Accelerated Authoring™ @ Method M

In this space we have written about Technical Documentation and Your Company in Google. For some practical tips and discussion about getting Google to index your documentation, see the tips “Create a word map of your help“. In the same post on HelpAuthoring.Info, the author also offers sound advice for getting your onlinde documentation in front of the viewing public:

“The best approach is to place several links to your manual in different sections of your web site: on any product description page, support page, and download page. These are the pages where users expect to find online help. Show them your help content masterpiece.”

Katriel

“Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system.” – Clive Thompson in Wired (March/April 2007).

Think about how your company appears in Google – and if you can leverage tech documents to improve your Google ratings. As an example, let’s take a company called HumanEyes that offers “software for producing visual 3D and lenticular effects.”

Googling for lenticular printing yields just one result for HumanEyes in the top 10. You guessed it – a page from tech docs posted to the web with useful information about lenticular lens types. Kudos to the authors at HumanEyes!

When deciding if tech documentation will be posted to the web, factor in the influence on the Google “reputation-management system”. Tech writers – start planning on-line documentation for maximum effect on Google rankings. And when you succeed, show management (before annual bonuses are calculated)!
Katriel