Customer feedback can be a valuable resource in many aspects of business. When it comes to your site’s SEO and internet marketing plan, customer feedback can be an absolute gold mine of information. That is, if you can get it.
It is an unfortunate fact of business life that people rarely tell you about the good stuff. People, whether they are online or in the real world, are rarely motivated to provide positive feedback. Most of the feedback businesses receive is of the negative kind. This is, of course, also very valuable, but it’s a little demoralizing to only hear the criticism and never the praise.
The sort of feedback that can be valuable to your search engine optimization campaign is really any feedback at all, although it does help to have some good mixed in with the bad. Customer queries are also extremely helpful, as they can give you an insight into what your customers want and are thinking.
Tips to encourage feedback
First of all, before you can receive feedback, you need to open up the avenues of communication on your site. Having an email contact address is a good start, but it’s important to keep in mind that site users will provide more feedback if it is easy to give. For example, an open comments section at the bottom of a piece of content is likely to attract plenty of feedback, whereas a complicated feedback form requiring registration is likely to put a lot of internet users off. Talk to our team at www.seoconsult.co.uk about the ideal feedback method for your site, such as the possibility of using SEO blogs to allow users to comment and connect with your company.
Once you’ve got your method sorted out, you need ways to encourage feedback. Some good ways include:
*Competitions: Rewarding the best comment of the week with a prize can encourage feedback, and can help you to collect information on your site users.
*Acknowledgement: Sometimes all it takes to increase feedback is recognition. Recognising a good comment by publishing it can prove a good form of encouragement.
*Surveys: These can prove a good alternative way to gather information from your site’s users. Try to keep them as simple as possible to attract the most replies.
*Publication of replies: Answering your customer feedback in the style of a forum can help to create a sense of community on your site. Internet users are more likely to be attracted to that community than to a cold, unresponsive site.
Why is feedback important, anyway?
The most obvious reason to value customer feedback is because you value your customers. When operating a business online, you don’t have the advantage of face-to-face interaction to gauge how your customers feel about you. You don’t even have the opportunity to answer their questions. Voluntary feedback enhances the relationship between your business and its customers.
There’s another reason to attract feedback, however, and it has to do with marketing. The more information your loyal customers can give you about their wants and needs, the better placed you are to answer them. This enhanced view of your target audience also assists your SEO plan.
