Optimising Support Content for SEO – Event Recap

by | May 20, 2021

Optimising Support Content for SEO - Event recap
6 min read

Welcome to the recap of our first in-person event post-COVID! Last month for our Data-Driven Digital event we went back to in-person events and talked to Lyndon Barnett, SEO Manager at Vodafone Australia about Optimising Support Content to reduce call centre dependence. Check out our upcoming events here and join our community.

Watch the recording below and read on to get the details.

Optimising Support Content – Event Recap

Reduce call centre dependence by optimising support content for SEO.

What do I look after at Vodafone?

  • Acquisition section – we’re an eCommerce platform
  • Support section (what we’ll be diving into below)
  • My Vodafone – self-service app

Why is support content important?

  • It’s a call deflector
  • Provide customers with contextual information to deflect future calls
  • Even if a customer does call, they’ve still engaged with the answer so the call will be shorter
  • Increase NPS
  • Increase brand loyalty and customer advocacy

Objectives for support content at Vodafone

“When customer need assistance, I want to deliver them seamlessly from wherever they choose to search, to a relevant, accurate and concise online support article that answers their questions.”

SEO and content strategies implemented to achieve this objective

This is at a high-level the support structure at Vodafone:

Support section structure

  • Category
  • Topic
  • Primary question & primary answer
  • Secondary question
  • Additional questions

Categories

  • All support content is broken down into categories such as prepaid, nbn, billing, etc.
  • Each category has its own iconography

Topics

  • All support pages are broken down into topics
  • Each page has one topic – all questions relating to that topic are found on the one page

Primary, secondary and additional questions

  • All pages/topics are broken down into primary, secondary and additional questions
  • The primary question is the most popular question that customers are asking relating to that topic

URL structure

The URL structure is incredibly important, so all support pages sit under:

  • The root domain
  • The section: /support
  • Each category: /support/category
  • Each topic: /support/category/topic

How to determine the topic and questions

  • What are customers calling about?
  • What are customers searching for through google?
  • What are customers searching for through the on-site search tool?

Examples

Prepaid recharge

  • Category: prepaid
  • Topic: prepaid recharge
  • Primary question: How do I recharge?
  • URL: /support/prepaid/recharge

How to determine the topic and questions for support SEO

  • Topic (H1) – Recharging your prepaid mobile phone service
  • Primary question (H2) – How to recharge your prepaid service
  • Primary answer to primary question
  • Secondary answer to primary question
  • Secondary question – Can I opt-in to Automatic Recharge?
  • Primary answer to secondary question
  • Tertiary question – How to pay for your recharge?
  • Additional questions (H3) – Additional information
  • Search again option

Paying your bill

  • Category: billing
  • Topic: paying your bill
  • Primary question: how to check the bill amount and the due date
  • URL: /support/billing/pay
  • Topic (H1) – Paying your bill
  • support content structure on the page examplePrimary question (H2) – How to check your bill amount and the due date
  • Primary answer to primary question
  • Secondary answer to primary question
  • Secondary question
  • Primary answer to secondary question
  • Tertiary question

Finding support content

Support content isn’t linked through a megamenu navigation but is found primarily using two search engines – Google and on-site search.

There are also relevant internal links from our acquisition pages to support pages.

Example

Finding support content

If someone were searching on Google for “how to recharge Vodafone” this would be the top result but more interestingly this is the on-site search page with the search results listing down the bottom plus reiterating their question with a custom banner up top which is triggered based on relevant keywords (via Cludo).

Custom support content banner

How do I ensure all support pages still have an internal link?

Again, we need to go back to that support structure.

All support pages sit under:

  • The root domain
  • The section: /support
  • Each category: /support/category
  • Each topic: /support/category/topic

How do I ensure all support pages still have an internal link?

So going back to this prepaid example, the top support pages sit under the category and then there are additional pages under the category.

This page isn’t actually for customers, but because it’s customer-facing we needed to make it look and appear like it’s useful for customers, but the actual primary purpose is for Google.

Other techniques to generate organic traffic

  • FAQ schema
  • Featured snippets
  • People also ask

FAQ examples

FAQ examples - Optimising support content for seo

Optimising support content for seo FAQ examples

Featured snippets examples

Optimising support content featured snippets

Optimising support content for SEO featured snippets example

People also ask examples

Optimising support content people also ask example

Key takeaways

  • Invest in the research
  • Keep it logical (keep in mind your structure)
  • Write for the customer first and foremost, not Google
  • Embrace iteration and learn from your mistakes
Paul Hewett
Categories

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