Robert Desprez Communications

MAKING ONLINE HELP SEO FRIENDLY

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When you’re look­ing for help when faced with some tech­nol­o­gy-relat­ed ques­tion, how do you find assistance?

Maybe you ask a per­son if you’re at work. Per­haps you fire up the help with the prod­uct, if it’s avail­able. Maybe you vis­it the company’s web site and troll through the sup­port sec­tion, look­ing for the answer to your ques­tion. But increas­ing­ly, I sus­pect that more and more users are typ­ing the prob­lem they face into Google’s search field because more often than not, it pro­vides the most accu­rate and rel­e­vant results.

As a tech­ni­cal writer, if you’re post­ing con­tent online that can be searched by search engines, it may be worth bor­row­ing Search Engine Opti­miza­tion (SEO) tac­tics to make your con­tent easy to find on the Inter­net. Some back­ground: SEO is the process of improv­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of a web site using search results. So, for exam­ple, if you work as a tech­ni­cal writer in Seat­tle and some­one types the key­words “Seat­tle tech­ni­cal writer” into Google, ide­al­ly your web site is one of the first to dis­play in the results.

Now imag­ine that you gen­er­ate Web­Help for your com­pa­ny and it’s host­ed on a web serv­er that can be searched by Google. As some­one who has per­formed SEO and web ana­lyt­ics on a web site, here’s how I’d start to make the help “SEO friend­ly” so that it appears promi­nent­ly in the search results.

(NOTE: This top­ic pro­vides just an overview of “organ­ic” SEO tac­tics. The oth­er main way to improve your search results is by pay­ing for them but I won’t deal with this method in this blog entry.)

  1. Dou­ble-check that the <title> tag of your online help is an accu­rate descrip­tion. I’d include three ele­ments of the title tag: com­pa­ny name, prod­uct name, and the phrase, “Online Help.” For exam­ple, “ACME RasterBlaster Online Help.” Ensur­ing the title tag is clear is one key way to help with SEO rankings.
  2. Add lots of relat­ed hyper­links that point to the help. Make sure that rel­e­vant web sites (for exam­ple, your sup­port web site, forums on the prod­uct, relat­ed blogs) have links point­ing to your help, which improve SEO rank­ings. Aim for qual­i­ty links, not quantity.
  3. Ana­lyze key­words. Key­words are the terms that your users type when search­ing for help on your prod­uct, such as “con­fig­ur­ing RasterBlaster.” When you know these key­words, make sure that you’ve lib­er­al­ly added the same terms to your “Con­fig­ur­ing RasterBlaster” help top­ic. Adding key­words to your con­tent is anoth­er key way to improve SEO results. Google AdWords is one tool that helps with ana­lyz­ing key­words on a web site.
  4. Add meta-data to impor­tant top­ics in the help. In the <meta> tag in the HTML code for an impor­tant help top­ic, make sure you add rel­e­vant syn­onyms that ide­al­ly match the key­words a user might type in a search engine.
  5. After you’ve per­formed some of the pre­vi­ous sug­ges­tions, be patient. Results don’t hap­pen overnight. After 10 days, type the iden­ti­fied key­words (for exam­ple, ACME RasterBlaster Online Help) into Google. Where are you locat­ed in the results? If you’re not ranked very well, per­haps you need to tweak your key­words, meta-data, or point more rel­e­vant links to the help sys­tem. In anoth­er sev­en to 10 days, see if your results have improved, based on your edits.

The SEO tac­tics that I’ve described are free and do work but they do not offer fast results. With some per­sis­tence, these ideas may just help your users find the answers they need.

HOW COULD CLOUD COMPUTING CHANGE OUR JOBS?

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Cloud com­put­ing is one of those terms you hear a lot about. Microsoft recent­ly launched a “To the cloud” adver­tis­ing cam­paign. Google offers Google Docs, a suite of cloud-based office soft­ware. I’m work­ing on con­tract for a com­pa­ny that makes gov­ern­ment soft­ware that runs on Sales­force, anoth­er cloud-based com­pa­ny. So it’s notable that there’s lit­tle dis­cus­sion about cloud-based author­ing soft­ware for tech­ni­cal writers.

Cloud com­put­ing basi­cal­ly means soft­ware than runs on the Inter­net ver­sus soft­ware installed on your com­put­er. Adobe FrameMak­er uses the tra­di­tion­al mod­el: you down­load it from Adobe’s site or insert a DVD into your com­put­er and the soft­ware is installed on your hard dri­ve. In con­trast, Google Docs is acces­si­ble via your web brows­er instead of installing it. Once you log on, it’s instan­ta­neous. No more wait­ing for the instal­la­tion. No more punch­ing in long, com­pli­cat­ed ser­i­al numbers.

Soft­ware like Google Docs is catch­ing on. While it’s cur­rent­ly viewed as a “lite” ver­sion of Microsoft Office, it’s improv­ing all the time. Google is also look­ing at cre­at­ing an offline mod­el in case you’re work­ing at a loca­tion that does not have Inter­net access.

For tech­ni­cal writ­ers, there’s not a lot of dis­cus­sion about writ­ing using cloud-based author­ing tools. Think about the benefits:

  • Your soft­ware would be avail­able imme­di­ate­ly. No more waits for a large and some­times slow down­load from a vendor’s web site. I recent­ly down­loaded Adobe’s Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Suite and the process took more than two hours.
  • Your upfront costs are low­er. Cloud-based soft­ware is fre­quent­ly priced on a sub­scrip­tion mod­el. So instead of pay­ing $2,000 for Adobe Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Suite, you would pay a month­ly fee to access Adobe’s soft­ware on the Inter­net. I’d read­i­ly agree to a month­ly fee of say $55 ver­sus $2,000 for a suite of software.
  • Your soft­ware sub­scrip­tion would ide­al­ly pro­vide you with the lat­est ver­sion of the soft­ware. Instead of pon­der­ing whether I should upgrade to FrameMak­er 10, which was just released, my sub­scrip­tion would imme­di­ate­ly give me access to the lat­est features.
  • Col­lab­o­ra­tion could be eas­i­er among writ­ers. As the soft­ware resides on a remote serv­er, you could prob­a­bly store your source files there too. If done secure­ly, this could make col­lab­o­ra­tion eas­i­er. Imag­ine if you need­ed to share your files with a team in India. No more e‑mailing large files.
  • Tech­ni­cal reviews could also be done via the cloud. So instead of crank­ing up Word or Acro­bat on a com­put­er, review­ers could read your mate­r­i­al by review­ing a doc­u­ment that is avail­able on a web site.

Of course the mod­el isn’t per­fect. Per­for­mance, for exam­ple, could be an issue. But if soft­ware ven­dors can ensure a secure envi­ron­ment and offer decent per­for­mance, I think the idea has a lot of merit.

FRAMEMAKER 10 ADDS SOME SIZZLE

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I start­ed using FrameMak­er 6.0 back in the late 1990s. For many years, the new ver­sions of Frame seemed, well, bor­ing. Espe­cial­ly when you com­pared it to oth­er tools like Dreamweaver.

FrameMak­er 10 is dif­fer­ent. Released a cou­ple of weeks ago, I found the pre­view video almost excit­ing. With more and more peo­ple watch­ing online videos (think YouTube) and few­er peo­ple read­ing, Adobe appears to have rec­og­nized that even tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion could use some pizzazz.

The lat­est ver­sion of FrameMak­er enables writ­ers to embed online videos or online demon­stra­tions dur­ing author­ing. This dynam­ic con­tent will then play in the final PDF.

What’s the ben­e­fit to tech­ni­cal writ­ers? It makes it eas­i­er to deliv­er doc­u­men­ta­tion that offers mixed media. For exam­ple, a hard­ware writer can write how to repair a part using the old stand­by: sta­t­ic pro­ce­dur­al con­tent. But he or she can now also add a 3D mod­el of the part that can be zoomed in on, spun around, and even pulled apart by a click of the user’s mouse.

Soft­ware writ­ers can also ben­e­fit from Frame 10. Writ­ers can aug­ment a pro­ce­dure with a relat­ed Cap­ti­vate video on the same page.
For users, this type of tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion could make things clear­er and def­i­nite­ly more engaging.

I know what you might thinking—these online videos and 3D mod­els are not exact­ly easy or quick to pro­duce. True. But if you’re lucky enough to already have online demos and mod­els and you’re upgrad­ing to Frame 10, I think this is def­i­nite­ly worth exploring.

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290