Why a support website and online findability go hand in hand

Maintaining a website is a lot of work. Especially with an informational or supportive website, updating and maintaining all the content on the site is overwhelming. Still, it’s smart to provide your (potential) customers with a support website. After all, this has major, positive implications for your online findability.

What is a support website?

A support website is all about customer support. Thus, a user can conduct business, gather information or get answers to questions online by himself. For example, a support site is set up with a customer portal where users can log in. A support Web site also has a knowledge base with comprehensive answers and practical tips, or a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) with short answers to frequently asked questions. In addition, it is often possible to contact the company, for example through a contact form or chat.A support website has many advantages, both for the organization and the user. One of the benefits is that it improves the online findability of the website.

What is online findability?

By online findability, we mean Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is to improve your ranking in search engines like Google. This involves being found on the right keywords. Google determines your website ranking in based on many different factors, for example:

• Do you regularly create new content for the website?
• Is the written content on your web pages of high quality?
• Is all content relevant and unique?
• Do you use internal and external links?
• Do you have a clear site structure?
• Is your website available on different devices?
• Is the loading speed of your website good?
• To what extent do you consider a positive user experience?

So this means that you cannot simply improve your rankings: all of the above components combine to positively impact your Google rankings.

The link between support and SEO

A support Web site often consists of a knowledge base and a help desk. This allows users to search for the answer to their question themselves, but when they can’t figure it out, there is an option to contact them. So a support website is all about self-service. Therefore, it is important that the knowledge base is always up to date so that the visitor can help himself as much as possible.

Because a support website contains a lot of content, it has a positive impact on your search engine findability (SEO). Ideally, you will proceed like this:

• You regularly supplement the knowledge base with new, relevant information for the user;
• The articles in the knowledge base are of high quality and explain step-by-step how a user solves the problem themselves;
• The content in the knowledge base is relevant to the user because it corresponds to frequently asked questions and answers;
• The knowledge base is structured into categories, which helps the site structure;
• Articles on the same topic are linked together by internal links;
• Providing a help desk where a user can contact the site in a variety of ways enhances the user experience.

The above points indicate why setting up a support website is beneficial for your online findability. Together, the amount of structured content ensures higher search engine rankings in the long run.

The best SEO plugin

We understand that following SEO rules can sometimes be tricky when writing a landing page or blog. Therefore, there are several tools to help you optimize your findability. Our favorite tool for WordPress websites is the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin provides SEO improvement points for each page based on the focus keyword you enter. This helps you have more staying power on the content.

Thus, this plugin also helps you populate the preview that users see in Google. You fill in the SEO title and meta description. Then immediately in the plugin you can see how your web page will look in the Google. In addition, the Yoast plugin offers many more options to improve your search engine findability.

Expanding your WordPress website with an SEO plugin? We are here to help you. Or check in advance how well your website scores on user experience by downloading the checklist below. Want to learn more about online marketing? Check out our knowledge center.