Thanks for choosing Answerbase for your business. This guide goes over a few foundational elements to consider as you get started with configuring your Answerbase account and customizing your solution. Why "People-First Helpful Content" is Critical for Google, SEO, and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Please view the quick video below so you're updated on Google's latest changes regarding ecommerce and why "people- Read more
The SEO world has been shaken up quite a bit when it comes to Ecommerce searches....with the Helpful Content Updates, Google's Helpful Content System, and then incorporating that into their Core Ranking Systems. This was released in parallel as Google started surfacing these "Popular Products" tables (and AI of course)....and this creates an environment that ecommerce stores need to understand what has happened, why Read more
We've spoken to many ecommerce merchants who have seen a notable hit on their traffic through the Google Helpful Content Updates and Google's Core Ranking System Updates, as Google integrated the helpful content system into Google's core ranking system. As a result, multiple systems in Google's core ranking systems would now assess the helpfulness of content....and "People-first content" is more important than ever. Read more
This Shopify Merchant started publishing ecommerce FAQs through Answerbase around August 1, 2024. See what their Q&A charts have done since then.... But...look at the last 28 days data in Google Search Console....here is their ecommerce FAQ content via Answerbase: and this is the rest of their site minus their FAQ knowledge base...see here: So...if you do some quick math.....it's 7K total organic visitors and 3,1 Read more
We know that ecommerce FAQs bring value...but we're always honest with our customers that quality content creation, recognition, and then SEO results are a longer term game. We communicate this constantly and we will continue to....that this isn't some kind of "SEO Magic Trick" and that they should be in it for at least a year mindset....but every once in awhile the "SEO Miracle" happens so we're fine with communicat Read more
We had a customer who had over 2K Q&A pairs from another platform that they imported into Answerbase, so wanted to communicate on what they experienced so future customers that import FAQ/Q&A content from another platform can have an idea of what they may see. Ecommerce FAQs, Effectively Published & Distributed, are Like an Organic Traffic "Light Switch" You can see what happened when they integrated Answ Read more
We often get the question of how quickly ecommerce customers will see results as they scale their ecommerce FAQs.....and our answer is always the same: "Don't think about SEO, think about serving your customers well with great information...and the SEO comes after that because search engines need that good content". The only real question is...what does your company and your company's employees have locked within you Read more
We get a lot of questions about the timing of results when it comes to answering questions...and how those are fed into search engines, how long it takes for the search engines to digest that content...and when you can see results. So, we have many examples of this and how this plays out for Ecommerce FAQs to drive anywhere from 10% to 50% of an ecommerce merchant's organic traffic ....but let's show you another cust Read more
This customer was an interesting story....because they actually reached out to us in September of 2024 talking about how Q&A wasn't performing for them. Turns out....now we're driving 24% of their organic traffic and the scalable recognition and publication of good helpful content should turn that into much more over time as they continue to give Google and AI what it needs to drive traffic. Help Us Help You When Read more
We have many customers where Ecommerce FAQs contribute 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 c Read more
We've seen the demand and performance of Ecommerce FAQs explode over the last couple years, and enjoy being able to communicate about what we've seen across our customer base. We've seen this lift throughout Google's updates....but the incorporation of the "Helpful Content System" into Googles Core Ranking Systems was special....and you can see it very clearly in this case. See how this customer goes from about 2-3% Read more
We've seen the Ecommerce FAQs content notably grow in importance with Google's shift towards "people first helpful content" and since AI needs to feed on this quality "people first" content to have any idea of what it's talking about. It feeds off content like Q&A to source the answers. We've seen this across various industries, and the automotive parts ecommerce merchants have also seen this lift. Let's dig into Read more
We love the customers who started with us a long time ago AND they've been committed to taking care of their customers. In these cases.....we've seen their traffic explode over the years. Sometimes the explosion with Google's updates has been quite dramatic....like during the August update for this customer where you can see what happened on July 18th as Google started rolling out their "August Core Update". IMPORTAN Read more
See this customer who signed up for Answerbase over a year ago and they have consistently answered questions well....and then in Google's December core update...that is when Google decided that it trusted their Ecommerce FAQ content and were going to source it. See here: They jumped from Q&A being worth just a small percentage of their traffic...and now Answerbase is responsible for over 25% of their organic traf Read more
Rovingblue provides a selection of Ozone water purifiers for travel, off-grid living, and emergencies. They came to Answerbase because they have great products, but in the new land of SEO (search engine optimization), GEO (Generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization), or whatever you want to call it....it's been hard to filter through all fo the communication about AI and determine what is actual Read more
Answerbase enables you to optimize your product and collection pages (product category pages) in just minutes per page, as we're able to recognize and aggregate the customer demand for information related to each product and product category and fed that to your team. We have customers optimizing their site in less than 5-10 minutes per page with great content that is important for customers and has been rewarded han Read more
We saw Q&A content soar through Google's 2024 core updates....from March to November (current month) we saw about a 5x increase in organic traffic to Q&A content specifically....and we've also seen lift for our customers sites that the Q&A content is integrated in and around. There are a couple different ways we've seen this play out which we'd like to point out in this post. We're going to show two examp Read more
When you migrate to another ecommerce platform, your Q&A content will continue to drive value for you on your new site but after you make the transition you'll need to just let Answerbase know how to reassociate your Q&A content to your new product IDs on your new ecommerce platform. Most times ecommerce platforms will have a unique ID that is within their database and how each product is referenced within th Read more
NOTE: This is documentation of how a Services Business should install the conversion tracking code, if you're an Ecommerce store selling products online you should use the document on How to Insert Answerbase Ecommerce Conversion Tracking Code . For Services sites, Answerbase's goal is to ensure that you get a very healthy return on your investment for the platform, and in order to do that for a services based busine Read more
Answerbase enables you to fulfill Google's demand for "people-first content" by engaging your existing content and visitors, identifying their demand for information, and ensuring that every one of your articles is fulfilling that full demand for information related to the topic. You can accomplish this by integrating Answerbase Q&A at the bottom of every one of your articles or blog posts. What Q&A on Articl Read more
Answerbase integrates with Zapier, enabling you to do more with your Answerbase engagements and data and automate the sending and usage of data collected by Answerbase. When you connect Answerbase with Zapier you'll be asked to authenticate your Answerbsae account through Zapier and you'll see the information you need to manage that within your Answerbase Administration Site under "Integration > API" so you should Read more
If you're integrating Q&A on the bottom of your website articles so that customers can ask any questions relevant to the topic in that article, you want to ensure that there are specific parameters defined when you insert the widget so that Answerbase knows what the article is and associate the appropriate Q&A content to that article. Answerbase's Q&A widget can be added to the bottom of every one of your Read more
If you're integrating into a services website, you want to identify the different "Services" that you provide and you'll want to ensure that those are defined when you insert the widget. This documentation covers a services site that has a few services that you provide and have a simple navigation to those services on your site, so if you just have several services you offer this documentation should service you well Read more
When customers are looking for a product, many times they're doing a broader "Product Category" or "Product Collection" level search but then they're presented with a number of products within that category and need to filter further from there to find the product they will feel satisfied will fit their needs and convert. Finding the Right Products Through Organic Search Filters Google's new "Merchant Listing Experie Read more
In 2022 Google got a patent issued on something called an "Information Gain Score", where Google can compare several pages that cover the same information and create a score based on which pages are actually adding something to the Internet as far as new information, which they're coining as creating "Information Gain". When you ask Google what information gain is regarding SEO, this is what they pull up as an answer Read more
In 2022 Google got a patent issued on something called an "Information Gain Score", where Google can compare several pages that cover the same information and create a score based on which pages are actually adding something to the Internet as far as new information, which they're coining as creating "Information Gain". If you know anything about what is normal when it comes to content creation and publishing, this i Read more
It's a brave new world and the whole planet is talking about AI....and we've run into many customers who aren't up to date with if/how to use AI and what Google has said about it, so we wanted to create an article that goes over the detials of what Google has said and how to appropriately use AI to create efficiencies. First....let's just set everybody's mind at ease.....Google has made it abundantly clear that using Read more
Google’s results have changed dramatically over the last several years, with their continued focus on rewarding "People-first content" that is created for actual people (not search engines) and then shaking up ecommerce searches as they're showing product details pages as the first result instead of just sending them to a product category page (most often Amazon’s category page). These updates to SERPS ma Read more
Answerbase has AI-Enhanced page-by-page optimization workflows which dramatically increase your productivity, enabling your marketing team to create helpful content which is valuable for improving conversion rates for visitors on your site as well as atttract new customers through search engines. We have ecommerce merchants who are utilizing our AI-Enhanced tools to optimize their pages in less than 5 minutes per pag Read more
Recently, SEO expert Lily Ray wrote an article discussing some observations in the ecommerce SEO landscape over the past year. The insights highlight a growing trend: Google is now prioritizing results from ecommerce, user-generated content (UGC), and social media sites over traditional product review websites for many commercial and comparison queries (think about the queries like "What is the best xyz product?"). T Read more
There are several things going on in the ecommerce, technology, customer behavior and SEO which is driving merchants to explore solutions like Answerbase on their site. We've listed a few of those below so you can understand a bit more about what is going on and why you should consider Answerbase for your site.
Google's Shift to Ranking Pages & Sites with "People-first content": Google has notable changed i Read more
There are SEO-related topics that commonly get asked about that are commonly misunderstood in the SEO world, so we went to help clarify some of these "SEO Myths" that are spreading around as it's putting unnecessary handcuffs on customers and many times restraining their ability to create pages and content that is going to be most satisfactory for visitors (and therefore not rank as well as they could/should on Googl Read more
Sometimes we'll run into customers who have heard the term "Crawl Budget" and they wonder if they're running into any issues with crawl budget. The quick answer is....unless you have over a million pages on your site (which you probably don't)....Crawl Budget isn't a problem for you and you can set your mind at ease. It's one of these "SEO Myths" that go around and we're not sure why it gets so much traction.....but Read more
If you're integrating into a services website, you want to identify the different "Services" that you provide and you'll want to ensure that those are defined when you insert the widget. This documentation covers a services site that has a multi-level taxonomy and navigation of different categories of services they provide represented on their site. If you don't have mutliple levels or categories of services, you sho Read more
Old Tracking Script - You Need to Update to the New Conversion Tracking Script if You're Still Using The Older Version Answerbase previously supported a tracking pixel which will still work for awhile but needs to be updated with the New Conversion Tracking Script . For reference for customers who still have the older tracking pixel installed so they can understand their parameters and how to translate to the new tra Read more
You can have your product questions and answers functionality search through your product descriptions, details, and specifications to ensure that if you've already provided an answer to a customer's question...Answerbase can auto-suggest that information to automatically answer that customer's question and lead them to convert to a sale. Within your administration area, you'll find under "System Settings > Produc Read more
When you integrate the full featured Q&A widget into your product page to support product-specific questions and answers, you'll want to test the integration after it's done to make sure everything is working well. POSTING A TEST QUESTION The first thing to do is get to a product page on your website and get to the Q&A widget placement where you can ask a question. Follow these steps:
Write a simple tes Read more
When you're testing your Q&A widget on your product pages and try to submit a question as a guest you may run into a validation that says "This is email is associated with an existing account. Please sign in." like this: The most common cause is that the email address that you've provided when testing out posting a question is one that is associated with one of your Administrator or Moderator users. In that case, Read more
When you're integrating your site with Answerbase you submit a test question on a widget, and get the following validation: What this means is that there hasn't been at least one product or category associated with the question, to let us know what the question is about. MOST COMMON CAUSE OF THIS VALIDATION The most common cause of this validation is with an ecommerce integration, where you're supporting product-spec Read more
As you grow question and answer content on your Answerbase platform, you'll find that similar questions are being asked on Google and you'll start to rank and get clicks from people who are asking those same questions, driving new organic traffic to your site. You're able to easily (1) ensure that your content gets indexed and then (2) track the progress of how many impressions, clicks, the click-through-rate, and po Read more
If you're transitioning from a different platform, or if you simply want to have your team create some great content for you to start out with, then you'll need to import your Q&A content (and potentially users if you're wanting to support a community where your customers can also answer questions). IMPORTING QUESTION AND ANSWER CONTENT In your administration site, you'll see an option in your left hand navigatio Read more
Now that you have your account information, you'll want to determine what users are going to be managing content on your platform. If you are the only person who is going to be managing the site and content, then you don't have to worry about setting up new users....but you may want to consider the "Default Content Publishing Rules" below to ensure that newly posted content is published based on your preferences. If Read more
As you answer questions through Answerbase you should start seeing an increase of your Google Search Console impressions and eventually clicks and click through rate. If you're not experiencing this we have a few items that you should check in on to ensure that you're set up to get the best out of your Answerbase engagement. Have you Added Your Answerbase Knowledge Base Sitemap to Google Search Console? As you're ans Read more
Answerbase provides you with a list of content that we would recommend that you create in order to ensure that your site is providing all of the most relevant question and answer content that your customers are asking about, and that you provide the answers in order to drive conversions and traffic on your site. What is the Value? The value in creating content that is recommended is the following:
Increasing Co Read more
Some answers that you provide through Answerbase aren't going to be long enough to justify their own landing page. Now, different customers have different preferences regarding this....we've seen some answers that are just a few lines live on their own landing pages and those Q&A pages turn into featured snippets within Google results that drive conversions and sales....but depending on the type of questions you' Read more
Answerbase provides many incentives for users to contribute valuable content while they're engaging with your community platform. You can incentive users through reputation points, user profiles, featuring users, rewards and badges. This article will focus on user badges, how to set them up and how to effectively use them to incentive your community. Enabling Badges for Your Community You can create badges for your c Read more
Answerbase supports the ability to not only have product page questions and answers, but you can also put questions and answers on your product category pages. This helps you accomplish the following:
Enhance the content on your product category pages for SEO
Engage your visitors on your product category pages if they have questions related to which product fits their needs best.
This article will give Read more
When you're posting an answer in response to a customer question that came in related to your products, there are a few tips that we'd like to share which will help guide you on how to respond in order to ensure you're getting the most value from your Q&A content. The main focuses of answering a question should be the following:
Giving a great answer that actually answers the customer question
Upsell the Read more
If you've installed the Answerbase Shopify Product Questions & Answers App into your store, you're ready to integrate into your site and make sure the functionality is configured as you'd like. Once you are within the administration dashboard, you can review some other configuration preferences by clicking "Shopify App Configuration > Installation Instructions" as seen here: From there, you'll see a number of Read more
If you've installed the Answerbase Bigcommmerce Product Questions & Answers App into your store, you're ready to integrate into your site and make sure the functionality is configured as you'd like. When you're managing the Answerbase App from within the "Apps" area in your Bigcommerce Administration Portal, you'll see a number of configuration options and fields available to you. This article will go over each f Read more
