Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral part of your marketing. It boosts your online visibility and brand awareness, among many other things. So, it’s no surprise businesses are always searching for ways to improve their SEO strategies.
Adding conversational marketing to the mix is one of the less-talked-about ways to elevate your search optimization. This technique will help keep your audience engaged throughout the customer journey, ensuring they’ll reach the conversion stage and make a sale.
But what is conversational marketing? Before we share the best practices for incorporating conversational marketing into your SEO strategy, let’s first define conversational marketing and explore its benefits.
What Is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational marketing is the practice of engaging customers in one-on-one interactions through real-time communication tools and dialogue-driven strategies. It’s rooted in connecting with customers in highly personalized ways.
Conversational marketing uses tools like chatbots to communicate with customers in real-time, answering their questions and resolving issues.
Benefits of Conversational Marketing
This marketing approach is beneficial for many reasons, including that it saves businesses time and money. Chatbots in customer service can help businesses save on costs by speeding up response times and answering up to 80% of routine questions. Conversational marketing also enhances the customer experience. For example, a small percentage — 14% — of people like filling out forms, while 86% prefer using a chatbot to resolve simple issues.
So, by using this conversational marketing tool, you’re helping customers get their questions answered quickly and in their preferred way, both of which are vital for a positive customer experience.
Another benefit of conversational marketing is it helps you capitalize on a successful targeted marketing campaign. Quickly answering queries from high-quality leads via live chat, for example, could be the deciding factor in them converting right then and there. You can also personalize these chatbot communications if the customer is logged in and provides identifiable information.
And let’s not forget conversational marketing’s impact on SEO. You can use it in your SEO strategy to improve online visibility and boost conversions.
For example, your customers go online to get a question answered or to find solutions to a problem they’re having. When you have a chatbot or another conversational marketing tool, they can come to you more often to do this. Incorporate keywords and phrases effectively, and your SEO strategy gets even better.
Additionally, conversational marketing can inspire customers to stay on your website longer.
A high bounce rate negatively impacts your ability to rank well in search engine results. If you can engage customers for longer on your site, it signifies credibility and a quality user experience to Google. Thus, Google may rank your site higher on the search engine results page.
How to Incorporate Conversational Marketing in Your SEO Strategy
Incorporating conversational marketing into your SEO strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. Instead, these best practices can simplify the process and ensure its effectiveness.
1. Understand your audience in terms of SEO
To ensure conversational marketing has the impact you hope for on your SEO strategy, you must first understand your audience in terms of SEO. Ask questions about your audience like:
- What are they searching for?
- How are they searching for it?
- What are their most pressing questions?
- What challenges are they facing?
- What keywords and phrases are they using to search for your products and services?
When you understand what your customers are most likely to inquire about, you can use this information to set up conversational marketing tools that help them find answers faster.
2. Choose the best conversational marketing tools and techniques
Not all conversational marketing tools are created equal, and neither are the businesses that make them. You want to ensure you’re choosing the best conversational marketing tools for your unique customer base and for achieving your SEO goals, whether that’s live chat, chatbots, or voice assistants.
It’s also important to note that conversational marketing includes your techniques. For example, it could be the tone you use to communicate with your customers or your specific messaging to inspire a particular action.
Thoroughly research suitable conversational marketing tools and techniques before making a firm decision.
3. Put them in the right places
We’re sure if you looked really hard, you could find a place for conversational marketing everywhere. But for the purposes of enhancing your SEO strategy, putting these tools in the right places is critical.
For example, people tend to have more questions while viewing your product pages than they do, say, your home page. So, incorporating a chatbot or live chat option on your product pages is smart — just decide when and where to deploy it.
Take your time determining the best places for conversational marketing tools so that your customers are more likely to engage with them.
4. Adapt to your audience
You can’t take full advantage of conversational marketing or SEO if you don’t know your audience. But if you do, engaging in one-on-one conversations and aligning your SEO strategy to them is much easier.
For example, let’s say you have a lot of neurodivergent people in your audience. They have a range of neurological differences that affect how they act, sound, talk, and behave. For example, people with ADHD experience sensory overload, so your language must be simple, and snappy, but impactful.
You must understand the specific communication needs of these individuals to engage them effectively in conversational marketing and attract them through SEO.
Adapt to your audience and shift how you engage them in conversation based on who they are.
Connect with Customers through Genuine Conversations
Conversational marketing is a simple yet impactful way to connect with, learn about, and serve customers. It can help not just your SEO strategy, but your entire business to soar to new heights. Implementing the advice above can help you effectively incorporate conversational marketing into your SEO strategy.
Looking to elevate your SEO strategy? Consult with the Spiralytics team today.