Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
Most people reach a help centre from a search engine, not from your website. Five things decide whether they find you.
1. It has to be public
Content behind a sign-in is not indexed at all. That is the single biggest decision, and requiring sign-in on a customer help centre costs you most of its reach.
2. Titles as questions
People search in their own words, and search engines match against your title. "Why is my order late?" matches what somebody types; "Delivery exception handling" does not.
This is the same habit that makes your internal search work, which is convenient.
3. Your own domain
Host mapping puts the content on your domain, so its value accrues to you rather than to a Zendesk subdomain. Do it before you publish, because changing it later means every ranking starts again.
4. Answer early
Search engines show the beginning of your article as the summary, and readers decide from it. An article that opens with three paragraphs of context shows three paragraphs of context in the results.
5. One question per article
An article covering five things ranks for none of them clearly. Split, and link between them.
What not to bother with
Keyword stuffing, and worrying about technical details you cannot change in a hosted help centre. Write clearly for a person with a problem, and the rest follows.
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