Hello folks, I have an online store and would like to provide a product support area either in the form of a blog or forum. It is not a high traffic site and a simple support thread would meet the need. I would like something that would be SEO friendly so that the information in the posts would add to my Google relevance.
It looks like the site will be using Opencart at the moment as the store shopping cart.
There are a couple of forum extensions for this cart but I could also consider installing the blog or forum outside of the shopping cart system.
Can anyone recommend a simple single thread question and answer style script that looks good and is coded to be SEO saavy?
TIA!!
vsilly ,
I’d go with a blog if your trying to bring traffic back for different keyword variations.
This will also show the public that you guys (actually provide support).
A blog…would not be the correct means. How would a user who needs support ask you a question on a blog? A forum would be better or even something like stackoverflow.com But no a blog is not what you want.
Would this be because the blog will get spidered more easily? is there a blog software that would have a question-and-answer format?
Stackoverflow looks like a pretty ideal format for what I am thinking of. I look all over the site was not able to determine what software they are using to create this question-and-answer format. Do you have any idea what software they are using? Thanks very much for the interesting idea, I like that site…
Hello again, I think I found the mothership here at the above link. This looks like a really great solution! Very cool!
I used osqa one a support website that I made, it works great. A forum is a good alternative though, there are free options too with PHPBB for example.
I would only need a single topic area, in my past experiences with forums software they have multiple posting areas. It might look a little empty in a forum layout if there is only one topic area… my web host has PHP BB as one of their installed services so I guess I will take a look at it. Thanks for sharing your positive experience with OSQA, good to know that it is a reliable script.
Does anyone know whether an OSQA based support area would give my site good visibility to search engines versus a blog versus a forum? Right now I have informational pages with technical info and those pages get the most response from search engines, so I believe that a discussion page in some format that covers technical issues for the products could be excellent for helping to get the content in front of people who need it. I just don’t know whether there are pros and cons to the different methods of presenting this material as far as SEO goes.
Thanks again
If your main goal is to provide support then a forum is the answer. But if you’re looking for links, you should a blog on your site.
Why don’t you try the social media like twitter or facebook? They’re great tools for advertise your site. keep track on the customers and support.
Alright…stop with SEO junk just stop. IT WON’T MATTER. osqa will do just fine for your purpose. As long as you make it easy for your users to ask questions and get prompt answers. A blog will not give you any more link juice then anything else. Search engines are not filled with idiots, like some “professional SEOs”* want to think they are. Google and the rest know how to index non-blog sites just fine.
- aka., children who spent 5 minutes reading a bad article.
Thanks very much that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. OSQA looks like a great solution in that case, thanks to everyone in this thread for helping me find a good option, I appreciate it.