Traffic boosting with FAQ's... recipe?

[skirril]

Hello,

suppose I sell widgets (I am in the B2B widget market), and to boost traffic, I came up with answers to the most frequently asked questions about widgets.

In your opinion, what is better:

a) www.mywidgetsite.com/widgetfaq.html

b) www.wudgetfaq.html and link to www.mywidgetsite.com

yours

Skirril

(edited by: engine at 7:47 am (utc) on May 27, 2002)

[chiyo]

i would make a new site if you dont anticipate linking TO it from your existing site, or at least very minimally. I would also make sure the new site not only links to yours, but also to other sites. I would make sure it is on another IP. That would make sure that the new site is a separate resource that can stand by itself, and you would be less at risk of cross linking penalties from Google.

If you are not willing to view the new site as a resource on its own and develop it as such, I would leave it as a directory on your existing site, especially if you anticipate a lot of cross-citation.

Just my take, I am sure others will have different (and probably more sophisticated) approaches.

The 2 separate sites I think would be the strategy to get more hits, but you have to make sure they can both stand on their own, and leave any cross linking until the new one has established itself.

[CromeYellow]

<devilsadvocate>On the other hand, in the long run, having a comprehensive FAQ on your main site will help with defining you as the Widgetmeister on the web.</devilsadvocate>

CY :)

[WebGuerrilla]

c) faq.mywidgetsite.com

The hands down winner. Inherted PR right out of the gate, and listings in SERPS are treated as different sites. (ie. no clustering takes place).

You also won't have much difficulty getting it listed as a separate resource.

[vitaplease]

Inherted PR right out of the gate

faq.mywidgetsite.com

WebGuerrilla, thats interesting. Can you explain?

[tigger]

Interesting idea it's something I’d never thought of, can you give us some more info WebGuerrilla

[paynt]

I use this method all of the time. You benefit as WebGuerrilla suggests with the inherited PR, not a bad start. The section then is also ‘a legitimate’ part of your site, the costs of putting it together are certainly a lot less and you get some linking benefits as well. Depending on how you build it out can also work to your advantage. Are you planning a one page FAQ with anchor links from the questions to the answer on the same page? Are you going to theme your FAQ into sections of relevant information and then perhaps offer a themed page for each section of questions. I tend to maximize every opportunity.

As to the use of sub-domains (canonicals), it still surprises me how little people use them. I’ll tell you though, in all my research the ones that are and then link them appropriately are really winning without much effort.

[brotherhood of LAN]

The subdomain solution seems good to me.....never done it before but....

I've seen them in overkill mode before, 1 site, 4 SERP's in Google for top 10? Bount to get banned.

Definetely worth planning ahead and (appearing) conservative about your traffic gaining efforts :)

[vitaplease]

Can someone explain "the inherited PR"?

If faq.widget.com is a sub-domain, its a new domain, if its a new domain, it needs its own inbound links just as any other new domain (or for that matter, option b of skirril)?

Or am I overseeing something?

[WebGuerrilla]

Can someone explain "the inherited PR"?

O.K, but first let me issue the standard warning about abusing third level domains.

<disclaimer>
Search engines hate wildcard dns spam. If you start throwing up dozens of subdomains that lack unique content, you will get nailed.
</disclaimer>

As an example, lets say I have an established site that sells widgets. (widgetsforless.com). It is listed in all the standard places.(Yahoo, ODP, etc.) The total sum of these inbound links have resulted in my homepage earning a PR 7.

I decide it's time to add a bunch of new content, so I spend a couple of weeks writing the world's greatest widget FAQ. I end up with so much new content that I decide to put it up on a separate domain. I register mywidgetfaq.com, publish the content, and link to the new site from my original PR7 site.

After the new site is crawled and Google's database is refreshed, it will show a PR score that one would expect from a brand new site with only one inbound link from a PR 7 page. (maybe a 3 or 4).

However, if I publish the new content at faq.widgetsforless.com and then link to it in the same way, 9 times out of 10 it will debut with a PR7.