How do you make the very most of your Private Questions?

[ChrisHolgate]

For the first time since signing up for a professional SEOmoz account, I didn’t take the opportunity to post a private question to the SEOmoz staff this month.  This was for no reason other than me being unable to think of anything that was both relevant and easily answerable.

Realising that I'd wasted the opportunity to pick the brains of some of the finest minds in the industry got me wondering how other people used their monthly questions and what kind of questions elicited particularly good responses.

I realise that questions such as ‘tell me everything I need to do to this site to make it #1’ are clearly not going to be privately and comprehensively covered under the terms of a $99 a month membership.  In the same breath however I also don’t want to be stuck asking questions which can easily be asked to the wider forum such as ‘Do I want to use a domain or subdomain for this?’

Purely in the interest of getting the most out of a SEOmoz subscription, I was wondering what was the deepest, most intricate or open ended SEO question you guys have asked and gained a particularly useful response from.  What styles of question have you asked which have resulted in the feeling that the $99 monthly fee was worth it just for that one answer?

[EGOL]

These are just opinions.....

I see some people who offer SEO services for hire asking questions that share the websites of their clients.   I don't think that they should post those in public.

I see some people who offer SEO services for hire asking some really noob questions.  It's good that they are looking for eduction but probably best to take those private or hire a consultant.

Not a good idea to post the URL of your money site here or affiliate sites in low barrier to entry niches.

Sometimes I post a private question because I am looking for one reply that I think I would trust rather than opening a discussion and getting replies from people I don't know.  I envision that difficult questions going to the "back room" are routed to appropriate people to answer rather than anybody opening them and "shooting from the hip" with an answer.  I get replies from people like Dr Pete which is nice.

[MarkScully]

Recently, I posted my first private question.

Through no ones fault but my own, it was a very broad question which really can't blame the confusion on the person who responded. I really need to follow up on it.

My Advice Chris is to be specific and keep the question focused on a given topic.

It may take some time to get a response so keep in mind that the question shouldn't be time sensitive and that it's something you can hold out on for someone to look at.

It's a great feature though. I'm sure I'll find it worth the $99 alone.

[KeriMorgret]

We're working on having the following message show up when you select that you want your question to be private, in order to help everyone have a positive experience with private Q&A and understand what we can and cannot offer:

Thanks for taking the time to read through our guidelines before asking a private Q&A question:

1. By asking your question, you’ll use one question credit (current PRO members get one per month, which renew at the first of each month).
2. Private questions are intended to be focused and specific. If you have broad needs for review of strategy or an audit of pieces of your site, consultation services are more appropriate. Our private Q&A team is happy to dig into details, but we've asked them not to spend large amounts of time on individual questions, as we have thousands of members who need help.
3. Feel free to ask a follow-up question on the same topic if you need clarification, but refrain from asking multiple questions on several topics.
4. Please be prepared for private questions to take a bit longer to get answered. You’ll get a response from one of our staff or Associates (aka experts in the field) as quickly as they can.
5. We are not able to log in to any of your accounts (such as your analytics, webmaster tools, or even SEOmoz PRO).
6. Take a read through our Community Guidelines.

Our promise

• Your question is confidential and will not be shared outside of SEOmoz Staff and Associates (and we've all signed non-disclosure agreements).
• You will receive a response within seven days of asking your question.
• Our experts will be TAGFEE when answering questions, we ask that you do the same.

Tips

• Is an SEOmoz tool not working right? You can save your private question credit and contact our help team at http://www.seomoz.org/help.
• Want a faster answer or opinions from a variety of people? We have a lot of great community members in public Q&A who would be happy to look at your question.