7 Reasons Why Q&A and SEO are a Match Made in Heaven

By Jonathan Hoekman

For many, search engine optimization (SEO) seems like a complex science experiment. Terms like algorithm, link-bait, archive and no-follow cause many to write the practice off as a weird science better left to ‘those people’ who understand what it is and how to use it.

At its most basic level, SEO is the practice of using targeted, relevant keywords to create useful, unique content about your business; optimizing your site categorically so people can easily access that content and then enticing people to link to it.

In SEO, the challenge for most businesses is how to create large amounts of quality content that is not only relevant to what your target audience is searching for but also provides value and leads to sharing and linking.

The solution? An ExpertBase online community. Here are 7 reasons why:

#1: Not All Content is Created Equal

There’s no doubt that when it comes to driving traffic to your website, content is king; but not all content is created equal. When it comes to effective SEO, quality content that is unique, relevant and adds value to the person reading it is what matters. Quality content engages the reader and helps make their life better, easier and less stressful. It becomes a resource, answers a question, helps make a decision, informs, entertains and even soothes. Most importantly for SEO, quality content begs to be shared, blogged, tweeted or liked.

Question and answer sites (Q&A) align perfectly with the elements of quality content. By its very nature, Q&A sites address unique questions, literally helping people find the information they need so that they can make a knowledgeable decision. While determining the quality of an answer is a problem on many Q&A sites, with ExpertBase, quality is built in. In ExpertBase online communities, the person who asks a question accepts the most helpful comment(s) as the answer to their question. They even grade the quality of the answer they received. Asker certified content equals quality content.

#2: Content Production Ain’t Cheap

In SEO, some (quality) content is good. More (quality) content is better. Unfortunately, few companies have the resources to hire the staff required to produce large amounts of that content. Enter Expertbase. When you add ExpertBase to your website, you give your employees, brand advocates and casual customers a place to interact about your product, brand or service.

Using ExpertBase as the collaboration platform, people ask and answer questions, give each other advice or point each other in the right direction regarding a decision about your business or products. All the while, they are adding large amounts of highly valuable, targeted content to your site. This content is stored on your ExpertBase site and becomes available to anyone, anywhere who might be searching for an answer to the same question--24 hours a day, seven days a week.

#3: Birds of a Feather Flock Together

You know the saying “birds of a feather flock together.” Well, the same is true for search terminology. People of similar backgrounds, interests or demographics tend to use similar terminology when communicating. The implications of this principle are significant when it comes to SEO and Q&A because of a concept called near or exact match. In SEO, the more the words used in your content match the terms or keywords being used to search for a topic, the better. The best possible outcome is an exact match. (For example, an exact match occurs when you have an article on your site called ‘How to Drive Traffic Using SEO’ and someone types ‘How to Drive Traffic Using SEO’ into their Google search.)

As you can probably guess, exact matches are rare, which makes near matches vital to your SEO efforts. The most important ingredient in achieving a near match is that the individual keywords being used in the search match the content on your site. If someone types ‘SEO’ into their Google search, you need to have ‘SEO’ in your article, not Search Engine Optimization. This concept is why terminology is so important. By providing a platform for your target audience to collaborate about your brand, you allow them to communicate using terminology that is common to them, greatly increasing the chances of achieving a near-or even an exact--match.

#4: Searching and Asking are Similar yet Different

Just as matching terminology is important for effective SEO, so is matching search intent. The three main types of search intent are: navigational, transactional and informational. Navigational searches are searches where a person knows the site they want to go to, but not the URL, so they search for it. (Ex: Searching for ‘Facebook’ when you want to go to www.Facebook.com.) Transactional searches are goal driven; you know what you want and are looking to complete that transaction. (Ex: Trying to find the best price for an iPhone 4.)

The third type of search intent is informational search, which is where Q&A comes into play. When someone performs an informational search, they are trying to gather information about something they did not know before. In essence, they are saying ‘how do I find out more about ______’. Sounds like a question, right? Bingo. When the search intent is informational, words like ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘what’ are commonly used. By utilizing a Q&A platform on your site, the content developed matches the intent of others looking to find out the same or similar information. Because search intent matches, your content will rank better for informational searches.

#5: Being an Authority Boosts Your Traffic

Just like in life, reputation means everything in SEO. If you’ve ever tried to hire a new employee, you know that people can talk a good talk and appear to be the perfect addition to your team. But, what do others say about them? Does their reputation match their self-promotion? You’ve got to check their references.

The same goes for SEO. What other people or sites say about your company is equally as important as your website’s messaging. If your website is helpful and adds value, people will talk about it and give you their vote of confidence one tweet, like, blog post and link at a time. Every time someone links to your site, you improve your site’s reputation. The better your reputation, the higher your website’s authority and the more important the content on your site becomes to search engines, ultimately leading to better ranking and more traffic. With ExpertBase, you have the tool to build the quality content and links needed to help increase your reputation, and as a result, boost your traffic.

#6: People Want to Pay It Forward

Ever seen the movie Pay it Forward, where Haley Joel Osment starts a movement of people doing good to others as a response to others doing good to them? A year or so ago, Liberty Mutual did a series of commercials on a similar topic. The overall theme: when other’s do good to you, you are challenged and encouraged to pass it on or ‘pay it forward’.

Again, the same concept applies with Q&A and SEO. When someone answers your question, they are coming along side you to help, guide or inform you-in other words, doing good to you. For most people, receiving this kind of support, gives them a sense of satisfaction that puts them in prime position to share their experience with others. Online, sharing takes the form of blog posts, tweets, likes or even emails-- all of which add links to your site content. As previously mentioned, a key principle in SEO is that the more links you have from other sites (Twitter and Facebook posts, etc.), the more important your site becomes to Google. More links increase your overall ranking in the search results, driving more traffic to your site. In SEO, sharing truly is caring.

#7: Relevant, Qualified Traffic is what Matters Most

The goal of any successful SEO campaign is not simply to drive traffic. While any traffic is better than no traffic, not all traffic has the same value to your business. When it comes to traffic, the more relevant and qualified the traffic is to your company, product or service, the better. A quick example: Say you are a cloud-based Q&A platform looking to get in front of a qualified audience that you can talk to about your product (sound familiar?). Would it be better to write a generic article about a pop-culture topic that gets the attention of Google news and drives 500,000 visitors to your site, or a targeted article demonstrating how your product fills a specific need and drives 10,000 visitors?

My experience (as the SEO manager for an Alexa top 1000 website) tells me the 10,000 visitors interested in your product would have a higher conversion rate than the 500,000 generic visitors. Again, this is where Q&A comes in. By engaging in conversations that are specific to your product or service, the resulting traffic coming to your site is extremely relevant to your business and highly qualified to make a purchasing decision.

Summing It All Up

Contrary to popular belief, SEO is not a difficult mystery that only certain people can solve. Optimizing your website to rank well in search results is as simple as a) creating quality content that is b) valuable to the visitors to your site and c) makes them want to share it with others.

And an ExpertBase Q&A community will help you do just that! It provides a platform for online collaboration and conversations about your brand, product or service to take place-all while driving relevant, qualified traffic to your site.

About ExpertBase

ExpertBase provides your employees, customers and brand advocates with incentives to ask and answer questions about your products and services. Utilizing a patented point/grade system, answerers earn points and recognition, while askers are rewarded with a quality answer. Solutions are stored on your Q&A help site, providing a reliable resource for future users.

An ExpertBase Q&A site brings the conversation home: you own the content, you get the traffic. Best of all, we do all the work to get everything up and running and maintain your site on an on-going basis.