Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do Q&A 's work for SEO
-
If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?
-
As an early member of Moz, I can tell you that what brought me back to the site everyday was the blog and the comments on the blog. However I rarely commented on posts, I didn't didn't answer or ask any Q&A, and I didn't use the tools very much (although I used free tools at other sites pretty often) but I thought they provided a lot of credibility. The content was very high quality and taught me to do my job better. You could tell that quite an investment was being made in the content and that there was a dedication to it and the community.
It's my feeling that it was the content and the tools that developed nurtured a community Q&A section--it didn't just spring out of nowhere. A lot of work first went into building a community where a Q&A section could flourish. I think the long term rewards will be worth it as long as you're in it for sake of building a community and not for the sake of any SEO value the community can provide.
-
Do you think you'd be able to attract authority figures in your industry to support your Q&A sectrion?
-
im in the equestrian industry and there is a number of thriving fourums out there however like all forums the quality of info is dubious and as yet the Q&A style of community has not yet been made. I feel this is an opertunity I could work with.
I realise that its a long game and will take lots of work. My main worry is that we are a retailer and that people may not trust our Q&A as we are retailers and no matter how much we separate our sales hat from our community element I feel it may not work. The fact that it has not been done make me think it is worth a try.
Any examples of an ecommerce site with a thriving community attached that would be a good model to emulate?
-
User Generated content can work amazingly well, even just being able to entice people to leave great comments on your articles can pretty awesome.
You do have some challenges through:
1. Cultivating a community.
Lots of website/webmasters have the thought - "Wouldn't it be good if I had a forum" and after getting things up and running are surprised to find that nobody's participating and the forums are dead.
It's a bit like organising a party, getting in the cheese and wine only, to find you've over estimated your popularity and end up drinking alone with the brie.
Do you have an audience in mind. What are their goals and needs. Would they expect to satisfy those goals by coming to you?
I think you'll find it a little harder than you imaging to "create a good community".
2. Differentiating yourself from others
If you're "just like the next guy" then why should anyone use your Q&A? How can you stand apart and offer something different and valuable to everyone else? There's little point just trying to copy someone else - they're already off and running and you're likely to be playing catch-up.
Unless you have something unique and valuable to offer (and be honest about this!). What's your value proposition. What's in it for your audience?
One tactic would be to cater to a very specific niche. One that is super-targetted to your own business offerings. This has pros and cons of course. The smaller the niche, the smaller the potential income. However, you'll be better able to specialise and become relevant to that niche.
3. Moderating and feeding
User-generated content sounds fantastic - just sit back and watch all this awesome content being created before your very eyes.
It's not quite as easy as that. Moderating and maintaining your community will take time and effort. So you'll need to make sure you have the resources available and the desire to do so. Managing people can be unpredictable and difficult so don't consider user generated content in any form as a quick win.
As well as moderating, you need to keep your audience focused and engaged. It's not going to be quick either.
All this can take you away from free earning work, and your business goals so do keep the opportunity cost in mind.
-
I think it's a great way to develop future content. If you have good analytics tracking on your Q&A (or FAQ section for some sites) you can take the questions that get a ton of traffic and make posts out of them for your main site. Also, if you have a particular section/topic that gets a ton of questions about it (ie panda, penguin, hummingbird, etc) you could develop a webinar for the people that come to your site.
As you develop your site and the Q&A section becomes widely used, you'll start to see questions show in Google searches. In general, as long as you develop that section for your USERS and not for Google specifically, you'll get the traffic you want and more sales (assuming that's the goal).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO'ing a sports advice website
Hi Team Moz, Despite being in tech/product development for 10+ years, I'm relatively new to SEO (and completely new to this forum) so was hoping for community advice before I dive in to see how Google likes (or perhaps doesn't) my soon to be built content. I'm building a site (BetSharper, an early-stage work in progress) that will deliver practical, data orientated predictive advice prior to sporting events commencing. The initial user personas I am targeting would need advice on specific games so, as an example, I would build a specific page for the upcoming Stanley Cup Game 1 between the Capitals and the Tampa Bay Lighting. I'm in the midst of keyword research and believe I have found some easier to achieve initial keywords (I'm realistic, building my DA will take time!) that include the team names but don't reference dates or state of the tournament. The question is, hypothetically if I ranked for this page for this sporting event this year, would it make sense to refresh the same page with 2019 matchup content when they meet again next year, or create a new page? I am assuming I would be targeting the same intended keywords but wondering if I get google credit for 2018 engagement post 2019 refresh. Or should I start fresh with a new page and specifically target keywords afresh each time? I read some background info on canonical tabs but wasn't sure if it was relevant in my case. I hope I've managed to articulate myself on what feels like an edge case within the wonderful world of SEO. Any advice the community delivers would be much appreciated...... Kind Regards James.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JB19770 -
Best SEO Strategy for Badges & Awards.
Hello Moz Friends! I was wondering what the correct "SEO friendly" strategy is with badges and awards. We recently got BBB accredited and added their badge to the footer of the website. We also added a review badge from shopper approved to the footer. As I'm joining other communities, I see there's badges given to us. For example, Alignable. Great place for networking. They offer a badge that says "locals recommend us" or something. Should I embed these badges onto our website someplace? Should I create a page for just badges or place them in the footer or sidebar widgets? What the best SEO practice for this? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE2 -
What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?
Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau3 -
What's the best possible URL structure for a local search engine?
Hi Mozzers, I'm working at AskMe.com which is a local search engine in India i.e if you're standing somewhere & looking for the pizza joints nearby, we pick your current location and share the list of pizza outlets nearby along with ratings, reviews etc. about these outlets. Right now, our URL structure looks like www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets for the city specific category pages (here, "Delhi" is the city name and "Pizza Outlets" is the category) and www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets/in/saket for a category page in a particular area (here "Saket") in a city. The URL looks a little different if you're searching for something which is not a category (or not mapped to a category, in which case we 301 redirect you to the category page), it looks like www.askme.com/delhi/search/pizza-huts/in/saket if you're searching for pizza huts in Saket, Delhi as "pizza huts" is neither a category nor its mapped to any category. We're also dealing in ads & deals along with our very own e-commerce brand AskMeBazaar.com to make the better user experience and one stop shop for our customers. Now, we're working on URL restructure project and my question to you all SEO rockstars is, what can be the best possible URL structure we can have? Assume, we have kick-ass developers who can manage any given URL structure at backend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
Why is /home used in this company's home URL?
Just working with a company that has chosen a home URL with /home latched on - very strange indeed - has anybody else comes across this kind of homepage URL "decision" in the past? I can't see why on earth anybody would do this! Perhaps simply a logic-defying decision?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
May know what's the meaning of these parameters in .htaccess?
Begin HackRepair.com Blacklist RewriteEngine on Abuse Agent Blocking RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [NC,OR]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esiow2013
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bolt\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bot\ mailto:[email protected] [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} CazoodleBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ChinaClaw [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Custo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Default\ Browser\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DIIbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} discobot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Download\ Demon [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^eCatch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ecxi [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EirGrabber [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailCollector [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailSiphon [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailWolf [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Express\ WebPictures [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ExtractorPro [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EyeNetIE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^FlashGet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetRight [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetWeb! [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go!Zilla [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go-Ahead-Got-It [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GrabNet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Grafula [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GT::WWW [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} heritrix [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^HMView [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTP::Lite [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTrack [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ia_archiver [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IDBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Stripper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Indy\ Library [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InterGET [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Internet\ Ninja [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InternetSeer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IRLbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ISC\ Systems\ iRc\ Search\ 2.1 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Java [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JetCar [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JOC\ Web\ Spider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^larbin [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^LeechFTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Link [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} LinksManager.com_bot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} linkwalker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} lwp-trivial [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mass\ Downloader [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Maxthon$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MFC_Tear_Sample [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^microsoft.url [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Microsoft\ URL\ Control [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MIDown\ tool [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mister\ PiX [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Missigua\ Locator [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.*Indy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.NEWT [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MSFrontPage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Navroad [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NearSite [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetAnts [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetSpider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Net\ Vampire [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetZIP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Nutch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Octopus [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Explorer [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Navigator [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PageGrabber [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} panscient.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Papa\ Foto [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pavuk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PECL::HTTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PeoplePal [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pcBrowser [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PHPCrawl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PleaseCrawl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^psbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^RealDownload [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ReGet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Rippers\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} SBIder [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SeaMonkey$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^sitecheck.internetseer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SiteSnagger [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SmartDownload [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Snoopy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Steeler [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperHTTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Surfbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^tAkeOut [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Teleport\ Pro [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Toata\ dragostea\ mea\ pentru\ diavola [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} URI::Fetch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} urllib [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} User-Agent [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^VoidEYE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Image\ Collector [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} webalta [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebAuto [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^[Ww]eb[Bb]andit [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WebCollage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebCopier [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebFetch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebGo\ IS [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebLeacher [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebReaper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebSauger [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ eXtractor [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ Quester [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebStripper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebWhacker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebZIP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Wells\ Search\ II [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WEP\ Search [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Wget [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Widow [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWW-Mechanize [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWWOFFLE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} zermelo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.)Zeus.Webster [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ZyBorg [NC]
RewriteRule ^. - [F,L] Abuse bot blocking rule end End HackRepair.com Blacklist1 -
Multiple stores & domains vs. One unified store (SEO pros / cons for E-Commerce)
Our company runs a number of individual online shops, specialised in particular products but all in the same genre of goods overall, with a specific and relevant domain name for each shop. At the moment the sites are separate, and not interlinked, i.e. Completely separate brands. An analogy could be something like clothing accessories (we are not in the clothing business): scarves.com, and silkties.com (our field is more niche than this) We are about to launch a related site, (e.g. handbags.com), in the same field again but without precisely overlapping products. We will produce this site on a newer, more flexible e-commerce platform, so now is a good time to consider whether we want to place all our sites together with one e-commerce system on the backend. Essentially, we need to know what the pros and cons would be of the various options facing us and how the SEO ranking is affected by the three possibilities. Option 1: continue with separate sites each with its own domains. Option 2: have multiple sites, each on their own domain, but on the same ecommerce system and visible linked together for the customer (with unified checkout) – on the top of each site could be a menu bar linking to each site: [Scarves.com] – [SilkTies.com] – [Handbags.com] The main question here is whether the multiple domains are mutually beneficial, particularly considerding how close to target keywords the individual domains are. If mutually benefitial, how does it compare to option 3: Option 3: Having recently acquired a domain name (e.g. accessories.com) which would cover the whole category together, we are presented with a third option: making one site selling all of these products in different categories. Our main concern here would be losing the ability to specifically target marketing, and losing the benefit of the domains with the key words in for what people are more likely to be searching for (e.g. 'silk tie') rather than 'accessories.' Is it worth taking the hit on losing these specific targeted domain names for the advantage of increased combined inbound links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Web fonts & SEO
Hi everyone ! My question is regarding web fonts. We are currently working on a new design for our website and we're thinking about using web fonts instead of images containing the fonts we'd like to have. I'd like to know if web fonts can affect SEO as they need to be downloaded on the visitor's computers and consequently can slow down the load time of our web pages. If anyone has used web fonts in the past, do you have some specific tips to share ? Thank you in advance for your answers! Jeremie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxxum0
