Questions With One Correct Answer

Which questions get answered directly

A question with one correct answer that does not change by circumstance can be answered in a box above the results.

What size is a standard door, how many litres in a gallon, what does that abbreviation stand for.

Somebody who wanted that has it, and no site receives the visit.

This has been true for years and is worth understanding rather than fearing, because it applies to a specific and identifiable kind of page.

The exposed categories

• Definitions and terminology.
• Conversions and standard measurements.
• Fixed specifications.
• Simple how-many and how-long questions.
• General explanations of a common process.

The last is the one small businesses actually write. An article explaining how a common installation works, in general terms, has one correct answer and dozens of sites giving it, which makes it exactly the kind of page most likely to be summarised rather than visited.

Check which of your pages are in that category

Since the exposure is unevenly distributed.

Go through your pages and ask, for each, whether the answer would be the same if a competitor two towns away wrote it.

Where the answer is yes, that page is a general explanation and is exposed.

Where the answer is no, because it contains your prices, your area, or your judgement, it is not.

That sort takes twenty minutes and it tells you which pages are worth defending.

Most sites find that their traffic-heavy pages are the exposed ones and their enquiry-producing pages are not.

A worked example

A business had a well-performing article explaining a general process in their trade, bringing about four hundred visits a month.

Over two years the visits fell steadily while the position did not change, because the answer was increasingly shown directly.

Their service pages, which stated prices and named the areas covered, were unaffected across the same period.

They rewrote the article to answer the general question briefly and then spend most of the page on what it costs here, what varies locally, and what they charge.

Visits did not recover to the previous level and enquiries from that page rose, which was the outcome that mattered.

The general version had never produced anything.

The response is not to stop answering

Which is the wrong conclusion people draw.

Withholding the answer to force a click produces a page that fails the reader and ranks worse, and it has never worked.

The response is to answer the general question and then add what only you can add, so the page has a reason to exist beyond the answer.

Somebody who gets the general answer from a box and then needs the local version still has to go somewhere.

Being the page that carries the local version is the position worth holding.

Being the quoted source has value

Even without the visit.

Where an answer is attributed and your business name appears, that is a form of recognition at the moment somebody was thinking about the subject.

For a local trade that is not nothing, particularly where the name appearing is one they will see again on a van.

It is worth less than a visit and more than absence, which is the honest accounting.

Which is why the paragraph worth being quoted from should contain your figures rather than a generic answer.

Watch the pattern rather than the total

The measurement, since this shows up in a specific way.

A page losing clicks while its impressions and position hold steady is the signature.

That comparison is in your search console and it distinguishes this from a ranking problem, which looks completely different.

Check it for your three most-visited informational pages once or twice a year.

Where you see it, the response is to make those pages specific rather than to try to recover the general traffic.

Some of that traffic was never yours to keep

Worth saying, since the loss feels worse than it is.

Somebody who wanted a definition was not going to hire anybody.

A page bringing four hundred visits a month and no enquiries has been measuring interest rather than demand.

Losing it looks like a decline and costs almost nothing, which is the same argument that applies to any traffic that produces nothing.

The pages to protect are the ones producing enquiries, and those are protected by being specific rather than by being long or by being defended.

The same page can serve both

Which is the practical arrangement rather than choosing between them.

Answer the general question in the first fifty words, so the page is a good answer and can be the quoted source, then spend the rest on what makes it local and specific.

Somebody who only wanted the general answer takes it and goes, which they were always going to do.

Somebody who needed more scrolls on and finds the price range, the local variation, and a way to ask.

That structure loses nothing you were going to keep and holds everything you might, which is why it is worth restructuring rather than rewriting.

The counter-case

General pages have uses.

They build recognition, attract links that help other pages, and reach people who will need you in a year or two, none of which shows in a monthly comparison.

Some trades also genuinely compete on being the clearest explanation of a complicated thing, and that is a legitimate position to hold.

And the answer being shown is frequently attributed to its source, which is worth more in some categories than in others.

Sort your pages by whether a competitor could have written them, add local specifics to the exposed ones, and judge by enquiries.

What to do

1. Ask of each page whether anyone could write it.
2. Mark the general ones.
3. Check clicks against impressions.
4. Answer the general question briefly.
5. Add prices, area, and judgement.
6. Do not withhold the answer.
7. Judge by enquiries.

Step one is the whole sort, since a page a competitor could have written word for word is a page nobody needs to visit yours to read.

How the questions themselves are changing is covered in long questions people type.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.