User Manuals & SEO
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool
Are user manuals and SEO connected? — Of course! That can be used by many technical writers who deliver online documentation. The more people find your manuals online — the less will have to contact support. For large companies or for fast-growing ones, that will save both time and money.
The main idea of SEO process has always been like that: you need to write relevant content that contains keywords and connect pages with each other. If everything is done right, the visibility of your website will improve. Today, when documentation has gone online — why not using the same instruments to make it more accessible and, at the same time to contribute to the marketing process?
Here are some of the things you can do to contribute to SEO:
- First of all, every document surely contains the best keywords for its subject. What is to be done is to index the links properly. This is already a step to success.
- Another thing that requires careful attention is URL. Using the right URLs will show the readers that your content is exactly what they are looking for. URLs should allow human reading, and of course, they should contain relevant words only. Users should be able to identify in seconds what your URL contains.
- URLs should be suitable for web crawlers. If web crawlers do not understand the URLs, they are not indexed. This affects SEO in a negative way.
- The word order means a lot as well. The SEO effect is stronger when the phrases match the keywords. But the word order should be natural. Otherwise, penalties will follow.
- The loading speed of the website should be high enough as Google ranks websites like that higher. This can be used as an SEO factor.
These are the basic things that may improve the SEO effect for your online documentation. If everything goes online today, it is vital to get to know how to make your user manuals accessible.
Have a nice day!
Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors