Long article vs short Q&As

[AStewartITI]

I'm a HubSpot newbie building a stand alone knowledge base (no website content). It is populated with fairly complex information for businesses trading with Europe. I want my users to be able to ask specific questions in the KB search and get a short answer to their query. I also want them to have access to a comprehensive long article covering all aspects of the same subject.

The search can't pull information from in the body of a long artice. It isn't reading the H3 level headings or text with anchors. So the user must go to a full article (maybe four A4 pages of copy) and find their answer (I'm including anchored contents lists).

I  had thought about also posting short Q&A style articles to answer the specific user questions - but I know this will damage SEO by duplicating the same information. I'd just be lifting paragraphs from the long article and posting them seperately so that the search surfaces a specific answer.

My question is, would posting the Q&As in the Knowledge Base with a No Index robots.txt solve the SEO problem or is it still just messy bad practice? Any other bright ideas?

[danmoyle]

Hi @AStewartITI and welcome to the Community! Thanks for the tag @PamCotton. 🙂

Thoughts from me: If you want to offer your audience the short answers with longer explanations as an option, have you thought about how the HubSpot Knowledgebase tool does that for you already? Here's what I'm thinking: 

Plus, you can also create an FAQ document for short answers, linking to the KB for longer explanations. I've seen that work well, too. 

Hope that helps spark some ideas! 

[AStewartITI]

Thanks @danmoyle. I'm going to think about how to make best use of an FAQs document.

With each long article generating maybe ten short answers I couldn't use the subtitle to address them, and I'd really like a search in the Knowledge Base to pull up a one or two paragraph answer to a specific query. 

I found this article in the HS Knowledge Base and I wondered if a No Index meta tag might allow me to post duplicate content without doing damage to the SEO: Prevent content from appearing in search results

Ever used that as a solution for duplicate content?

Amy

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

@AStewartITI the myth of duplicate content is one that persists today, but has been debunked. I wouldn't worry about that for SEO, honestly. However, if you're concerned, I'd add that no-index feature, yes. 

Hope that helps! 

[AStewartITI]

That certainly does help. Thanks @danmoyle 

Amy

[Jnix284]

Hi @AStewartITI I think what @danmoyle offers the best way to leverage the format of the Knowledge Base and how search works.

I'm in the process of building a knowledge base for FAQ, and sometimes my articles ask and answer the same question in different ways (depending on who is asking and how/why).

For more in depth answers, I am linking back to our step-by-step documentation to learn more on the topic (outside of KB on our website).

Hope this helps!

[AStewartITI]

Thanks @Jnix284.

If your FAQ answers appear in a Google organic search do you worry that they will eat into SEO for your website step by step content?

I only have access to a HubSpot Knowledge Base and I am concerned that users won't bother to read a full article if that's all that I put out there - but I still need to make it available.

I want to give users a short form quick answer in the KB search - but if it pops up in Google then they might think they had all the information they need and not read the comprehensive information.

I don't think I can win using HubSpot alone, trying to do both things. I might have to test it and see what works best.

Amy

[Jnix284]

Hi @AStewartITI no, because our FAQ from the Knowledge Base (KB) are ranking for specific questions that people are typing word for word in Google, wheareas the documentation doesn't use that same wording. Many are coming up as Snippets, which some argue hurts your web traffic because they stay on Google, but we still see them clicking through to the article for the full answer since it is technical in nature.

And we make our documentation rank for different keywords as part of our overall SEO strategy, but use a similar concept as SEO topics, in that we link the content together - our top FAQ is linked in the documentation to the KB, and our KB links back to our documentation.

Creating multiple types of content on the same topic is how you can build authority with search, it's only when you are using the same information word-for-word that you could run into an issue and I don't recommend doing that, at least not in full.

In the end, all of these efforts are driving organic traffic back to our website, which is ultimately the goal.

[AStewartITI]

Thanks @Jnix284 That's really helpful. You and @danmoyle have given me lots to think about (and set my mind at rest a bit about the duplicate content issue). I'm still thinking through the best solution for my Knowledge Base but you have helped me loads!

Amy

[Jnix284]

You're welcome @AStewartITI , sometimes we just need a little outside perspective and a little food for thought to find the best path forward. I'm really glad this was helpful for you! 🙌

[PamCotton]

Hello @AStewartITI, thank you for reaching out to our Community!

Welcome to HubSpot as well, I want to invite some of our top experts to this conversation @danmoyle  @Olivia_Bagnall, @Kevin-C, @warrendavey any recommendations for @AStewartITI  matter?

Thank you,

Pam