[Build Backlinks Online] Auditing the Moz Q&A: Optimization and Insights

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Auditing the Moz Q&A:
Optimization and Insights'

Posted by gfiorelli1One month ago I had a crazy idea: analyzing one year of Moz
Q&As,andTrevor was even crazier accepting it.My original idea was both to
understand the most common issues the Moz Community discusses and asks for help
with, and also to understand how the trends in our industry are reflected in
Q&A.After the first few days of digging into the data, though, I started seeing
that there was a problem: a sub-optimal Q&A structure is preventing a truly
accurate analysis of the same.For this reason, this post has been conceived as a
two part series:Auditing a Q&A site/section;What insights can the analysis of
the Moz Q&A site/section offer?This first part goes beyond the simple analysis
of a community and, using the Moz Q&A section, takes into account and discusses
issues that are common to all Q&A sites.The second part will published within a
few weeks (I'm still "digesting" data and discovering great insights).Auditing a
Q&A site/sectionBefore people were sharing kittens and selfies on Facebook and
Instagram, "social" was a synonym of "forums" in Internet-speak.In forums,
people were (and still are) sharing knowledge, funny things, and questions.
Forums were the first collaborative space in the web, maybe the purest symbol of
the web philosophy. The forum's collaborative nature and crowdsourced knowledge
is so strong that upon reflection the success of social networks, which mimic
forums (Reddit is a clear example), must be essentially attributed to it.The
advantages and difficulties of a Q&A site/sectionQ&A sites are a specific
variant of the forum idea, and their model is quite simple: People ask and
answer questions about certain topics.From an SEO point of view a well executed
and maintained Q&A site/section has great positive effects:It may help your site
rank for long tails;It may help your site earn natural links;It may help your
site earn social visibility (hence second-tier links);It may help you discover
ideas for new content;It's a great source for content to repurpose into other
channels;The data you collect thanks to the Q&A may help you with other business
decisions; orIt may help you understand if a business decision was correct or
not.Its positive effects, then, have clear reflections on branding and thought
leadership.The simplest ideas, though, are usually the most complex to shape
into something real.The first difficulty is building a community that is able to
feed the Q&A in the first place.Even if I know people who could create hundreds
of fake accounts all asking and answering questions in order to show a lively
forum and thus attract new members, if you are creating a Q&A section as a
feature in your site, then it may be better to create it when you already have
even a small (but loyal) community.Here is not the place to discuss how to build
a community around your brand (check The Truly Monumental Guide to Building
Online Communities by Mack Web Solutions for more on that), but if you are
creating a Q&A section you must think at it as a product. Hence, first you must
conduct an audience analysis, define the personas that you want to target with
the Q&A, and from there, build the architecture of the section and shape its
voice.Moz doesn't have this problem, as it has one of biggest and more loyal
communities in its niche. Nevertheless, even if I am sure that Moz has portrayed
what kind of personas are using its Q&A well, I tend to believe that this
section of the Moz site has been designed more for marketers with at least a
minimum of experience in the use of forums than it was for marketing newbies.A
very brief history of theMoz Q&AThe Q&A section was created in 2007 as a a
Freemium feature. Only Pro subscribers could ask a limited number of questions
per month to SEOmoz, but everybody (if the question wasn't labeled as "private")
could read the Q&A.In 2012, Moz revamped the Q&A section, eliminating the
"private" questions and opening it to everybody, alsointroducinggamification
rules (the "500 thumbs up rule")which:From one side can help fighting forum
spam;Push people to be proactive onthe site and in theQ&A in order to fully
participate in the community.What didn't really change was the architecture of
the Q&A itself, which is partly still operating.From the image above, apart from
thefunny Roger image, we can see how the categories were very broad back in
2012. That gave way to the more detailed architecture we see today.First
commandment: Strive fora perfectQ&A IA and navigationChoosing a very broad
architecture, especially in Q&As and Forums, can be a great idea in order:To
avoid thin categories;To avoid "too many choices angst" (a syndrome caused also
by eCommercemega-menus).But it alsohas some risks, such as:Difficulties in
extracting unique valuable data;Too broad ofcategories may risk looking
verysimilar, especially to anon-expert audience (i.e.: "Technical SEO Issues"
and "On Page/Site Optimization").The two issues listed abovecan be enhanced,
then, by offering Q&A users the abilitytoenter their questions inup to a maximum
offive categories, also in different topicalareas.This freedom, however,
is:Making itdifficult to attribute a question to only one topic when it comes to
data analysis;Maybecontributing to the confusion the questionaskers may already
have.Hey Gianluca, weren't you saying Moz Q&A was broad? Here I see a complex
taxonomy!Yes! The Moz Q&A has evolved throughthe years for the better, and the
taxonomy used right now is very clear(check it out by trying to aska question),
but it stillhas issues, especiallyfrom a navigation point of view.For instance,
when we enter theQ&A home page we see by default the latest-submitted questions,
but if wewant to restrict our search, we may have a panic attack, because we can
choose between45 categories, and many appear to bevery similar.Too muchfreedom
is not freedom, therefore: When offering users navigation through a taxonomy, it
is always better tofunnel them from broad to a moredetailed offering, using both
contextual menus and away to go back in the architecture
navigation.Unfortunately, the Moz Q&A lacks both:Because the main categories of
the Q&A,i.e. "Moz Resources" or "Online Marketing," are virtual and not made
explicit with a real category page, thepossibility of creating contextual menus
is substantially hindered;Because theQ&A section doesn't include abreadcrumb
navigation (thelack of which is probablynot helping Googlebot in easily
understandingthe section's information architecture).Avoid confusion between
categories and tagsIn the recent past there was a sort of "anti-tags" crusade,
especially in the blogging world.Thiscan be attributed to the misuse of tagging,
which is usually considered to bea synonym of categorizing things, when the two
in reality have a very different nature:A category isthat ontology value that
include everything related to a specific topic. For instance, under the category
"Link Building" we can find questions about broken link building, guest
blogging, newssyndication, image link attribution et al;A tag is that
transversal taxonomy value that reunites under its label questions from
different categories, which share a same topic. For instance a tag
"infographics" could be attached to questions that have been listed in different
categories like Web Design, Technical SEO, Link Building and Content/Blogging.If
used well, then, tags can really improve the usability of a Q&A site:Helping the
askerspecifying even better the nature of its question;Help the Q&A community
members (and the casual visitors, who are not into the Q&A niche jargon)
infollowing onlythose specific topics about whichthey are interested.From an SEO
point of view, then, a wellthought-out tagging system (which includes both a
suggested tag engineand, ideally, a semantic tagging consolidation engine, and
takes into account the duplicated content issue) can help the Q&A site become
visible to an even greater set of queries, thanksespecially to thesemantic
topical nature of the Tags' pages.Use category pages as topical hubsWhen it
comes to category pages, Q&As (and Forums in general) may present us some ofthe
same uncertaintiesthat categories in classified adsor eCommerce sites present,
the main one beingrelated to the weight we want to give to category pagesin
relationto the pages of the questions themselves.In the case of Moz (just
speculating here,now) the doubt wascertainly greater, because theMoz Blog's
categories tend to overlap those of theQ&A section. This isimmediately
understandable if we look at the "link building" topic, which is both a Q&A and
a Blog category (also because the Q&A categorization was modeled afterthat
oftheBlog, which came first).In this case, Moz has decidedthat the blog isits
main content asset (and has been since the beginning), and therefore theblog
categories should have priority. Theyacted in order to have them ranking over
theQ&A's.And it did well.But we could choose to follow the opposite path, using
Q&A as themain content asset and, therefore, using its categories and
sub-categories pages as "topical hubs."The concept of the topical hub is
becoming more important every day, because of the evolution of Google itselfand
its shift to semantics and "understanding things" as opposed tosimply indexing
pages.A topical hub, to be clear, is a page where people interested in a topic
can start theirresearch and navigationabout the topic and its subtopics.
Theyfind relevant content about the topic itself, and these pages aresomeofthe
most importantlanding pages from an organic search perspective.A topical hub, in
the case of a Q&A category and tagpage, should therefore evolve from being a
simple paginated list of questions. It should move frombeing a transition page
to becomea full"reference page".What are the elementsof a topical hub?A clear
description of whatthe topic the hub is about. It seems a bit "old-school" SEO,
but it reallyisn't. In Q&A sites, then, it has the particular function of
confirming forpeople that they havelanded onthe correct page, which is both good
for them and for those of us administering the Q&A. For instance, thecategory
labeled"Reporting" in the Moz Q&A is quite confusing, as many people refer to it
thinking abouttheir Moz Analytics reports (withessentially
support-relatedquestions), and not aboutreporting in thebroader sense.The list
of questions, with the visualization options you may desire to offer depending
on the priorities you have assigned to the Q&A itself;Contextual menu, in order
to create relations between sister categories;Tags menu, in order to create
relations with transversal topics (alsohelping facilitatethe crawling of
questions pertaining to separate categories);Contextual related content. In the
case of Moz, contextual content can be:
Related educational content fromMoz Academy;Relatedwebinars;Related posts or
post categoriesfromthe main blog andYouMoz.Moz should suggest the Link Building
Moz Academy videos in its Link Building category page in Q&A.Help your analysts,
empower your moderatorsAs we have seen, every Moz subscriber can include
aquestion in up to five categories. Even though this is great for the users,
from an analysis point of view it can make collecting insightsquite
difficult.For instance, when I was analyzing one year of Moz Q&As, it was very
hard to understand whichcategory toattributing the main value to,because the
largemajority of the questions had been associated withmore than one category
(many in all the five categories allowed).For this reason, apart fromcreating
atag system,it would be a wise idea toempower the moderators so that they can
eventually place a question in a better-suited category and/or eliminate a
question from an inappropriate or inconsistent category.(Re)discover the
importance of internal searchInternal search is thesecret feature that makes
sites with amassive amount of content stand out and be loved by their users.It's
obviouslynot the only one, but when we think ofsites like Amazon, Zillow,
Tripadvisor, or Yelp, we can easily understand how internal search plays a major
role in how a user of those sitesis satisfied.For that same reason, a
certainspecialization within SEO (onewhichis becoming more and more important)
is what can be defined as Vertical Search Engine Optimization, meaning
optimizing for the internal search algorithms of sites likethe ones I just
mentioned.A Q&A site's internal search, then, is essential for:Helping users
find questions for which they seek the answers; andLimiting the creation of
substantially duplicated content, with all theadministrative loss of time it
maycause.We should not forget, finally, how the analysis of internal searches
can help us re-discover a big percentage of the keywords Google hides behind the
(not provided) wall.If you have a small Q&A site, maybe the best solution is
torely on theCustom Search Engine offered by Google, which is alsorelatively
easy to connect to Google Analytics.But if you have a big Q&A site, then Google
CSE may be not enough. In that case, even if thereexist third-party commercial
solutions, creating a native internal search algorithm is the best choice.This
is the path Moz followed, but is its algorithm a good one? It is not bad, but it
could be improved.In fact, when we perform an internal search (try "how to use
hreflang?"), the internal SERP offered is not really the best one:The
first-ranking question is dated 2012; the second and fourth have responses, but
are still tagged as not answered. The best question is ranking third.Sure, Moz's
internal search allows us to refine our searches using advanced filters (for
instance, searching forquestions similar to ours in a determined category), but
still,that shouldbe an option, not a necessity.So, what should the ranking
factorsbein a vertical Q&A search algorithm like the oneMoz uses? Here aresome
suggestions:The presence ofkeywords in the question title;The presence of
keywords in the question body;The presence of keywords in the answers. For
instance, "hreflang" may not be present in the question itself, but may be
presentin one or more responses, which meansthe question can be relevant for the
user's query;The presence of one or more "Good Answers." Good Answers are those
that, in the Moz Q&A system, earn 3 or more thumbs up or are defined as such by
a Q&A moderator. Clearly, a question with one or more good answers deserves
bettervisibilityin an internal SERP;The presence of one or more "Staff
Endorsements." When an answer is particularly good, moderators may endorse it,
giving it a bigger value than simple answers or even"Good Answers." This should
be the equivalent of links in the case of Moz Q&A :-);Tbe freshness of the
question. The reason is obvious: Questions, especially in inbound marketing,
tend to become obsolete after a short time (but, remember,there are important
exceptions). Therefore, showing thequestions thatmatch all the previous factors
and thatare alsofresh as ranking firstshould be therule.Don't forget the
"suggested question" featureSomehow related to the internal search algorithm
issue, we can alsofindthe "suggested question" issue.This is something Quora was
quiteable to solve:When someone is writing a question, Quora interprets the
question they arewriting (not always very well, to be honest) and presents the
asker a list ofalready-answered questionsthat mightsolve the one they are
aboutto ask. If the questions presented are not satisfying the user, theycan
still proceed topost theirown question.This feature is very helpful, again, for
preventing theQ&A frombeing flooded with very similar questions, which is both
useless for the users and the Q&A site itself (not to mention that itcould be a
potentially substantialduplicate content generator).Pay attention to design
changesWhen I started analyzing the more than 20,000 questions users posted in
Moz'sQ&A between May 2013 and April 2014, the first thing I noticed was an
largedecline in the number ofquestions posted after May 2013.We must remember
that one year ago this site rebranded from SEOmoz to Moz.At first, then, I
thought that the fall in the Q&A postings was due to some SEO factors. But,
after sharing this insight and discussing itwith the Moz marketing team, I
focused on the re-design of the site as the potential reason for that drop.In
fact, if we lookhow theSEOmoz.org menu was, we will see that the Internal Q&A
link was easily reachable by the users from the main menu:In the Moz.com site,
the link to the Moz Q&A can be discovered and clicked only if we firstclickon
"Community," opening the community hub page, and thenclick on Q&A.Just moving
the internal link awayfrom the main menu may have caused the drop inposts.What's
in the second part of this post?This is the end of the fist part of this
"Auditing the Moz Q&A" mini-series.In the second part we will have a lot of fun,
because analyzing 20,000+ questions can really offer us a realistic portrait of
our industry's fears, hopes, and trends.I want to leave you with a teaser:The
Moz community has an obsession, and it's not cats, sex, or whatever: It's
Google.Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top
ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team.
Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down
but want to read!

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