Naomi says: “First of all, any data that your customer services team have in terms of complaints, but also compliments. What are your customers saying?

This is mainly for e-commerce websites, but what are they saying about your products or your service that you can then take and put onto your website to help future customers?”

How do you collect that data and then make sense of that to do something with it, from an SEO perspective?

“A lot of it is, it sounds cliche, but communication. There are so many businesses where the SEO team or the marketing team won't ever speak to the sales team or the customer service team.

There's a really big disconnect there, because the sales and customer services teams will know what customers want in real depth: what they want, what they ask, their general pain points, or the things they really like about something. That's rarely translated through to the marketing team who are actually meant to be marketing the product or the service. Communication is the main thing – just asking.

The other side of it, a more practical side, would be for e-commerce websites but also for service-based websites. Make sure you have FAQs and content around those complaints and compliments to educate your audience as much as possible.”

If you're an agency that's acting on behalf of a client, how do you try to ensure that you get all this information?

“There are several ways you can do it. Things that I've always done in my role is I just ask the question. When we start with a client, and we start doing their strategy, and we know, ‘Okay, they want to focus on these products or these services’, any questions that I have as a potential customer, I send them on. I say, ‘Hey, can you answer these questions for me?’ or, ‘Can you give me some more information about XYZ because I see this on the website, but I don't know much about it?’

At the end of the day, we're all consumers. If I'm thinking that, and other people in the team are thinking that, it's very likely that the business's customer will be thinking that. I also think agencies should have, as part of that onboarding, a good questionnaire or something that asks key questions. You can make them quite generic, but key questions around their best-selling products.

They can give you a list and then you can say, ‘Okay, why are they best-selling? What do your customers say?’ It’s just a lot of data gathering, but a questionnaire is quite a nice, easy thing you can send out during the onboarding phase.”

Do you also apply another layer, another filter, on top of consistent complaints that you hear to determine whether it is something the business should be focused on?

“Absolutely. A lot of the time, when there are complaints, it might just be that there's a lack of education for the customer on that product or service. Then there are also complaints that are just complaints for the sake of it, that you can ignore.

But when it comes to a lack of understanding – or maybe there wasn't enough information when the customer bought it, and then it arrived and it didn't quite meet the expectations – all of that information is information that you can use to then put on the website.

It could be that, if you sell that box, and you find a lot of people complain because they have a 16-inch laptop that doesn't fit, then maybe you need to add specs to the website. Or, if you have that, maybe you need to add a comparison video with one of your other bags. Things like that. It can then translate quite easily into wider SEO-focused work.”

Are there any systems and tools that you use that you'd recommend to help define what you're hearing?

“For the wider business tool stack, I would definitely recommend some kind of program where your customer service calls are being recorded, and then that data and the keywords that they use in those calls can be gathered.

If we just use the backpack example. If you keep seeing that people using ‘small’, ‘too small’, ‘too big’, or things like that, there are really good tools that you can use to gather that data and then turn it into a data set which then can be passed on to various teams.”

Are there any specific tools that you can recommend? Can you use AI to generate a transcript, summarise it, and collate the most repeated points from it?

“Definitely. One that I've used in the past is Ruler Analytics. That's a really good one because it gives you a whole dashboard, and it does utilise AI to pick up on the keywords or frequent words that are used in a conversation when people are talking to your customer services team. Then it can also create additional information about that user – where they're calling from and all of that kind of stuff. You can also integrate their platform with Google Analytics, AdWords, Facebook Ads, and other regularly used platforms. It’s really, really good. I definitely recommend it.

That's one that I've used the most but, especially now, there'll absolutely be so many AI-focused tools that you can use to download the transcripts, or even just to sift through the transcripts and say, ‘Hey, can you give me a summary of this complaint or compliment?’, or whatever it was, to figure out what the key things are.”

You have also said that you should be using your own experience to deal with what you find. What experience is that and how do you know if you've got the right experience?

“I'll answer that question from the agency side, but then also as part of a business in-house.

Agency side (so if I'm thinking about me), the experience that the agency can bring can be the SEO/Marketing benefits. You've got all these questions around this product. How do we then translate that onto the website, to actually help future users to boost sales? Then that's where it comes down to your content – your on-page FAQs, pictures, and all of the standard on-page things. Then there’s also cross-referencing with keyword research to see if there's anything else that you can use to enhance that.

Then, on the in-house side, if you are part of a brand, you should intrinsically understand your product better than anybody else – even better than your customers. So many business owners, or even people who are in marketing or sales, underestimate how much experience and expertise they have around a product because it's their bread and butter.

I've spoken to so many business owners and people working within a business where I'll ask them questions and they'll say, ‘Oh, well, I just thought everyone knew that.’ Most of the time, they don't know that. All the things that you get asked frequently, and all the things that you take for granted as an advanced user of a product or a service. That's your experience.

It's a bit intangible, but I think that's where businesses can pitch themselves against competitors because it's going to be more about these unique insights going forward.”

How do you decide upon the right solution to provide in order to serve that customer complaint?

“I think it's a mix of everything, to be honest. Especially now, and looking at the future of how SEO (and marketing in general) is moving, I think all of those touch points are really important.

If you were looking at it practically and you're like, ‘Okay, there are all of these options. What do we go with first?’ The first port of call is to just make sure your product page is as informative as possible. If people are on that page, sometimes they just need one question answered before they can make a purchase, which is perfect. That's what you want. Then, beyond that, you want to make sure you have supporting guides and content.

Then, when you have all of that, if you're still having some tension or if things aren't quite explained in the way that you want, then webinars and even just videos going through and tangibly showing a product can make such a difference.”

From an SEO perspective, how do you measure the success of what you've done in order to serve the gap that you've found? Is it just conversion rates that you look at?

“It's a mix. If you're looking at content, for example (if it's purely informational and top-of-funnel), then it’s engagement rates and click-through rates as well. If you're looking at more commercial content – for example, if someone just knows they want a product but they need a bit more information – then you can tie revenue back to content that you produce on your blog, if it's very product and commercial-heavy.

This is something that has been quite successful, I think. Some people believe that content just doesn't convert, but that's not necessarily true for content that sits further down the funnel.

Really do your research, and also look at competitors as well. If you have a competitor that's absolutely nailing a space, from a content and perceived sales perspective, have a look at what they're doing and see if there's anything that you can tweak with your own content to improve that.”

Is there any measurable SEO impact, such as ranking increases, that you've actually discovered as a result of doing that?

“100%. When you have your data set, and let’s say you know that people want more information about some backpacks that you sell, have a look (in addition to your own customer data). There will absolutely be search around these topics, so this is where you need to do keyword research – but perhaps looking at the more informational keywords. It wouldn't just be, ‘black backpack’, it would be, ‘What's the best backpack size for a 16-inch laptop?’ for example.

You can build content around these more informational terms, and then that's when it comes down to your rankings and your visibility. Search Console would probably be the best for this because you should be able to visibly see your impressions and clicks go up for these more informational terms, and then how that translates through to the rest of the pages.”

Are you attempting to rank these long-tail terms for AI-driven answers?

“It depends. First and foremost, you should focus on the customer, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.

In the same way that you would optimize for featured snippets, definitely make sure that content is digestible for SGE (when that comes around for us in the UK) and more AI-generated features.

But I think that would come naturally anyway, just in the way that you ask your questions – especially if you're answering FAQs that don't require a bunch of text. Sometimes it might just be a line or two. So a bit of both.”

How do you know when your competitors are knocking it out of the park from a content perspective?

“Generally, once you have your keywords, just Google them. There's a lot to be said for just Googling some of your top keywords on the informational side and just seeing who's coming up top and why. 9 times out of 10, they're probably gonna be people you're pretty aware of.

I work a lot in the e-commerce space and, generally, it's the brands that we expect to see up there. Then you’re asking, why? What are they doing? What kind of content is ranking? Is it their product page that's ranking or is there something that's ranking that we could do a better version of, or is actually more relevant? You could produce a more relevant piece of content or asset, or whatever it might be. Then using tools as well, just to see what they're ranking for.”

Do you attempt to guesstimate how much success competitors are getting in terms of click-through rates and traffic to their websites?

“I would say guesstimate to a point but, rather than focusing solely on what they're doing and then trying to copy that, have a good idea of: ‘Right, they're doing really, really well. I can see why.’ This is where the expertise will come in, especially if you're working from an SEO point of view. You'll know if their on-page is better than your on-page, for example.

But then, once you have that information, try and translate it into your brand, or the brand that you're working on. It's very easy to just do a copy and think that's going to work. But, especially with AI and E-E-A-T and all of that, I think you need to focus on your brand or how your brand can take that insight and then translate it into something that feels right for you.”

What's something that SEO shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“This may be controversial, but I think SEOs should focus less on keyword difficulty and keyword volume, and actually look at whether that keyword is relevant. You may have keywords that have a ridiculous amount of search volume (obviously you can go after those as well), but then a lot of people ignore the keywords that don't have much search volume at all but are incredibly relevant for your brand or your product.

It doesn't make sense to discount it or really delve into, ‘Well, the difficulty is this, but the search volume is this, so what should we do?’ If it makes sense, it makes sense. You'll know, sooner or later, whether or not you need to up the ante or if you need to add in other keywords.”

Does it make sense to go after zero volume keywords?

“If it's completely relevant to your product or your service, and you know that is how your customers describe your products, I think absolutely.

Also, we can't ignore emerging trends. There is so much new terminology, especially with social media, where there may be zero volume now but, give it 3-6 months, it might be a really good keyword. If it's relevant, I would focus on it.”

Naomi Francis-Parker is Head of SEO at The Evergreen Agency, and you can find her over at TheEvergreenAgency.co.uk.