Is Using a Question, Answer Format Appropriate for a Blog? Is a 300 Word Micro Blog An SEO Plus?

[Kingalan1]

My PR agency has suggested a question answer format be incorporated in my blog. They suggest a microblog with a single sentence question and an answer of about 300 words.

My blog currently has about 35 posts. I would like to ramp up blog entries to about one or two per week of these "mini blog" posts.

The format of the new blog begins as a question with the responses being paragraphs that do not use headings. My concerns are as follows:

1. No headings in an answer of 300 words will fail to provide Google with context regarding the content's meaning. Everything I have read about SEO suggests text be broken up in short sections and that it be divided by headings (preferably H2s).

I very much like my agency's concept for a question answer format blog. It provides very practical info for visitors. How can I use it in a manner that supports SEO best practices?

2. According to a reputable SEO firm that has been assisting me, Google does not consider a blog post of less than 600 words to be superior quality. They told me that  blog posts of 300 words, from an SEO purpose will not be a great helpful, that the content will not be rich enough to generate incoming links.

Is this really the case? What if this abbreviated content is very well written and engaging? If so, is 300 words sufficient? From the visitor's perspective I am not sure they would have the patience to read 600 words when 300 words is more than than enough to answer these basic questions. From a PR perspective I think the shorter content in a question answer format is superior at least for my line of business (commercial real estate brokerage).

3. If 500-600 words is the minimum word count, and headings are necessary, what is the best way to execute a question and answer blog format?

The purpose of this blog is to provide very useful info to my visitors while generating incoming links to that will boast my rankings.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!!!

Alan

[katemorris]

There used to be a platform for this called Sponge, but their site is down so I assume it's gone now.

Q&A can be very useful, but you will need to focus attention less on length and more on the capability to search the questions. More importantly if your market wants this and if it's not available elsewhere. If this is something that has been identified as necessary and useful, go for it. Don't worry too much about the headings and length. Just don't make this a factory of questions and 300 word answers. Allow the people writing the answers to answer well, no matter how long.

Hope that helps!

[GrowthHackingGooglesIndex]

Heading over to Quora, Yahoo Answers and related site types is a great way to seed your FAQ type posts.

Try to answer these questions with as much detail as possible as it will gain return readership, especially if their pain was relieved.

You can worry about the finer details if you would like but providing relevant help answers to industry questions is always going to be a plus.