Question & Answer posts are a fantastic post type for two reasons: people love to get answers to their questions and these kind of posts are great for SEO. These two reasons are related, but the first reason also makes your posts more share-worthy.
Q&A posts show that you’re listening to your customers and responding in helpful ways. This builds trust and shows expertise, which leads to sales. Nothing shows authority more so than being able to answer any question thrown at you.
Two Types
Single Question
As you’ve probably figured out, the single question Q&A post is about answering a single question. I know, I know, sometimes you gotta be a real Einstein for this stuff.
Single question Q&A posts have a very simple structure: the headline asks the question and the post content answers it. That doesn’t sound like much, but often an answer needs more space than you might think to get everything out.
Multiple Question
Questions can be an random order, ordered from most frequently asked to least, or in a “next thought” order. What I mean by “next thought” is when you follow the question asker’s natural progression of questions based on the answer to a previous question (technically, a question-asker is called a querant, but I don’t think we need to get technical).
Why This is Good for SEO
The reason why Q&A posts are so great for SEO is a simple one: because you’re using a searcher’s exact keywords in your content. Not only that, but in the most important part of your content: the headline. And to a less important extent, the subheads.
This means your headline or subheads are very simple and easy to write, because they are nothing more or less than the exact question, word for word. You should not correct for grammar or usage in this case because you want there to be no difference between your headline and what someone is going to type into that Google box.
People do not always type in one or two keywords and off they go. They very often type in an entire question, figuring someone else already has answered it (or perhaps in some cases because they don’t know any other way–if you’ve never seen how someone else searches for the same thing you’re searching for, you really have no idea how varied this can be and it’s a real eye-opener).
Don’t Overexplain
You know way more than your clients do. It’s tempting to try and explain everything to them, but then when you try, it becomes overly difficult to give all the necessary background in some kind of logical order. If answering a question feels like you have to write an entire book, you’re overexplaining.
You need to remember something very important: give people only the information they need right now. Give it to them in bite-sized chunks, not more than they can chew. Multiple question Q&A posts are a way to do this on a very small scale, but be careful not to overexplain.
The reason why this is so important is that if you try to explain everything it will have the opposite effect from what you intended. Instead of being helpful and driving new customers into your arms, you will frighten them with excessive, interrelated details and scare them away. A confused mind never says “yes.” A confused mind never buys.
Where to Get Questions
There are several ways to get questions for Q&A posts:
- Actual questions people have asked you
- Actual questions other people have asked
- Imagined questions based on how well you know your ideal customer and her situation
There are many ways to get questions other people have asked, from search to special Q&A sites online like Yahoo! Answers and Quora.
Image by erix!
