Should you add obscure keyword topics to an existing article or publish it as a stand-alone article?

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Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels*

A common question among us traffic-hungry bloggers is whether a specific question that has some search volume be added to an existing article or published as a stand-alone article?

For me the answer is simple.  These days I almost always publish it as a stand-alone article unless it has a ton of overlap with an existing article.

Moreover, in some cases, I may add a variation of the question to a relevant article, provide a brief answer and then link to the full stand-alone post.  This is what I call the “full Q&A treatment”.

I’m on a Q&A blog post rampage these days – here are the benefits of Q&A posts as I see them

I’ve not forsaken higher volume keywords. I’ve not turned my back on listicles and other long-form informational content that I’ve done very well by over the years.  However, I am publishing in addition to the usual fodder plenty of shorter question and answer articles.  It’s far too soon to tell whether this strategy will work. I think it will.  It sits very, very right with as the right thing to do for visitors and my sites.

1. Makes for interesting niche sites (overall)

On an overall blog level, I love how my archive pages have all these specific, interesting Q&A topics available for readers.  It makes for an interesting-looking and insightful website.

2. Cheap to produce

On a production level, these posts are cheaper to produce so I can publish more going after very, very long tail, low competition, easy-to-rank keywords.  I recognize that most of the topics won’t haul in lots of traffic every month but in the aggregate, they should do well.

How much do I pay per word for these Q&A posts? I pay $.04 to $.05 per word.  How many words are they?  They range from 750 to 1,200 words. This means I pay anywhere from $30 to $60 per post which is fairly inexpensive.

3. Bolster cornerstone articles

Another big benefit is that these subordinate child articles serve as great little boosters to my high search volume articles that are more difficult to rank.  I link out to one to three articles from each of these Q&A posts in an effort to bolster the heavy lifting posts on my site.

4. Fun to write

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that these posts are a lot more fun to write.  They’re specific.  They delve deeply into an obscure topic.  Often the lion’s share of the content is opinion-based which makes it relatively easy to write.  All in all, they are easy and fun to produce that are enjoyed by website visitors.

5. Keyword research (coming up with the topics) is ridiculously easy

Lastly, they’re so easy to do keyword research for. I don’t bother finding topics with keyword research software.  I come up with the topics on my own. I can come up with topics so fast. It’s kinda fun dreaming them up.  It’s akin to power-posting questions on Quora.

6. Great articles to write when short on time

Have a spare hour? Write a short n’ sweet Q&A article for your site. I do this regularly.  I’m pretty busy managing various aspects of my portfolio but when a spare hour or two appears, I bang out a quick article (like this one).

This is all well and good Jon but do you care to share some examples?

I’ll gladly share some examples.  I’m deploying this strategy on Fat Stacks.  In fact, this very post is an example.  Here are more examples from Fat Stacks:

I’m also deploying this on Cyclebaron.com (my public niche site).  Here are some examples on Cyclebaron:

Are shorter Q&A articles good for new websites? Newbies?

Arguably, they’re very good because they target such obscure keywords with little or no competition.  Moreover, if you’re new to this business, these are great sized articles to sink your teeth into.  Most folks just getting started in this business are short on time due to job/family so these types of articles are great to help getting content published fairly quickly.

Isn’t this sub-750 word article refreshing?

The only way you’d end up here is if you searched in Google for something somewhat similar to the title of this article or saw it on my blog while browsing all the other awesome articles.  Isn’t refreshing to come to an article where you get the answer instantly and every part of the article is 100% relevant to what the title of the article is?

I think so. In my gut this is a great strategy.

*Why am I using Pexels when I pay for Shutterstock?  Cause I’m upgrading my Shutterstock account today adding team members and unbeknownst to me downloading is paused while it gets set up.  Talk about a huge hassle.

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