Handling a Q&A section

What is your experience?

[vivalasvegas]

I recently put a Q&A section on my "how to" type website. It's a nice script allowing people to ask questions which I answer and publish on the website via a control panel system. I chose this script for the ease of use - it does not require people to enter email, name, etc. They just submit the question. I've had a good response, but looking at my logs - most people ask the question and never check back for the answer. Some wander on my website for 1-2 hours probably expecting a very quick answer. Then they're gone.

So I need some advise on this. Should I install a more complex Ticket System asking people for their email and send them notifications of Q answered? Wouldn't this stop some from asking?

Thank you.

[Beagle]

Do you have any statement posted there suggesting how long it might take and when they should check back for an answer?

[vivalasvegas]

Hm, no although you can see how long it could take from other answers posted (the script displays a date when a question is asked and when it is answered). Sounds like a good idea to also post such a statement. The thing is that people asking questions on my website are kind of in a hurry to find the answer because they want to do something right away (sorry I can't be more specific:). So I don't know, maybe they keep searching for an answer after posting the question.

[rocknbil]

Everything on the web is about instant gratification, it's a bit of a pain. :-)

it does not require people to enter email, name, etc. They just submit the question.

Is email at least optional? I'd approach this with a statement: "Enter your email address to be notified immediately when this question is answered. Your email will only be used to notify you that an answer has been provided and you will never receive unsolicited email from this web site."

Then when you answer, you don't email them the answer - you email them a link to the answer. And tag it so you can track when they return. :-)

[vivalasvegas]

Thanks for the suggestion. I definitely must add the email field, if only I can get someone to modify the script.

One other big dilemma I have is whether to display one or more questions per page. Initially I would display one question with part of the question being the page's title. From an SEO point of view this seems like the best option. However, most of the questions I receive (and their answers) are very short resulting in just 40 or so words per page. So I am now showing 5 questions per page, all pages having the same generic title (Questions and Answers). I guess I could use some opinions on this too.

[ZydoSEO]

I'm assuming you don't publish the question until after you've entered the answer... Do you store the questions as well as your answers in a database?

If you can categorize the questions you are asked into logical, related groups, each group could have it's own custom <title> value associated with it which could provide some SEO benefit (better than "Questions & Answers"). At the time you enter the answer to the question, you can also pick the category to which the question belongs. Based on which category you assigned the question, your system could at least render a category specific title that provides some SEO benefit on the category Q&A page where you list multiple Q&As from that specific category.

This is probably a crappy example, but say you had a "How to Gamble" web site. You might have categories for questions like:

How To Play Craps FAQ
How to Play 3 Card Poker FAQ
How to Play Black Jack FAQ
How to Get Deals at Casino Hotels FAQ
etc.

When someone posts a question "Can you explain a good betting strategy for 3 Card Poker?" you would not only answer the question but also assign it to the "How to Play 3 Card Poker FAQ" category. Your site would be able to render category specific Q&A pages and include the category specific <title> on each so it at least lets the SEs know the content of the page is related to 3 Card Poker, for instance (assuming you continue to render multiple per page).

If you decide to go back to having a single page per Q&A then you could modify your 'answer' UI so that when you enter the answer to the question, you can also enter a custom <title> value. So for the question above, "Can you explain a good betting strategy for 3 Card Poker?"... you might enter the answer to the question and also enter the value "Betting Strategies for Winning at 3 Card Poker" for the custom <title> for that article. When you render the page for that article, use this value in the <title> for that particular article's page. If you want to really go nuts you could also enter a unique meta description value for the Q&A when you answer the question. This could be rendered in the HTML as well.

This might all be overkill for your needs, but you could make the Q&A page(s) rendered on your site so that it provides additional SEO benefits if you use a little imagination.

[edited by: ZydoSEO at 10:52 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2008]

[vivalasvegas]

Great advise, thanks. You're right in assuming that I don't publish questions until I answer them. The script I'm using stores all the data in a text file, not a database.