Source: elegantthemes
Do chatbots contribute to a website’s SEO rankings? This blog addresses this hot topic and offers helpful tips on how chatbots can boost your onsite SEO.
Website, chatbots, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) might seem like a weird combination, but it’s a profitable mix, to say the least. The data sure paints a positive picture:
- Growing chatbot adoption in the webspace: “58% of B2B companies use a chatbot on their website, as compared to 42% on B2C websites.” Plus, recent research by Oracle claims that “By 2020, 80% of businesses plan to utilize chatbots.”
- Increasing demand from the customer’s viewpoint: “35% of consumers would like to see more businesses incorporating chatbots on their websites.”
- Chatbots emerging as an optimal cost-effective strategy: “By 2022, chatbots will save businesses an aggregate of over $8 billion per year.”
Any way you slice it, a central idea emerges from these statistics: Chatbots are on the rise. In this blog, we will look at the top-5 ways in which chatbots can enhance your website’s SEO organically and sustainably. Let’s get started.
Top-5 Chatbot Strategies that Work Wonders for your Website’s SEO Efforts
#1 Chatbots Drive Higher Customer Engagement & Capture Leads
Consider this scenario for a second: You’ve got a steady stream of visitors landing on your website (congratulations are in order). But surprisingly, you notice that your conversion rates are at an all-time low.
source: SproutSocial
Logic dictates that while it’s good to have high footfall on your website, it’s better to keep the visitors engage and prevent them from jumping ship. This is where chatbots can shine. Let’s look at a few real-life examples to understand this better:
Chatbots, like the one shown below, communicate with customers in a conversational, warm, informal, and user-friendly manner, thereby connecting with users on a more personal level:
If you’re wondering what an ‘engaged’ customer looks like, here’s my two cents: In my opinion, an engaged customer typically browses through your site and spends time understanding your offerings, they tend to view more pages per session, and more often than not, engage in a Call-to-Action button (think: sign up, buy now, register email ID, etc.).
Remember that these parameters sit high on top of Google’s list when determining your website’s relevance and value.
Key takeaway: Chatbots, if programmed well, can be as intuitive and helpful as live agents. They can address queries 24x7x365 and keep the customer’s engaged.
More importantly, they can capture valuable customer feedback through contact forms – in a conversational manner.
This helps you build a rich repository of leads who are genuinely interested in your product/service.
#2 Chatbots Can Personalize Your User’s Website Experience
“48 percent of consumers feel the ability to interact in the method/manner of their choice is the most important facet of personalized customer experience, 3 times more than knowing their name/history.”
Source: SproutSocial
Undoubtedly, global brands like Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, etc. are spoiling us silly with hyper-personalized recommendations and customized experience from start-to-finish. The result is that customers expect a tailor-made experience everywhere they go – from physical stores and online shopping portals to in-app experiences and website offerings. Again, here’s where chatbots can make their mark.
Take, for example, Universal Studio’s chatbot, which empowers customers to book tickets and make reservations.
Here’s the kicker: The bot offers real-time information to customers who wish to get practical information about the theme park (think: nearest restroom, restaurant, etc.)
Additionally, customers can get a sneak peek into the ride’s wait times so that they don’t have to waste time waiting in a line and can plan their day accordingly:
Another example worth noting is Nike’s chatbot – Stylebot – which empowers customers to create their own shoes:
This is exactly the kind of personalized service customers have come to expect today. In fact, customers are even willing to share personal information in exchange for relevant deals, incentives, and offers.
That said, they want brands to go the extra mile and offer value-adds keeping stellar customer experience at the core of every offer.
Key takeaway: A seamless and personalized website experience, coupled with a helpful and intuitive bot, can boost sales and build customer loyalty. From your website’s SEO perspective, the happier your customer base is, the better it is for your user-generated efforts.
More and more users will share positive reviews, links, and mentions on social media channels, give your SEO efforts a healthy boost. In today’s age of personalization, brands need to gather customer data and offer products/services that are perfectly suited to their target audience’s desires and needs.
#3 Chatbots Can Enhance Your Website’s Capabilities
Unknown to you, here’s another scenario that your customers may be facing day-in-day-out: Say they’ve logged onto your website for the first time and have (luckily) added an item to the cart. 
Unfortunately, they’re unable to find the checkout option or make a payment. If, at that instance, you don’t offer proactive support in the form of a bot, your customer will leave, never to return.
Chatbots can be trained to popup on specific pages if a customer is seen hovering on the same page for a long period of time. This helps the customers feel valued and ‘noticed’ by the brand, thereby boosting the overall user experience.
Sephora’s chatbot is truly the stuff of chatbot legends. The Facebook Messenger bot allows customers to act on a variety of tasks, without leaving the Messenger platform:
By allowing users to freely browse through the brand’s products at the click of a button, the bot offers an unparalleled customer experience. That’s not all. The bot can also take appointments and drive brick-and-mortar sales:
So, as a brand, if you have both an online and offline presence, your chatbot can drive offline sales while enhancing your customer’s virtual experience – the best of all the worlds if you ask me!
Key takeaway: In order for a website to stick in the user’s mind, it needs to be user-friendly, speedy, and beautiful to look at. Plus, its interface needs to be simple and seamless. Chatbots ticks all the boxes and help enhance the website experience from the moment your visitor lands on the page.
#4 Chatbots are a Gold Mine for Useful Customer-Centric Information
source: sproutsocial
Let’s face it. You can’t hope to personalize your website if you don’t have real-time and updated data at hand.
Chatbots have somewhat of a specialty in this regard.
As mentioned earlier, chatbots help collect valuable customer information round-the-clock and provide useful insights into what makes your customers tick or, conversely, what their pain points are.
For instance, the following bot asks customers for their email address in exchange for providing useful, troubleshooting information.
Plus, they can also get a pulse of the customer’s pain-points, roadblocks, etc. while navigating through your website. This information can be stored and used later across your sales and marketing campaigns:
Key takeaway: The intelligent chatbots of today continuously learn from every interaction and are capable of asking the right questions at the right time. If used correctly, they can have a lasting impact on your website’s SEO. How so? Chatbots gather information stored, analyzed, segregated, and used as actionable insights to further your sales and marketing processes. Working like a domino effect, every chatbot-led initiative drives website performance, build brand loyalty, and ultimately drives user engagement.
#5 Chatbots Drive Traffic to Other Areas of Your Website
Think of chatbots as a rich knowledge base, offering customers information that comes in all sizes, shapes, and forms. 
Take the following examples, for instance:
As you can see, customers can be redirected to vital parts of your website (think: blogs section, resources, FAQs, contact, etc.) that would otherwise go unnoticed as most customers tend to feel lost if there are too many pages obstructing their navigation journey.
Handy tip: When you implement a chatbot for one page or specific pages, make sure to factor in its purpose. Chatbots should add value to the page instead of annoying your target audience by popping up suddenly and, worse, unnecessarily.
On a Final Note…
Chatbots, without a shadow of a doubt, contribute to an overall positive user experience thanks to its ability to provide quick responses and instantaneous support.
These critical metrics can enhance your user engagement and boost conversion rates through the roof. The math is simple.
The lower your conversion rates, the better your SEO ranking will be.
So, to wrap up, make the most of this futuristic technology to augment your SEO efforts while leveraging a host of other benefits such as:
- Higher customer engagement and round-the-clock capturing of important leads
- Personalized user experience across your website
- Enhanced website capabilities leading to better SEO rankings
- Seamless access to useful customer-centric information
- And finally, increased traffic to other areas of your website.
Chatbots are here to take off some of your workloads and make your website’s user experience simpler, seamless, and smart – the trifecta of an SEO-optimized website. Thoughts?
