After the system indicates that the no search results condition occurred, it must now help the customer recover. Whenever you display a no search results page, always provide a helpful way forward to get your customer back on track as quickly as possible. Virtually every control on the page should be focused on doing something to help the customer recover from the no search results condition, and any extraneous controls for filtering and sorting search results should be removed. (9)

In other words, the “No search results” page is a key place to present users with alternative ways to find what they’re looking for.

It’s almost impossible to get the No search results page from a Google search unless you type a fairly long strand of gibberish. More common are “No search results” pages from site searches (or from Google Custom Search, as I have on my site). If so, this is what you see:

Google’s best advice is to check spelling and try different keywords.

If you’re using the default WordPress theme, here’s the “No search results” page:

WordPress essentially has the same response as Google: try again with different keywords, with no help at all in figuring out what the right keywords are.

(FSB, by the way, stands for the Federal Security Service, which is the counterintelligence unit of Russia. It’s not something that I’ve covered very frequently on my blog.)

Previously, when your search query seemed a bit off, Google would ask, “Did you mean …” and present you with a more common spelling. Now Google simply corrects your bad spelling automatically:

The reason you don’t see many “No results found” pages with Google is because it’s likely that at least some part of your search will match one of the three trillion pages (?) on Google. But if you have an online help file, or a search box on your own website, the chances of users not hitting any results is much higher.

Ideally, when users don’t find any results, rather than merely encouraging them to pick new keywords and try again, it might be more helpful to do say something like the following:

No results found. Try the following:

• Broaden your search keywords.
• Browse the glossary to review keywords.
• See frequently asked questions.
• Review common troubleshooting issues.
• See popular searches for your role.
• See known limitations of the application.
• Submit a question to the experts.
• Contact the support center.

Actually, it would be nice to show these recommendations even when search results are found, since many times the results may not provide the answer. One issue, however, in implementing any customized search results page is that it’s not always technically possible to do it. For example, now that I’ve integrated Google Custom Search, the No Results Found page cannot be customized (at least I don’t see a way to do it).

I’m betting that customizing the No Results Found page in many help authoring tools is also a bit of a conundrum. As Robert Desprez explains in his post, Would Faceted Search Assist Your Users?, “the search engine is largely a black box that isn’t meant to be significantly customized.” Desprez is highlighting RoboHelp, but only as one example of the many black box search engines in help authoring tools. Even if you were to customize it (it would probably involve hacking the source files), would every new release of the help authoring tool simply overwrite your customization?

Mark Baker points out that because search in help authoring tools is so poor, it’s often easier to find content using Google’s search engine instead, even if this means that searching trillions of web pages instead of narrowly focusing on specialized sites. Baker explains, “I get better results by searching the haystack than the needle case, even when the needle I want is in the needle case” (see The Best Place to Find a Needle Is a Haystack).

In this case, you’re stuck with a dilemma: If you go the Google route for search, the results are better, but you can’t customize the search results page. If you stick with your native app, you can perhaps customize the search results page, but the results are poor.

Even with these technical limitations, I think it’s a good idea not to give up, because there are workarounds for the technical limitations. The key idea is that successful search involves knowledge of keywords, so when users aren’t aware of those keywords, we should help them figure them out (rather than just inviting users to randomly guess new ones).

One strength many help authoring tools have is the ability to integrate keyword synonyms into searches, so that even if a user doesn’t realize, for example, that “reserve a resource” is the correct keyword phrase, we can equate the terms on the backend so that a more familiar search for “schedule a room” returns results.

This doesn’t guarantee that the search results will now be on par with Google, though. Reason being, Google has a lot more content. Your help content must actually include the answer the user is searching for. Many times these answers aren’t in the help in the first place. I wrote about the issue of scope earlier in a post titled, Faulty Assumptions About the Scope of Help Content.

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• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
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• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

I touched briefly on Google’s search engine algorithm. Since Google is such an important search engine for content, including help content, I want to dive deeper into strategies for maximizing the visibility of help content on Google.

Putting Help Content on Google

Since many users turn directly to Google to find answers to questions, rather than turning to the help file, it makes sense to put your help content on Google.

Additionally, help files are rich in keyword density. An online help file with more than 200 topics adds hundreds of keywords to your company’s site, making your product more findable.

If you have optimized your help content with synonyms and other terms that people actually use, the help file can be a wealth of highly search-engine-optimized content that increases visibility of your product and company in Google’s search engine results, right?

Let’s Try a Test

Let’s try a test. Let’s say that I’m using a software application, Madcap Flare, and I want to know how to insert concept keywords. Using Google, I search for “insert concept keywords flare.”

Google search results for insert concept keywords in Flare

Why is it that the search results didn’t find the topic in Flare’s online help file, which is on the web? It did find a Madcap KB article, but not the topic in the webhelp file.

The exact topic in Flare’s help is titled Inserting Concepts into Topics. Even if I search for this phrase, the Flare help topic doesn’t appear in Google’s results. In fact, the results for this search aren’t even related to help authoring or Flare.

When I search for inserting concepts into topics flare, one of the results points to a topic in Flare’s online help: Creating Printed Output. But still not the webhelp topic I’m looking for.

Why didn’t Inserting Concepts into Topics, the topic from Flare’s help file, appear in any of my Google searches, even when the topic is online and apparently indexed by Google? Why is it that Eddie Van Arsdall’s post, Madcap Flare Tip: Helping Users Find Related Information, appears at the top of the list for both of my Google searches?

What Is PageRank?

Eddie’s post itself has just a couple of inlinks, that is, links pointing to it from other sites. But to Eddie Van Arsdall’s domain, Simplifying Complexity, there are a lot of links pointing to it. These incoming links give Eddie something called PageRank, which helps his topic dominate the search engine results.

PageRank is a trademarked term created by Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, that describes a ranking of a website’s credibility and authority. Every time you link to a site, Google interprets that link as a vote of confidence for the site. You’re vouching for the site’s credibility when you link to it.

For Google, PageRank is a major variable that determines what sites appear in the search engine results (SERPs). Sites with a high PageRank get more visibility in SERPs. If a site has 1,000 links pointing to it, Google knows that it must be a credible and worthwhile site. Therefore the site appears higher in the results.

Each site on the web is assigned a PageRank between 0 and 10. You can check PageRank here or more powerfully with the SearchStatus Firefox extension.

The New York Times and Wikipedia have a PageRank of 9. TC.Eserver.org and my site have a PageRank of 6. Simplifying Complexity has a PageRank of 4.

In contrast, the webhelp for Flare has no page rank at all. Ouch.

Help Content and PageRank

Help content on the web will always be at a disadvantage with PageRank, because people are less inclined to link to webhelp topics than to blogs or other user-created sites. Why is that?

One reason is that it’s hard to link to a webhelp topic. Webhelp files use frames, so even if you’re looking at the Inserting Concepts into Topics topic, you can’t grab the link to it unless you click the TOC accordion tab at the bottom, find the topic in the TOC, right-click the topic, and copy the link address. It’s non-intuitive to see the link.

Additionally, it’s just not common to link to help files. We tend to link to content created by people like us, especially when the content includes unique insight and perspective from a person’s point of view. Plain procedural topics are boring. We don’t have cause to link to them.

Frames and SEO

Another reason the Flare webhelp topic doesn’t appear in the SERPs is because Flare’s webhelp uses frames. Using frames in general is a poor practice for SEO on web. Many people point out that frames aren’t good for search engine optimization. For example, Webconfs.com: SEO Tools and Webmaster Utilities says ”Frames are very, very bad for SEO. Avoid using them unless really necessary.” Almost every HAT’s webhelp output I’ve seen uses frames, unfortunately.

Index Keywords and 2% Keyword Density

Not only do webhelp files lack PageRank and use frames, they also run into problems with index keywords. Google dislikes repetition of the same keyword over and over in the topic because Google thinks the site is trying to trick it.

The optimal keyword density is about 2%, meaning that if you have 300 words in your article, about 6 of them should be the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for. If you have a keyword density of 20%, Google sees this as trying to game the system. The excessive keyword density works against you.

If I were to include my string of sample keywords that I referenced in my last post, would Google interpret this list of keywords as an attempt to game keyword density? Here’s that list:

• burn notice
• deliver burn notice
• drop off burn notices
• burn notices sending
• how to present a burn notice
• cutting off undercover agents
• severing ties with field agents
• burn notice protocol
• best way to handle burn notice
• give burn notice to operatives

Assuming Google even sees this content (questionable since the index keywords are tagged using Madcap’s unique markup in the code), would Google penalize me for overusing the keyword “burn notice”? I’m not sure.

Moving Towards a Dangerous Conclusion

As the importance of visibility on Google grows, and as companies recognize and treat their help content as an SEO asset for the online visibility and ranking (not to mention marketing) of their products, shouldn’t we put our help content on web-friendly platforms that will maximize their visibility in Google’s search engine results? Are traditional help authoring tools holding us back from realizing the SEO power of our help content?

Jing, TechSmith’s quick image and video capture tool, has their help on a blog platform (Movable Type). When I search for capture video with Jing, the help appears in the top five results.

Are blog platforms the future of help authoring?

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• Congree

As a solution, I incorporated Google Custom Search, which is a free service that allows you to embed a Google search box and results (limited to just your site and any other sites you specify) on your site.

Try it out by searching for something using the search at the top of my sidebar. Not only are the search results more accurate, when you start running a few searches, you begin to see how your site appears to people who search for you in Google.

Canonical Posts

One thing I immediately realized was that a lot of my archives pages were appearing in posts. The search results would begin with my blog title followed by the word archives followed by the post title (which was then truncated due to space constraints). It’s important to have just one version of your post in Google’s search results, so that your other posts aren’t competing against each other. (For more on this, research canonical URLs in WordPress.) I also wanted the search engine result to begin with the post title.

To fix the display of the results, I implemented the All in One SEO plugin and configured the plugin’s settings so that only the single post would appear in the search results, not the archives. I then created a sitemap (using the Daigon Design sitemap generator as well as the Google XML Sitemap plugin), generated both sitemaps, and linked to the Daigon Design sitemap in one of my latest posts so that Google would reindex all the posts on my site.

Implementing Google Custom Search

Implementing Google Custom Search in a WordPress site can be a little tricky. The Google Custom Search WordPress plugin didn’t work for me, so I just copied the Google code manually.

Google gives you two pieces of code: code for a search box and code for the search results. Choose the iframe option before generating the code. For the search results page, type the name search. Insert the search box code in your sidebar somewhere. Then create a page called Search that uses a page template with the search results code. Also copy the search results code into the search.php page of your theme.

As you accrue more and more posts in your blog, you need an fast and accurate way to retrieve posts based on vaguely remembered keywords. WordPress’s built-in search won’t always find what you’re looking for. If users are savvy, they can use site:yourdomain.com keywords to search your site at Google.com. But embedding the search form directly on your site is much more user-intuitive.

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Last week Google released Google Voice, a service that allows you to integrate all your phones into one number and includes a host of features, including voice mail, recording, conference calling, and other services.

To help users get started, Google Voice has a list of 20 short videos. Only the overview video contains animation. It’s certainly the video they’ve put the most work into, and it also functions as marketing collateral.

The other videos are fairly simple, with short looping background music, professional voice talent, and a read script. The defining quality is that each video is short, some as short as 25 seconds.

The videos aren’t integrated with the text help. So if you don’t feel like watching videos, you can’t easily read the same topic. Google Voice does have help text, but it’s on another page, only linked to from the videos with a tiny, hardly noticeable help link in the footer. It’s almost like one group produced text, another produced help, and they published them independently.

The video windows are small, under 500×500 pixels. The small video window allow you to easily move from one video to the next without losing your place in the site. If you click outside of the window, the window doesn’t automatically minimize, which is nice. You have to close the pop-up window to go back to the list of videos.

All the videos are pulled in from Youtube, so they’re shareable. After one video ends, you see a list of related videos, but the related videos aren’t other Google Voice videos. Instead they are other Google services. So the related videos somewhat fail if you’re trying to learn more about Google Voice.

You can’t comment on the videos, or upload your own, or do anything other than watch them. Unlike the Michael Pick videos on WordPress.tv, Google’s videos are somewhat boring. Except for the overview video, which contains an animated stick figure, they lack a sense of being cool. They feel a bit corporate.

Similar to the length of the videos, the help content is also short and to the point, but the help topics are too text-heavy, with almost no illustrations, diagrams, or screenshots. The pages are embedded on the web, and navigating the topics is somewhat tedious. A search field appears at the top of the help, but if you search for the word “videos,” nothing appears.

Glaringly absent is any printable manual. You can print a single page, but not a group of pages in a PDF manual format. Additionally, Google does not provide any kind of quick reference guide to get started.

You can’t comment below the help topics, but there is a forum. The forum allows you to be notified by email and see the most popular discussions. You can also read a Google Voice blog, but the blog, like the help and the videos, isn’t well integrated with the rest of the help materials. It somewhat lives on its own. Google’s blog also takes the backward position of disallowing comments and only allows linkbacks to the posts.

One interesting characteristic of Google Voice help is a lack of parallelism in the topics. Here’s a list of video topics:

• Call screening – Announce and screen callers
• Listen in – Listen before taking a call
• Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls – Call US numbers for free
• Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

The help topic titles are similarly unparallel. Usually help contains all verbs or nouns in a more parallel list.

My Analysis

Google puts a lot of effort in the overview video. That’s a smart move. When people want to learn about Google Voice, the overview video communicates the service in a catchy way, with more of Google’s branding. This video is probably watched thousands of times (a lot more than any other video), so it makes sense to go to the effort of including animation.

What I don’t like about Google’s help is the lack of integration between the video and help content. Not every topic deserves a video. Many times I’d rather read the help. And sometimes I’d rather watch a video. Separating the two formats so strongly is a poor usability move. The forum and blog also need to be more closely integrated with the other help materials.

Additionally, the lack of any printed manual makes me think Google has no single sourcing strategy. The help content is probably just written as regular text on each page. I would have appreciated the opportunity to print a quick reference guide or short manual, only because reading on the web is a nonlinear experience, and moving from one topic to another without any logical sequence can be tiring.

I also think Google chose the wrong voice for its videos. Google is playful, young, and irreverent. But the voice they chose is professional, corporate, scripted, and somewhat ordinary.

I’ve been thinking a lot about voice in videos. Professional voice talent is not necessarily engaging. It sounds professional, but a professional voice isn’t always what users want, even if it’s what they expect. Users want a voice that is friendly, engaging, conversational, and real. I wouldn’t even mind it to be a bit spontaneous.

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree

Strategy and Purpose

Ash says, You need a strategy with search engine optimization (SEO); otherwise you’re just pinging content all over the place. Everyone has an agenda, a strategy, or a reason – or should. If you don’t have a reason, you should shut your blog down and walk away.

(He later took some criticism for this comment.)

Links

• Include internal links to your content so search engines can better find your posts.
• User permalinks in your titles.
• Include a XML sitemap on your blog.
• Include a call to action in posts (e.g., remind users to take the next step, such as to buy your book).

Content

• You don’t need a ton of content on your posts (300 to 700 words is fine), but avoid posts shorter than that. You can’t create a call to action based on a single paragraph. If you run out of words, cover the journalistic Who-What-When-Why-Where.
• Ensure keyword density in your posts. Use keywords in your title and content. (He didn’t mention much about placement, but I’d say definitely include keywords in the title and first paragraph.)
• Focus your posts on how to solve a problem.
• Hone your copywriting skills. You need to lead a reader down a path gracefully.

Search Engine Marketing

• Create link bait with your content (make it enticing for others to link back to you).
• Keep linkbacks varied. Google is suspicious about linkbacks that all have the same anchor text.
• The more linkbacks you have, the greater SEO.
• Add comments on other blogs.
• Partner with other bloggers, such as by going to events such as Wordcamp.
• Write guest posts (this can introduce you to a new audience).
• Add your URL to blog directories.
• Send your latest post links across Twitter. (Ash uses Twitter to follow links more than Google Reader.)

Recommended Plugins

• Akismet, All in One SEO Pack, Comment Luv, Contextual Related Posts, DoFollow, Easy Inline SWF, Easy Tube, FeedBurner, FeedSmith, flickrRSS, Google Analytics, Google XML Sitemaps, Keyword Luv, Make Clickable, Rewtweet, SEO Post Link, ShareThis, Subscribe to Comments, Twitter Tools, What Would Seth Godin Do, WordPress Mobile Edition, WP Auto Tagger, SEO slugs

Tips

• Avoid static links that are spread across every page of your site, such as a blogroll. Google looks at these types of links suspiciously. Put your blogroll on just one page. (This is the first time I’ve heard this advice.)
• Avoid duplicate content. The content duplicated between your category archives and your single posts is undesirable. Ash recommends using excerpts or titles on your category page instead.
• Avoid thinking instead of doing. Don’t sit around contemplating hypotheticals all day.

Ash asked people to submit questions via Twitter. Interesting social phenomenon — he received tons of questions, but people felt free to heckle him playfully with tweets.