How Chatbots Can Help Boost Your SEO
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Chatbots and SEO – somehow these terms don’t seem to belong together, do they? Sort of like pizza with peanut butter, or Game of Thrones with Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation. When we think SEO, we think content, keywords, landing pages, backlinks, etc. How could a chatbot possibly help in any of that? Well, this post is here to prove otherwise.
First, What Exactly Is A Chatbot?
Feel free to move on to the next section if you know about chatbots already.
A chatbot is a tool that allows the platform/website to talk to a user without the need for human personnel. Basically, it handles all the grunt work so the employees can use their time for more productive purposes.
If, like us, you’re someone who goes to a lot of websites in a typical day, you’d have noticed that a lot of those sites have a chat option on the bottom right. Most of the conversations that you have on those are with a bot. For example, check out the chatbot on the Outgrow website.
Some examples of chatbots you can make with Outgrow are Legal Services Bot, Event Planner Bot, Hotel Feedback Bot.
Why You Need Chatbots On Your Site for SEO
Dwell time, or the amount of time people spend on your page, is one of the 200+ ranking factors used by Google to determine search engine rankings. And a pretty important one at that. With people’s attention span decreasing, Google wants to reward sites where users spend more time. Well, guess what? Chatbots on your site help with increasing dwell time.
Chatbots mean real-time, personalized conversations with your users. They are tailored to make your users feel like they’re talking to a real person. As a consequence, people prefer to engage more with chatbots than other elements on your site. 63% of online users talk to a chatbot without being aware of it. In addition, Gartner predicts that, by the time 2020 rolls around, you’re more likely to talk to a chatbot than to your spouse.
Based on all this evidence, we think it’s safe to say that chatbots, because of their personalized, real-time nature, help you increase the average time spent on your site. In addition, they also help users navigate to different sections of the site which increases the number of pages visited. Voila, another SEO ranking factor checked!
How to optimize your Chatbots for SEO in 3 simple steps
1. Log in to your builder and select ‘outcome quiz’ as the content type.
To optimize your chatbot for SEO, you need to make sure that your bot can answer most of your users’ questions. This means designing your bot to go further than a “Hi, how may I help you?” statement and a link to your support email.
You need to ensure that users can find satisfactory answers to most of their questions via the chatbot itself, without any need of human intervention. For example, checkout this chatbot made by Outgrow.
2. Link to important pages on your site via the chatbot
To increase time spent on your site, it is key that you expose users to different pages on your site and urge them to dive deep into the site. And chatbots shine in this aspect because they have the ability to parse the user’s question and figure out which page on the site is apt for the question. Thus, using chatbots to link to different pages on the site gives the user a fantastic experience by leading them to the answer to their question effortlessly. And it boosts SEO by keeping your users on the site a little while longer.
3. Integrate your chatbot with your CRM
Use your chatbot to collect contact info of your users. Pass this info to your chosen CRM and then get those people back to your site with regular email newsletters promoting all your latest content. Not only will you improve your SEO, you’ll also improve your chances of converting these leads into customers via the magic of lead nurturing.
Antara Agarwal is a full time marketing consultant at Outgrow. She can be found packing her bags for her next trip, often to the mountains. And in one of those bags you will always find a half finished book she’s been struggling with for months.
