Your Best Technical Content Is Hidden Where Search Cannot Find It

I must’ve audited close to a hundred sites over the last 20 years, and I always come across the same issues. Landing pages that fail to do their job of giving the reader enough of a reason to buy. You lose the sale to a competitor just like that, because they told the reader what they needed to.

Software and cloud businesses are no exception. Readers aren’t convinced the software will solve the productivity problem they’re facing because their technical questions aren’t being answered. Even worse, if it looks like it might not be compatible with the rest of the setup, it can actually encourage them NOT to buy, as it starts looking like a risk, not a reward. The problem is even larger if search engines can’t find this information either.

When I speak to businesses, they're adamant that the information is there. Then when they show me, it’s buried three pages away where no one can find it, like some sort of treasure hunt! The worst case has to be when I see critical sales information hidden behind a login wall where only existing customers can see it. Even the most curious researchers won't find it, and they walk away.

Potential customers are seeking technical specifics right away to confirm that you are the correct choice, and they aren’t finding this information, even though you’ve written it. Placement, availability, or organisation are the main issues. This is stunting conversions and growth.

Issue 1 — The content is in the wrong place

You say that the technical content is on the website, but customers and crawlers aren’t finding it. So what’s the best way to make this available?

The first step is to address how articles are labelled internally. Articles are labelled before they are published and put in the corresponding ‘bin’. ‘Support’ articles go to the help centre, ‘Marketing’ pages are published on the main website, etc. These make sense from an operations perspective, but are a poor model for how people research software.

Customers won't go rummaging through your help centre to find answers before they convert. They either don’t have the time or won't know to look there. From experience, only existing customers know to look here for after-sales support.

Buyers don’t care about which team owns the answer, just if they can find what they are looking for. Therefore, companies should label content based on how far customers are in their journey and what they are searching for at each stage. An example could look like:

“Can cloud software replace our current system? - Awareness

“Does it integrate with Microsoft 365?” - Research

“Can it import data from HubSpot?” - Consideration

Using this method to label content creates a logical path for customers to click through your website. It means that people aren’t clicking into a new section that looks like it's not for them. They are staying on-site, where the decision is made, reading the answers to their questions.

Creating pages based on the customer journey is also vital because it creates a natural funnel towards the sale. Detailed FAQ style pages should be written for customers to land on, and the question should be answered there. If the customer has further questions, they should be found one click away, on another page. Don’t make them back out or click through three pages to find this answer, and don’t attach lengthy PDFs for them to crawl through too. Search engines struggle to find information in technical PDF documents, so don’t make your customers go look through these too. Keep them on the page and answer the question there.

Issue 2 — Content is poorly connected

Okay, so now you know where to put the information so it’s not hidden from customers, but your rankings are still not increasing, and customers are still not converting at a rate that’s strong enough. This is because your website isn’t organised in a way that search engines can join the dots and find this information.

You might now be asking — ‘But the information is there, why not?’

You must link pages together for both customers and search engines to easily navigate your website. Google states that it uses linking to discover new pages. Its crawlers move along links like a spider moves along its web. Google recommends that every important page has at least one internal link pointing to it. This means that one page on your website must also link to another page. These links must make sense and support the reader's journey through your site

For example, a data migration guide for a specific CRM tool should be linked to the main migration guide hub - like a home for all guides. This helps both the crawler and the customer make logical connections and find the information they’re looking for. If customers find the right information, they’ll be more confident and more likely to pick your software. If search engines can find your pages more easily, they will trust the pages more, boosting the likelihood of ranking well in search results. This gets more eyes on your service.

However, I recommended against reducing content discoverability to just an indexing checklist and instead making internal linking a standard practice for publishing all new pages. That means every guide, service page, and technical article.

Issue 3 — The content doesn't even exist

Sometimes the best technical content isn’t available because it’s not actually written at all. Businesses don’t always know every single question the customers are asking, or they don’t have time to answer them. But this information is out there for you to use.

Not having the right information is detrimental from both a visibility and conversion perspective too, and if customers are looking off-site for answers, they can come across your competitors who tell them everything they need to know.

The simple solution is to write the content and follow the above guidance. Present this where customers are searching for the answers and link it to other relevant technical content to keep customers on the site and satisfied, whilst allowing search engines to find it too. The question now becomes ‘what content do I need to write?’

There are three core ways to evaluate what customers are asking about your service:

Feedback

Surveys

Search queries

Ask customers for post-purchase feedback. Personal, bespoke emails encourage the highest engagement rate. Ask them if they have any questions and provide them with the best email for post-sales support. Gather common questions and publish guides for new customers to read. Customers leaving feedback such as ‘The migration went smoothly, but we didn’t realise beforehand that several custom fields would need to be reformatted’ is gold dust in this scenario.

This could inform a pre-sale guide titled “What to Check Before Migrating Your CRM Data”, explaining supported fields, formatting requirements and the preparation required before migration.

Sharing surveys with customers or software users is another effective way to gather common customer pain points and joys. By understanding what customers are really looking for, not what your marketing team thinks they do, you can create a content strategy that attracts many high-quality customers.

Lastly, there are questions that potential customers are already searching for. Take a deep dive by using public tools and websites. Sites like Answer The Public and Ubersuggest provide a freemium service to help find you find these questions. Supplementing this with something as simple as looking at software subreddits can help paint a clearer picture. The goal here is to collect a list of what people are asking in the industry to turn these into website goals.

Bring it all together

Your technical content only works if potential customers and search engines can find it and use it to make a purchase decision. If it’s sitting in the wrong website section, disconnected from the rest of the site or hasn’t been written yet, you’re allowing customers to search elsewhere for the answer. Competitors will step in.

Start with one service. List the questions customers ask before buying, check where the content is, and make sure the pages connect in a way that makes sense. Use customer feedback, surveys and real search queries to fill the gaps. Don’t make potential customers hunt because they simply won't. Give them the information they need where they expect to find it.