Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in driving traffic, generating leads, and boosting sales for businesses across industries, including contact centers. As an increasing number of customers turn to online channels for support and information, contact centers need to develop a robust SEO strategy. This strategy not only improves their visibility but also enhances customer engagement and performance.
Understanding SEO for Contact Centers
SEO involves optimizing websites and their content to achieve rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher a page ranks for keywords the more organic traffic it attracts from users searching for those terms. According to BrightEdge search accounted for 53.3% of all website traffic in 2021 underscoring the benefits of strong SEO.
For contact centers, SEO presents an opportunity to be discovered by customers seeking support and to encourage self-service options. Since 75% of users do not scroll past the first page of SERP rankings, appearing for customer support-related keywords can increase website traffic while reducing call volumes.
Key Strategies for Effective SEO in Contact Centers
Optimizing a contact center website for visibility and engagement requires both on-page and off-page SEO techniques.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization focuses on optimizing the website itself. Some key strategies include:
Keyword research & optimization
Thorough keyword research is vital to identify high-value keywords customers use to find support content online. These keywords should then be integrated into page titles, headers, content, image names, alt text, meta descriptions, and other on-page elements. This optimization helps pages rank for target searches. According to Oberlo, 49% of users discover new brands through search engines, so keyword optimization is impactful.
FAQs and knowledge base
Creating an extensive, SEO-optimized knowledge base and FAQ section targeting informational keywords is one of the most effective ways to increase self-service usage and organic reach. Websites with blogs and knowledge bases have 434% more indexed pages, reports TechClient. Grouping FAQs into logical categories, optimizing headers, and crafting compelling content pays dividends.
Integration with CCaaS
For contact centers running on a ccaas provider, ensuring SEO strategies are integrated with the platform improves optimization and analytics.
Site speed optimization
Faster load times improve visitor experience and search rankings. Optimizing images, enabling compression, minimizing redirects, and using a content delivery network (CDN) improves speed. Pages with the fastest load times have 2.6x more organic traffic, per Dotcom-Monitor.
Mobile Optimization
With 52.2% of website traffic now coming from mobile devices, having a responsive mobile design is essential for ranking well. Ensuring a seamless mobile UI/UX, minimizing load times, and providing click-to-call functionality creates value. Progressive web apps can further boost engagement.
Local SEO
For contact centers serving local markets, optimizing listings on sites like Google My Business with complete information, photos, and positive local reviews is impactful for local pack rankings and visibility.
Offpage SEO
Off-page optimization is all about making your website more popular and trustworthy to search engines like Google.
This helps your website show up higher in search results. Here are some things you can do:
Backlink Building
Get other websites to link to your website. This indicates to Google that your website is trustworthy. You can do this by writing articles for other websites, making helpful images, and partnering with other websites.
Social Media Optimization:
Use social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to make people notice your brand and visit your website. Make your social media profiles look good, join discussions that matter to your business, and use pictures and videos.
Reputation Management:
Make sure people say good things about your business online. When people read online reviews, it can help your business a lot. So, keep an eye on what people are saying and try to get more good reviews.
Technical SEO:
This is about making sure your website works well and is easy for search engines to understand. It involves ensuring that all technical aspects of your website function properly, thus improving its search engine visibility. This helps search engines find your website and show it to more people.
How to Measure SEO Success in Contact Centers
Robust analytics are crucial in measuring the success and ROI of contact center SEO efforts. Key metrics to track include:
Organic traffic
Volume and growth of website traffic from search engines. Useful for assessing the health of efforts.
Click-through rates (CTR)
The CTR for the first organic result averages 31.7% but decreases for lower positions, so monitoring CTR by keyword can indicate opportunities.
Keyword rankings
Tracking important keyword rankings in Google and Bing ensures visibility for critical searches. tools like SEMrush and Moz allow for rank tracking.
Lead and call volume
The number of leads and calls generated from organic traffic can reveal the revenue impact of SEO.
SEO traffic value
Calculating the value of a call/lead and multiplying it by SEO-driven volume highlights ROI.
SEO-influenced self-service metrics
The volume of self-service content views, knowledge base searches, FAQ access, etc. show SEO’s role in deflection.
Online review volume & sentiment
The number, sources, and sentiment of new online reviews indicate how reputation management efforts are faring.
Goal conversions
Monitoring online form fills, downloads, purchases, and other goals achieved by organic visitors shows behavioral impact.
Platforms like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Moz, SEMrush, and call-tracking software provide this data.
With 61% of marketers prioritizing organic growth, per HubSpot, analyzing these KPIs is essential for SEO success.
Challenges and Solutions for Contact Center SEO
While SEO offers immense upside, contact centers also face challenges like:
Competition
Ranking becomes harder as keyword saturation increases. Staying on top of trends, expanding keywords, and securing backlinks helps.
Negative reviews
Harnessing SEO to bury bad reviews is crucial. Proactive reputation management and providing good support prevent this.
Limited time/resources
SEO takes time. Starting with foundational on-page optimization and core keywords before expanding efforts is recommended.
With a proper understanding of SEO and adherence to best practices, contact centers can overcome these hurdles in their quest for greater visibility.
The Future of Contact Center SEO
Exciting SEO opportunities on the horizon for contact centers include:
Voice search optimization
ComScore predicted that 50% of searches would be voice searches by 2020. Optimizing content for conversational queries will be key.
AI-powered customer support
As the use of chatbots and virtual agents expands, their capacity to provide SEO-driven self-service at scale is also expected to increase.
Personalization – With Google’s AI now tailoring results to user context, personalization and localization of content will become more important.
Keeping pace with these SEO innovations can help secure a competitive advantage.
FAQs
Can SEO help contact centers?
Yes, SEO can make a big difference for contact centers. It can help them show up higher in internet searches when people are looking for help. This brings more people to their websites, makes it easier for customers to find answers on their own, and makes the contact center look better. It can even reduce the number of phone calls, which saves money. With approximately 5.6 billion Google searches conducted every day, the impact of SEO is significant.
What tools are important for contact center SEO?
Some important tools for contact centers to use for SEO are things like tools to find the right keywords (like Google Keyword Planner), tools to check how well their website is doing in search results (like Moz and SEMrush), tools that look at their website to find any issues (like Screaming Frog), tools to see how many people are visiting their site (like Google Analytics), and tools from Google to help them see how they’re doing in search results (like Google Search Console).
How can contact centers keep a good reputation online with SEO?
To maintain a positive online reputation, contact centers should monitor feedback on review websites, engage with customers online, and provide exceptional service. This way, they can stop bad reviews from happening. If there are already bad reviews, they can try to fix things by responding to those reviews. They can also make new good content about their brand and get good reviews and links on trusted websites. This helps their website show up better in search results and makes the bad stuff go down.
Conclusion
By leveraging the proven SEO strategies outlined above, contact centers can boost their online visibility and authority in search engine results, capture more traffic and self-service opportunities, manage their reputation, and deliver significant ROI. Given the increasing competition, investing in effective SEO has become a core component of contact center success, rather than an optional strategy.
Michael C Vang is a passionate blogger. He has been blogging since 2013 on a variety of topics. He is committed to creating informative and engaging content that helps readers learn more about everything.
