today and was considering the terms "SEO agency" and "SEO company". 

Search Marketing and in particular search engine optimisation is an interesting industry as it is a cross-over between technology and marketing.  Some companies, like ours, arrived at SEO from technology (web development, etc) while others got here from more traditional marketing disciplines (direct mail, etc).  In the marketing world, the term "agency" is used frequently - you have design agencies, advertising agencies, PR agencies, etc.  In the non-marketing world you have companies or firms - how many engineering agencies have you heard of?

So the first approach as to whether we (and companies like us) are SEO agencies or SEO companies is to consider our relative industry.  Naturally, we are in the marketing industry and provide marketing services and so from this perspective we are of course an SEO agency (i.e. if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..).

But as with the travel industry example, I looked at our target audience for some help and here you start to see a split. 

Some of our clients are marketing folk - in-house marketing people and other agencies who do not offer search marketing - and so as they would probably search for an "SEO agency".    However, a lot of our clients are in the B2B mid-market and our main contacts are not from marketing - they are Sales Directors, Managing Directors, etc.  These people are used to looking for companies and not agencies when searching for an SEO and would use "SEO company".

And so what's the answer?

Well, in my opinion, it seems that we are an "SEO agency" in terms of our industry terminology who typically refer to companies as "agencies".  But to many of our prospects, we are an "SEO company"  - and this is an important distinction when deciding which keywords to use for search marketing.  Always lean towards the terminology of your target audience and not that of your company or industry. 

As far as our own SEO efforts are concerned, we will continue to use both terms (agency and company) as our target audience is split between marketing-industry buyers and buyers in other industries or from other disciplines.  So this was a bit of tail-chasing exercise in the end.  But the important point I wanted to make is that you really have to consider the keywords and language that you are using on your website and make sure that it is consistent with your audience.  Don't use terminology and jargon that is only used by your company or by your industry.  The best way to check?  Speak to people who know nothing about what you do and ask them what terms that they would use to locate your company and factor this feedback into your keyword analysis.