The following is a live blog from State Of Search. Please pardon any typos or grammar issues as we really didn’t have time for much proofing between sessions.
The WiFi is working today and Eric Enge from Stone emple Consulting is on the main stage. Unfortunately a client issue resulted in me starting this post about 20 minutes into what I can tell is a great session. So let’s jump in …
He’s talking about how to get answers showing up from your site. The steps are:
- Identify a simple question
- Provide a direct answer
- Offer value added into
Schema was not necessary in their tests which saw a 40% success rate.
He mentions FAQ pages are not a good format as it’s difficult to include value added content.
During Q&A he’s asked about how to come up with questions to answer he replies that you can start with keyword research and site search and brings up asking your visitors. He notes that “how to” queries work well and that Google likes steps (i.e. answers framed as “Step 1 … Step 2 …”
He also mentions that you need a solid site (i.e. first page but don’t need to be #1) and that it can help push you up. He also notes wisely that it just involves creating great content which you should want to do anyway.
When asked about forums where people ask questions and moderators mark questions as SOLVED when an answer is indeed solved does that help? Eric doesn’t know as he didn’t use it in a test.
Next he’s asked if it might go to paid. He doesn’t believe so.
When asked about questions with simple answers does Google penalize the domain for a high bounce and low time on the site. He’s not sure but can’t see why they wouldn’t pull engagement from snippets.
When asked about using them to jump above thousands of pages. He answers that you need page one for it to work.