Ecommerce Q&A Case Study - Transition to Subdirectory Reveals Q&A Content Over 25% of Total Organic Traffic
We have many customers where Q&A contributes to a significant percentage of their organic traffic, as search engines like Google, Bing, Perplexity, etc. need to fulfill their information searches/questions with the information that best addresses their needs. Those engines can only service up what they've read/consumed....so as long as you're creating great original content based on great experience...the content should perform and we've seen that over and over again. Some customer journeys to that percentage are a bit different....especially customers that don't 100% follow our guidance during onboarding:) Nevertheless....they're rewarded if they're creating Great Content....so wanted to show an example of a customer that was answering questions well but they never followed our guidance to make sure that content was living on their own domain...but regardless, it ended up turning into a significant percentage of their traffic (over 25%) and continues to grow.
The Scenario That Creates the Interesting Observation
When our customers signup for an account.....by default, their knowledge base starts on an Answerbase subdomain like this:
yoursite.answerbase.com
As part of our onboarding process....we tell our customers to setup their own subdirectory (typically it's "yoursite.com/answers") where their knowledge base will live....but some customers have just kept it on the Answerbase subdomain. The good news is....Google still respects the content and it performs....you can see an example here of a customer knowledge base that grew and then during Google's December Core Update....Google decided that it loved what the customer was spitting out (seems as if per section) and the traffic grew quite a bit...see what happened here on the Answerbase subdomain.
As we said....Google's looking for helpful content...and we've seen that perform wherever it sits (even on an Answerbase subdomain). The traffic from the Answerbase subdomain had become their #1 referral of traffic to their site...and we encouraged them to transition it to a subdirectory so that it was 100% white-labeled and there are several other benefits to having Answerbase integrated within your actual domain. So....what we did is we had them manage that configuration within Answerbase to get their knowledge based on a "yoursite.com/answers" subdirectory.
What Happened to the Existing Traffic?
Once the configuration was finished.....Answerbase managed a 301 redirect from their original "yoursite.answerbase.com" location to the new "yoursite.com/answers" location....so everything flows for SEO.
What was seen as a result was a notable lift of existing traffic to the Q&A knowledge base within their Google Search Console reports.....which they could easily identify as they did a filter under "answers" in Google Search Console and they were able to see an explosion in traffic to pages with "answers" in the URL....see here:
So, we made sure that the transition was managed effectively they maintained/grew their traffic to your Q&A knowledge base....and everything is white labeled under their domain. Now....let's get into some interesting observations after the transition.
More Traffic to Same Content on Subdirectory After Transition vs Answerbase Subdomain
You'll notice that before the transition...the Q&A content was driving about 200-300 clicks per day and between 35K to 45K impressions per day....as seen here:
But notice after transitioning to the subdirectory.....the clicks are 250-375 per day and the impressions are now reaching higher heights with impressions as well:
So.....seems like it got a bit of a boost just by having it on their domain vs an answerbase subdomain (which is why we recommend it from the start). Now let's dig into the percentage of their traffic that is being driven by the Q&A content given how the SEO landscape has moved towards "people first helpful content".
Q&A Accounts for Over 25% of Organic Traffic
For the site above....you'll see over the last 7 days since the transition....the Q&A is responsible for over 25% of their organic traffic as seen here that covers specifically the Q&A subdomain (you can see the filter):
You can see their site's total organic activity as shown here:
So....if you do the math on that for the last 7 days since the switch:
Google's Indexing 92% of the Q&A Content
You can see that Google likes the vast majority of the Q&A content they're publishing with over 6K Q&A pages being indexed, see their indexing of the Q&A content here as Google Search Console starting picking that up:
But....those above stats don't tell the whole picture. You'll see that for the ones that aren't indexed.....Google knows that they're out there but hasn't gotten to crawl them yet...see here:
In fact....out of over 8,350 Q&A pairs....Google has chosen not to index only 11 after crawling the content...see here:
That means that 92% of the Q&A content that Google has crawled it has chosen to put in it's index. Q&A is exactly what Google is looking for and defining as "people first content"....and when customers answer questions, they perform over time.
Each Question Answered & Indexed Attracts 19 New Potential Customers
As you can see through the stats above.....when this ecommerce merchant is answering questions, they are doing it well because the Q&A pair is not just servicing one potential customer....they are seeing 19.4 customers per year are being serviced through organic search for every new Q&A page they publish and Google indexes. Answerbase has seen some examples that go up to 44 people per year over time, per Q&A pair.....so this really speaks to the value of servicing customers well and your can turn your customer service channels into a new customer acquisition channel. It's worth spending just a few extra minutes to make sure you have a GREAT answer to their question (great doesn't necessarily mean long). Answerbase sees on average that 8% of new answers convert to a sale, but over 21% of Q&A's eventually have conversion attribution because the Q&A content is leveraged on the site and also drawing brand new potential customers through organic search results.
But, Wait...It's Getting Better
As you can see in the above charts....the Q&A has continued to grow as the traffic transitions. If you take the last 24 hours for that ecommerce site.....you see the Q&A is this:
and this is their whole site in the last 24 hours....
That's 29.5%. We've seen Q&A account for up to 48% of an ecommerce merchant's organic traffic.....so as long as you create original and valuable content....you should get rewarded for that as Google and any other AI engine needs that content in order to satisfy the informational requests they get.
We'd love to help grow traffic to your site through valuable Q&A engagement and content, you can Schedule a Demo here.
The Scenario That Creates the Interesting Observation
When our customers signup for an account.....by default, their knowledge base starts on an Answerbase subdomain like this:
yoursite.answerbase.com
As part of our onboarding process....we tell our customers to setup their own subdirectory (typically it's "yoursite.com/answers") where their knowledge base will live....but some customers have just kept it on the Answerbase subdomain. The good news is....Google still respects the content and it performs....you can see an example here of a customer knowledge base that grew and then during Google's December Core Update....Google decided that it loved what the customer was spitting out (seems as if per section) and the traffic grew quite a bit...see what happened here on the Answerbase subdomain.
As we said....Google's looking for helpful content...and we've seen that perform wherever it sits (even on an Answerbase subdomain). The traffic from the Answerbase subdomain had become their #1 referral of traffic to their site...and we encouraged them to transition it to a subdirectory so that it was 100% white-labeled and there are several other benefits to having Answerbase integrated within your actual domain. So....what we did is we had them manage that configuration within Answerbase to get their knowledge based on a "yoursite.com/answers" subdirectory.
What Happened to the Existing Traffic?
Once the configuration was finished.....Answerbase managed a 301 redirect from their original "yoursite.answerbase.com" location to the new "yoursite.com/answers" location....so everything flows for SEO.
What was seen as a result was a notable lift of existing traffic to the Q&A knowledge base within their Google Search Console reports.....which they could easily identify as they did a filter under "answers" in Google Search Console and they were able to see an explosion in traffic to pages with "answers" in the URL....see here:
So, we made sure that the transition was managed effectively they maintained/grew their traffic to your Q&A knowledge base....and everything is white labeled under their domain. Now....let's get into some interesting observations after the transition.
More Traffic to Same Content on Subdirectory After Transition vs Answerbase Subdomain
You'll notice that before the transition...the Q&A content was driving about 200-300 clicks per day and between 35K to 45K impressions per day....as seen here:
But notice after transitioning to the subdirectory.....the clicks are 250-375 per day and the impressions are now reaching higher heights with impressions as well:
So.....seems like it got a bit of a boost just by having it on their domain vs an answerbase subdomain (which is why we recommend it from the start). Now let's dig into the percentage of their traffic that is being driven by the Q&A content given how the SEO landscape has moved towards "people first helpful content".
Q&A Accounts for Over 25% of Organic Traffic
For the site above....you'll see over the last 7 days since the transition....the Q&A is responsible for over 25% of their organic traffic as seen here that covers specifically the Q&A subdomain (you can see the filter):
You can see their site's total organic activity as shown here:
So....if you do the math on that for the last 7 days since the switch:
- Q&A Content: 2,330 organic clicks
- Total Organic Clicks: 9,100 organic clicks
- Percentage of Organic Clicks to Q&A Content: 25.6%
Google's Indexing 92% of the Q&A Content
You can see that Google likes the vast majority of the Q&A content they're publishing with over 6K Q&A pages being indexed, see their indexing of the Q&A content here as Google Search Console starting picking that up:
But....those above stats don't tell the whole picture. You'll see that for the ones that aren't indexed.....Google knows that they're out there but hasn't gotten to crawl them yet...see here:
In fact....out of over 8,350 Q&A pairs....Google has chosen not to index only 11 after crawling the content...see here:
That means that 92% of the Q&A content that Google has crawled it has chosen to put in it's index. Q&A is exactly what Google is looking for and defining as "people first content"....and when customers answer questions, they perform over time.
Each Question Answered & Indexed Attracts 19 New Potential Customers
As you can see through the stats above.....when this ecommerce merchant is answering questions, they are doing it well because the Q&A pair is not just servicing one potential customer....they are seeing 19.4 customers per year are being serviced through organic search for every new Q&A page they publish and Google indexes. Answerbase has seen some examples that go up to 44 people per year over time, per Q&A pair.....so this really speaks to the value of servicing customers well and your can turn your customer service channels into a new customer acquisition channel. It's worth spending just a few extra minutes to make sure you have a GREAT answer to their question (great doesn't necessarily mean long). Answerbase sees on average that 8% of new answers convert to a sale, but over 21% of Q&A's eventually have conversion attribution because the Q&A content is leveraged on the site and also drawing brand new potential customers through organic search results.
But, Wait...It's Getting Better
As you can see in the above charts....the Q&A has continued to grow as the traffic transitions. If you take the last 24 hours for that ecommerce site.....you see the Q&A is this:
and this is their whole site in the last 24 hours....
That's 29.5%. We've seen Q&A account for up to 48% of an ecommerce merchant's organic traffic.....so as long as you create original and valuable content....you should get rewarded for that as Google and any other AI engine needs that content in order to satisfy the informational requests they get.
We'd love to help grow traffic to your site through valuable Q&A engagement and content, you can Schedule a Demo here.
