Answer
May 20, 2024 - 03:12 PM
If you'd like to closely regulate what content is included in your Q&A sitemap and supports a landing page for the Q&A pair, you can do so in your SEO settings under "System Settings > SEO". Answerbase connects directly with Google search console and can help regulate what Q&A pairs are indexed based on Google Search Console data or you also can manually determine some conditions where that may be the case.
Answerbase's "Supplementary Content" settings enables you to regulate what Q&A content is going to be considered good enough to be "Main Content" and what content should be considered "Supplementary Content" and manage them appropriately. Here is an overview of each of these mean and how they can be valuable:
Within your "System Settings > SEO" settings you'll see a "Supplementary Content" tab as shown here:
These settings are available so you can determine what approach you'd like to take as far as the creation and indexing of Q&A landing pages. Here is an overview of some of the commonly used settings for the purposes of regulating what Q&A pairs support their own landing page.
Companies can choose which settings they want to enable based on their own preferences for SEO. When a Q&A pair is marked as being "Supplementary Content" you can choose to do the following with it:
These settings ensure that you can regulate your helpful Q&A content as you see appropriate while ensuring that the Q&A content that does have a regular search demand can be satisfied by your expertise and drive traffic and customers to your site.
Answerbase's "Supplementary Content" settings enables you to regulate what Q&A content is going to be considered good enough to be "Main Content" and what content should be considered "Supplementary Content" and manage them appropriately. Here is an overview of each of these mean and how they can be valuable:
- Main Content: This is the main purpose of the page, so when you have a Q&A pair where there is a search demand for the answer to that question you can have a Q&A landing page dedicated to that Q&A pair. The Q&A landing pages that are spawned/managed by Answerbase see on average a click through rate of 121% higher that a business' average CTR as it directly speaks to the intent of a customer's search and leads them to the page. Google specifically communicates about the "Main Content" (MC) of the page and that the page needs to give the visitor a satisfactory experience when it comes to fulfilling the purpose of the page. Since the Q&A landing pages are specifically focused on the question and shows as a priority the answer to that specific questions, this ensures that the Q&A landing pages best fulfill the search intent when customers are asking those questions on Google.
- Supplementary Content: Not all of your Q&A pairs have a regular demand on Google or you may want to designate some of the Q&A content as having it's own landing page, so Answerbase gives you some tools to identify those pairs and that content can still be used to (1) supplement the Q&A pairs that do qualify as "Main Content" to provide additional social proof and value to visitors of those landing pages and (2) to auto-suggest answers to future visitors who ask that same question.
Within your "System Settings > SEO" settings you'll see a "Supplementary Content" tab as shown here:
These settings are available so you can determine what approach you'd like to take as far as the creation and indexing of Q&A landing pages. Here is an overview of some of the commonly used settings for the purposes of regulating what Q&A pairs support their own landing page.
- Flagging Q&A that's Solely AI-Generated: AI is a powerful tool for efficiency and it's not against Google's guidelines to use AI to create content, but if your team creates an abundance of AI-generated content without any review, editing, or approval that can be looked at as being spammy. Answerbase can recognize the AI-proposed Q&A's where your team has chosen to not edit or add any topical expertise and we can automatically mark those as "Supplementary Content" so they don't support their own Q&A landing page. As long as your team has reviewed the content and approved it, it can still be valuable for visitors to view but if you're not adding any new experience or expertise into the content it's probably not creating any "information gain" so it's best to be utilized as supplementary content as opposed to living on it's own as a "Main Content" piece.
- Demoting Q&A that Google Search Console Doesn't Index: Even if you have a user generated question that is asking for information that is not currently available on your site, while your knowledgeable answer that should demonstrate E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is creating some "information gain" for your site and for the world....if there isn't a demand for that content on Google it may be best to have that content support your other "Main Content" pages (product pages and indexed Q&A) and not have it's own Q&A landing page. Answerbase communicates directly with Google Search Console and can identify when Google has crawled a page and chosen not to index it, and you can determine how quickly Answerbase should offiically demote that content and utilize it as Supplementary Content vs Main Content based on that data.
- Flagging Content Based on Length: Google has made it clear that they don't care how long content is, they simply want to fulfill the search intent. That means that a 1-2 sentence answer can rank just as well (if not better) than other depths of content like articles. Google says in their Search Raters Guidelines that for some queries a simple answer is many times the best result and we've seen some Q&A landing pages with just a 2-3 sentence answer ranking over in-depth articles related to that topic. The typical featured snippet is 40-60 words so Answerbase recommends answering with at least that to provide a well formatted answer that services the customer well. With that said, we do have some customers who prefer to have some kind of minimum threshold (for example, at 40 words) so we have settings for you to set that threshold if you prefer. That content can still be valuable to supplement the content of other pages and these settings allow you to configure that.
Companies can choose which settings they want to enable based on their own preferences for SEO. When a Q&A pair is marked as being "Supplementary Content" you can choose to do the following with it:
- Make Content No-Index and Remove from Sitemap: If the Q&A pair doesn't meet the threshold based on your settings, you can choose to no-index that Q&A landing page and ensure that your Q&A sitemap doesn't include that Q&A pair. This ensures that you're only indexing the Q&A pairs that pass your criteria as being worthy of "Main Content".
- Displaying Supplementary Content on Other Main Content: By default if your Q&A pairs are associated with either a product, product category, or article....those Q&A pairs will act as supplementary content on those pages and bolster the "Main Content" of those pages. You'll also see a setting for "Display supplementary content on relevant Q&A landing pages." so that the Q&A pairs that do pass the criteria to remain with their own landing pages....they can be bolstered by other "Supplementary Content" Q&A pairs that are associated with the same topic (products, categories, or articles).
These settings ensure that you can regulate your helpful Q&A content as you see appropriate while ensuring that the Q&A content that does have a regular search demand can be satisfied by your expertise and drive traffic and customers to your site.
