10 Battle-Tested Ideas on How SEO Can Improve Your Customer Service

Intro

32% of customers “break up” with a favorite brand after one poor customer experience. It’s a matter of seconds to switch to your competitors when users meet with a “less than comfortable” experience.

Moreover, there is an all-seeing eye that tracks these processes:

• if your customers are happy, Google improves your website ranking;
• if they are not, you may know how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The SEO managers have already learned some of Google algorithms. Don’t hesitate to use this knowledge to boost customer service on your website.

Use Google Featured Snippets

You probably saw how Google highlights the top position of the Search Engine Results Pages. This honored place is a featured snippet. It provides people with direct answers to their questions:

(A featured snippet example)

Being featured gives you a 43.7% CTR of all the Google Search page results and as result better website traffic. People follow the featured snippet link because they trust Google and feel too lazy to scroll down.

How to get in a featured snippet?

Google reads information** from structured FAQ data and content** where you provide detailed answers to the users’ problems. All you need is:

• Be in the first ten search results with website content devoted to the user problems. For example,_ _this HelpCrunch’s comparison article is optimized to a group of keywords that are close by meaning:

• Create FAQ. Check what questions your customers are searching for in terms of some topic. There are SEMrush, Serpstat, Ahrefs, Keyword Finder tools to help you.

Answer them on the FAQ section of the relevant page.

Track what people say about your company on the web

It's not rocket science that a good customer experience comes from listening to customers. So check what they are talking about your company on Reddit, socials, and review websites like Capterra.

Here is an example of the feedback on Amazon:

81% of shoppers use such resources to look for suggestions on your product from the current users.

Use it too!

• First, answer user queries. Do it fast because complaining to a brand on socials, they expect a response within an hour or a week. That’s your reputation.
• Second, communities and social media networks are valuable sources of feedback on your product.

You know that there is a call tracking for SEO. Thus, there are ways to track brand mentions on the web:

• Set up Google alerts.
• Track backlinks.
• For socials, use specialized tools like BuzzSumo, SocialMention, etc.

Just let them know a keyword to track.

Optimize knowledge base

People prefer to solve their problems independently, ideally by using a knowledge base. 91% of visitors would be glad to see something like this on your website:

(HelpCrunch knowledge base)

Knowledge base is useful for:

• Search engine optimization because Google loves to add those articles to featured snippets.
• Your customer service representatives to focus on more difficult tasks than answering FAQs.

All you have to do is to create an SEO-optimized knowledge base.

• Check your support tickets to define FAQs.
• Use Google Analytics to find out “What is” and “How to” search query questions related to your product.
• Analyze and group customer issues to answer each one with a separate article.

Educate customers on your product

If you show customers how to get the most out of your product or service, you’ll see more and more of them returning to you.

Let’s count. Stat says that each 5% growth of the retention rate can increase your profit from 25% to 95%.

I like the way Canva cares about its users:

They use the most popular ways to educate customers:

• Courses. All of them are free.

• Webinars on relevant topics. Also free.

• White papers and e-books

• Explainer videos

• Tips on a product better usage.

Improve customer onboarding

It is about guiding them through the initial steps to the aha moment on using your product's features effectively.

If you fail, 55% of users can ask for a refund.

Discover the best practices companies implement to let users onboard autonomously:

• Personalized onboarding flow. Instead of forcing everyone to watch the same video, SemRush send personalized emails according to the 40 tools a user subscribed to.
• Know your customer preferences to help them set up a tool according to their needs. Like ticket marketplace app Ticketmaster does:

• Don’t leave features without any data. Always provide newcomers with example data, then offer to edit it according to their needs. Just like Grammarly does:

• Let them skip a product tour and return to it later if they need, like Heap did:

• Celebrate each step users pass on the way to their goals. For example, say something like: “_Congrats! You’ve launched your first Ad _🥳”, just how LeadGen App does when user finishes product tour:

Take care of the loading speed of your website

Irritating, heh? Waiting for something is a sophisticated type of torture. That’s why people hate slow websites.

One in four visitors would abandon a website that takes more than four seconds to load. Each of the next ones decreases customer satisfaction by 16%. That’s a fact.

The fix? Here are best tips on what to check on your website:

• Decrease your image size to less than 1 MB.
• Use PoPs to deliver content through the server closest to your user’s location.
• Reduce the time between initiating a network request and receiving a response.
• Optimize your code for Core Web Vitals. Minify HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files.
• Get rid of redirects.
• Move your website to a faster hosting platform.
• Specify the time user's browsers should store JS, CSS, and images.

Adapt to the latest technology

If you are an e-store, visitors expect to see a live chat support option on your website. If you’re a mobile app, people wish you to remember their data after registering, so they don’t have to re-enter it each time. These are just some examples of how companies adopt tech trends.

Wanna track trends?

Make it a habit to check Google, Twitter, Quora, etc. trends. They work similarly: enter your industry and location to see the results.

Here is how it looks in Google:

Analyze topics in trends and think about how you can use them within your company. For example, this list will be useful for a laptop store owner. It can help to find out what product to highlight on the website.

Use images and video

People love videos. Search engines love videos.

It is the fastest way to understand products or how to do stuff. Google regards such opinion and provides people with a Videos tab and block in the search results list.

So use it on your website! Here are best practices for you:

• Ask your support team about the most common customer issues to solve them with video.
• One video should refer to one customer’s problem or idea.
• 7-15 minutes is the best time for an explainer video.
• Publish it on the product page, YouTube, socials.
• Let your support team share it with customers.
• Add it to the FAQ section.

Thus, Dollar Shave Club customers can easily find videos on how to use their razors.

These videos are perfect for sharing by a link in chat, messengers, socials, or email.

Improve site navigation with proper structure

Compare these two online store menus:

https://assets.awwwards.com/awards/element/2022/04/62555506875c3624760982.mp4 (Source: House of Gucci)

The question: where will a user find the desired product faster?

Despite the beauty of the second website design, the first wins. That’s because web navigation is like a remodeled supermarket. You used to find your favorite donates in the third row. But everything is new, and you spend way more time finding your donuts.

The more standard menu you have, the easier it is for a user to find the right content.

Here are basics on how to make it clear for website users:

• Chose a “hamburger” ☰ menu sign at the top or left side of every page for mobile devices.
• Use labels like “UX design solutions” instead of generic “Solutions”. Find the keywords your visitors use when googling your product.
• Psychology says that having too many items on the menu is bad. 3 to 6 options are the best.
• Use breadcrumbs to indicate where a visitor is.

(Source)

• Separate menu elements from others with white space and colors.
• A footer menu is a perfect place for content you “just couldn’t fit” into your header.

Publish reviews

It is hard to get trust if you’re a business. Guess who is the most trustworthy resource on the web for a typical customer? Friends? Family? The perfect reputation of the mature brand?

Another user.

Stat says that 85% of consumers trust online reviews. After reading them on third-party resources, like G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius, 57% of customers visit a company's website.

For example, below you can see some customer reviews on the TrustRadius that may arouse interest in the product:

Wanna double that interest? Publish customer reviews on your website too.

You kill two birds with one stone by publishing reviews: get customers and Google’s trust. Consumers love reviews to help them make purchase decisions. That’s why Google considers this element as a ranking factor.

How to get them? Ask your customers. 68% of them are happy to help after:

• Repeated purchase.
• Referring someone to you.
• The first success with your service/product.
• Tagging your brand on socials.

That’s the exact strategy Casper pillow store used in this email:

Wrap up

Keyword stuffing is in the past. The main goal of the nowadays SEO is to improve customer experience. The above tips will help improve your ranking and make your potential customers happy.