Increase Web Site Traffic with Qualified Buyers. How? Product Documentation, of Course.

It should come as no surprise that buyers of your products are using search engines to learn more about your products. They may be researching your space to make a purchasing decision or trying to figure out how to better use a competing product. You can actually use your product help to drive prospective buyers to your site. Indeed, search engines reward you for publishing product, technical and help content by increasing your search engine rankings.

If you’re only providing your help center as a service to existing customers, then you’re not getting the full benefit out of what could be your most important marketing tool for lead generation. So, how effectively are you using your product documentation in your marketing efforts?

Increase traffic to your site using product documentation

If you’re concentrating all of your SEO efforts on the ten to twenty pages that you have on your website, then you’re not fully taking advantage of the opportunities existing within your product help itself. Software product help can have as many as 2,000 pages–can you imagine what your site traffic would be like if every one of those pages were fully optimized? Leverage this resource and publish your product help in a web-ready format, making sure to focus on applying the proper SEO practices to each document.

You can’t stop there, however; you also need to think about what keywords prospective buyers might be using as they search for a solution like yours. Target those keywords, applying them to your product documentation, and you’ll start to see a significant increase in traffic. Driving those Google searches to your product help, and making sure that those pages are in the top results, will go a long way towards giving your product more of a presence online as potential customers do their initial research. Bottom line: Use what you already have! Documentation!

Turn users into product advocates

You don’t want your product help to just exist; you also want it to engage. Proper SEO is only part of the process in utilizing your product help as a marketing tool–you also want to leverage your existing customers by convincing prospective buyers to convert to your product. Do this by providing a commenting, rating, and editing system that your customers can use to contribute to your product help. It will demonstrate to potential buyers that this is a product worth committing to because so many other people are obviously passionate enough about it that they want to take the time to leave comments and ratings on your help pages.

Even more so, when you have excellent product help, users will enjoy a robust customer experience and become experts on your products. Because related content constantly filters through the help pages a user views, finding help and learning new features becomes effortless. Not only are customers more engaged and invested in your product, but likely to inadvertently advocate your product to others. These product advocates are invaluable to companies because they drive revenue and renewals.