Improving Customer Service with SEO

[Crum]

We published a post from Lee Odden today dealing with the customer service benefits that can come with good SEO.

Lee talks about how many people use the major search engines as a means of navigation for sites from which they are trying to acquire information rather than using the site's own search function or navigation set-up.

Why do we do this? Because as Lee says, "most on-site search functions are horrible". I can't say that I disagree with him.

Lee makes this point to illustrate how SEO can improve customer service.

If you optimize your site to rank well for what your customers are looking for, it will lead to them finding the information that you want them to see as opposed to say some random blogger talking about your company in either a positive or negative way, not to mention make it easier for your customers or would-be customers to find what they were looking for and potentially buy what you're selling.

What comes up when you search for information on your product?

If you were a potential customer, would you easily find what you were looking for?

[toprank]

Thanks for posting that Chris. Navigation of a site via search engine isn't something a lot of web site owners seem to realize. It gives yet another reason to make sure a site is optimized.

[mike]

Hi Lee,

I Tried posting a response on your original blog, but it said I was spam... go figure.

Anyway, this is what I thought about when I read your post:

Enter the Google custom search engines, right?

Have you or any of your clients worked with these yet? I'd be interested in seeing if maybe the inverse didn't hold true insofar as they're concerned.

In other words; True...what's good for the search engine is good for the customer. SEO is good for your customers because it lets them find things/navigate your site easier. Likewise for the spiders.

Now on the other hand, if you use the Google custom search, it's designed to be a boon to your customers as well, but I wonder if there are any implications for the regular index as well?

In other words, Google is all about analytics and algorithms right? Wouldn't they know if thousands of custom search users had a set number of sites assigned to their custom search engine? Knowing this, would it not then be something that could be algorithmically quantified?

It's pure speculation, sure... but it seems like it's feasible.