Digital self-service. It’s a keyword that best describes chatbots, especially in this time of the pandemic.
Due to budget cuts, business owners were forced to lay off many of their employees.
Despite not wanting to do so, businesses needed to do this to save whatever they can to survive.
This has crippled entire industries due to a lack of manpower.
Luckily, Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered chatbots came to the rescue.
AI Chatbots continue to help businesses offer services while conserving whatever’s left of their human resource capabilities.
They respond according to consumer queries and appointments.
Aside from this, chatbots also help improve the SEO rankings of business websites.
But how can chatbots help with this?
Search engines, like Google, have a ranking algorithm that they follow to determine the ranking of websites.
There are a number of indicators that determine a website’s ranking.
Chatbots help boost your ranking by ensuring these indicators are met and optimized.
Here’s how having a chatbot on your website helps improve your SEO ranking, gaining you more web traffic.
Increase Dwell Time
Google and other search engines take into consideration a web visitor’s dwell time.
Dwell time refers to the length of a user’s stay on a website. Increased dwell time signals the search engine that your website is relevant.
Thus, if you enhance the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), visitors will stay longer.
Chatbots give out information.
That is why most new visitors look for a chatbot’s assistance when the user doesn’t know what they are looking for.
Research shows that solid website experience helps reduce bounce rates.
It keeps visitors engaged, which helps boost their trust and your brand credibility— giving a positive overall ranking of your website in the long run.
Websites with chatbots are more likely to keep visitors engaged with the content longer. Bounce rate is a factor in SEO and ranking.
Although there are several measures to reduce the bounce rate, chatbots can really contribute to success in that capacity.
Improve Engagement With Content Personalization
Content personalization can be tricky to implement, but it has good potential to help improve your SEO results.
There are a lot of things you need to consider when creating content.
First of all, it has to be relevant to your customers. They need actionable solutions for the problems they have.
If you want to then improve your chances of converting these leads into customer, you’ll be well served by offering them better solutions than your competitors.
Secondly, be sure to release content on a consistent schedule.
When your customers can expect a weekly tip or hack from your website, they’ll start developing a relationship with your brand.
This relationship will eventually turn to loyalty, given the right conditions.
Where do AI chatbots come into play in all of this?
Chatbots are there to help your website visitors understand more of what you offer.
A popular technique utilized by most websites is the questioning phase.
If they are browsing your website for a specific duration of time, your chatbot can prompt a message to ask them if they need help.
For example, your customers are struggling to find information about something. Chatbots help out by directing them to the content they need.
Chatbots can then collect the information they gained through the conversation to better help future customers who have the same questions.
Chatbots can also step in to assist when your customers are struggling to navigate around your website.
This collected information helps you determine your visitor’s common struggles with the website.
It can give you an idea of how to redesign your website, streamline your navigation, or restructure your content.
Generate More Leads
Chatbots are not only programmed to answer and ask questions. They also gather personal data from your visitors.
But one word of caution: this is a tricky technique that you should approach with caution.
You may lose visitors if you instantly ask for personal information.
Let your customers engage in conversation before requesting any personal information.
The information the chatbots collect will help you reach out and contact them easier.
Some brands even use their chatbots to create a more personalized order.
Put the information into immediate use by following up on your leads.
Don’t waste a day, which risks letting your customers move on to another solution or vendor.
They could completely forget why they needed you in the first place.
Improve Reviews With Better Customer Service
There was a time when the best and most efficient marketing came via word of mouth.
The way your customers talk about your business to others can make or break your business.
Do you know how your customers talk about your business to other prospects?
I like to think about reviews as the modern version of word of mouth.
Customer reviews and feedback are great ways to tell people about your services.
Let’s say your friend talked badly about a product or service. Would you still try it? You wouldn’t, right? Studies show that people trust brands with positive reviews from strangers.
But, how are chatbots related to product reviews? Chatbots make your customers feel important.
Whether it is before or after the purchase, your customers will feel valued by the attention and service they receive.
Google reviews have a direct impact on your Local SEO ranking.
Even when a customer complains about a problem they encounter, you can convert a bad review to good feedback with stellar customer service.
This shows how much you value your customers after they buy.
Enhance Website Credibility and Customer Trust
Even though chatbots offer many benefits, websites do face some challenges with them. For one, they are robot-like.
Well, what would you expect? That’s what they are!
But, chatbots need to conceptualize the personality of your brand.
Web visitors will notice if your website experience fails to match your brand personality.
You can capture their attention with a well-crafted chatbot personality.
Your chatbot’s personality should reflect your company’s ideology and reputation.
They can provide value by recreating a natural flow between your customer and the chatbot itself.
At times, customers might have a lot of questions about a product or service.
With chatbots, your visitors will have real-time assistance with the issues they are facing even after hours or over the weekend.
Thus, work with your chatbots.
It can be a great help in building your brand reputation and credibility.
Conclusion
Let’s embrace how technologies have emerged.
As a business owner or consumer, you should know that chatbots will help companies grow and improve both now and in the future.
Large and small companies are using chatbot technology to improve their customer interactions.
With all of these benefits, chatbots can offer a great platform for further enhancing your organic traffic performance.
In the end, you will enjoy better customer interactions, streamlined business processes and tasks, and higher returns and revenues with these amazing new capabilities.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain. Feature image sourced from pixabay.com.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Daniel Martin
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