Author: Agata Wasilewska, Content Writer
FAQ pages are a valuable source of relevant information for your website’s users and search engines.
If done well, FAQ sections can provide users with all the answers they might need, which Google will want to rank.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create useful FAQs that will benefit both your customers and you.
What is an FAQ Page?
An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page is a page which contains answers to commonly asked questions by people about a specific product or service available on a website.
A well-done FAQ page can help potential customers obtain all the information they might need about your brand and goods before purchasing.
It also has some added SEO benefits…
Why Create an FAQ Page?
A well-set-up FAQ section is an essential knowledge base element of your website that carries numerous benefits for your customers, brand and your SEO.
- It makes the buyer’s journey easier and faster. If you provide all the necessary answers, your customers don’t need to reach out to you or your customer service team for support and wait for their response. The less hassle, the bigger the chance that users will purchase your goods.
- It saves your time too. If your FAQ page answers your customers’ questions well, it is the primary source of information they use before they need to get in touch with you directly, if ever.
- It helps you become more transparent and therefore build trust with your customers. Transparency is crucial for your brand’s success, and a quality FAQ section can help you implement it into your strategy. Providing your customers with information about shipping or returns policies can help you increase loyalty between you and your buyers.
- It boosts your site’s internal linking. If your FAQ page includes links to your site’s related content, it helps users navigate it, providing a better customer experience. Internal links also play a vital role in search visibility by increasing your chances of ranking higher in search results.
- If enough people are asking a certain question, and you provide a great answer that clearly provides what the user’s looking for, you increase your chances of appearing as a featured snippet.
Are FAQ Pages Good for SEO?
Yes, if they are done correctly.
Having your page built around a set of randomly chosen questions with quick answers may not bring the desired results.
An effective FAQ section must be thoroughly thought out and well-optimised in terms of relevant keywords to work well for SEO – read on to learn how to do this.
To ensure a high-quality FAQ page, it’s crucial to opt for user-friendly content that provides the best answers to the most common questions from a customer’s point of view.
Types of FAQ Pages
Depending on your preference regarding the website layout, you can display your FAQ page in multiple arrangements. They all work well at supplying your audience with the relevant information they might need.
We have highlighted 4 different types of FAQ pages in terms of SEO:
Homepage FAQs
Including an FAQ section on the homepage just above the footer is one of the most common and effective techniques.
It also creates a suitable space for internal links, which help to redirect your users to the relevant pages of your website.
Product/Service Page FAQs
You can add FAQs that are dedicated to a particular product or service within their respective pages.
Dedicated FAQ Page
Having a separate page that’s dedicated to FAQs is another great way to display your questions, especially when there are many of them to cover.
Like the homepage, the dedicated FAQ section can be a solid base for internal link building as it can be referenced on other pages of your website.
Dedicated FAQ Section at the End of a Blog Post
If you don’t want to create a separate page for your FAQs, you can add them to your existing blog post, as long as they relate to the article’s content.
Top tip: you can also combine the previous two types together by adding brief answers within your blog posts, and then adding an internal link to a dedicated FAQ page which answers the same questions, but in much more detail.
How to Find FAQs
A quality FAQ section’s most crucial part is the questions you want to answer. Finding them is the first step to take before starting to build your page.
There are 3 useful techniques that can help you find your FAQs:
People Also Ask
- Type a relevant keyword applicable to your product or service into Google and press search.
- Scroll down to the People Also Ask section which contains other relevant questions related to the searched term below.
- You can click on any of the suggested questions to get a short answer along with additional commonly asked questions to find FAQs suitable for you.
Related Searches
While you’re still on that page, scroll down to the very bottom, and you’ll find a list of related searches for more information about your original search.
From the example above, instead of just writing an answer for “how to cook broccoli”, you can actually now also write answers to more specific questions like “how to cook broccoli on stove”, “how to cook broccoli in oven” etc.
Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer
Researching your keywords is a great method that will allow you to establish your FAQs. You can easily do so with the help of a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer.
1) Type in your relevant keyword. Before pressing search, select the correct target location.
2) Hit search and scroll down to the Questions section.
3) Press View All, and you’ll see a list of questions built around your chosen keyword.
4) For more precise questions, use a more specific keyword.
Where To Put Your FAQs
There are a few possibilities where you can place your FAQ section on your website. Depending on the type of your questions and what they relate to, you can add them to your site’s existing pages or create a new page dedicated strictly to the FAQs.
If you’re adding key questions about the same page or topic, you can add them to existing pages. As the user has all the needed answers on hand, they don’t need to go through multiple pages to find the information. Therefore, it increases the quality of the user experience.
If you’re adding a set of less relevant questions about the same page or topic, it’s better to create a dedicated page for your FAQs to answer them. In this case, you can add internal links to your FAQ section with reference to your related pages.
If your FAQs require a more comprehensive answer, you can use both techniques together. Add a short answer to your question within an existing page and expand them on an FAQ dedicated page providing additional information.
FAQ SEO Best Practices
To provide users with the best experience of browsing your website, you must ensure that your FAQ page is easily accessible and readable.
There are some key points you should take into consideration when developing your FAQ page:
Write FAQs That’re SEO-friendly
Search engines are designed to display well-structured FAQ pages with articulate questions rich in relevant keywords.
You can provide a high-quality user experience on your FAQ page while ranking higher in the search engine with a few simple tips:
- Organise your questions. Put your questions into categories so the users can quickly find what they are looking for.
- Be consistent with your tone of voice. Make sure your FAQ section reflects the same writing style as any other page of your website to keep your brand personality in check.
- Use simple language. Your content should be easy to understand for the users. Avoid using jargon that may confuse the reader.
- Give short and quick answers to your questions. Your readers want to find out the information in the shortest time possible, so keep your answers concise and to the point. If you want your answers to be more comprehensive, write them separately in the form of a blog post.
- Add internal links. It’s crucial to link your content to any other website or resource page to drive traffic and increase conversion (more on this later).
- Optimise your meta titles. If you’re creating a dedicated page, remember to optimise your page title, H1 heading, meta description etc to improve the rankability of the page.
- Update your page regularly. You should review your FAQ content on a regular basis. Add new questions and modify or remove older ones if needed to keep the most up-to-date version of your page.
Implement FAQ Schema Markup
An FAQ schema markup is a specialised set of data that includes a list of questions and answers. You can add it to your website’s code for Google to read it and create rich snippets on the SERPs.
You can add an FAQ schema markup to your site in a few easy steps:
1) Generate your FAQs
Add your questions to a dedicated FAQ page or an FAQ section on an existing page according to Google’s guidelines.
2) Create and authenticate your FAQ schema markup
Use our free online FAQ schema Generator to create your code.
Copy your questions and answers and paste them into the code generator.
Make sure the questions and answers are exactly the same as they are on your website.
Once your code is generated, you can paste it into the Rich Results Testing Tool and test it to see if it works properly.
3) Add the FAQ schema to your page.
The final step is to apply the markup to your site. There are a couple of most commonly used methods that you can use:
- Add the code manually into the <head> space of your page.
- Add it using a WordPress plugin, like Insert Headers and Footers or RankMath.
After implementing the code onto your page, test it again via the testing tool (see point 2.) Additionally, investigate your page in terms of errors by checking it in GSC.
Optimise FAQs for Featured Snippets
As you already know, by optimising your FAQ section well, you have a chance to rank higher in the search results. What’s more, your website can appear at the top of the search results page if it’s included in featured snippets.
Featured snippets are short fragments of text visible at the top of the organic search results page, They are aimed at answering the search query instantly.
This short text is taken directly from the website. What’s important is that the snippet consists of only a couple of sentences, as Google’s aim is to provide a brief yet comprehensive answer to the search query.
Getting the coveted featured snippet can help increase your website’s click-through rate. If the user needs more information about a particular topic than what’s included in the snippet, they go to the website for more details.
To write featured snippet-friendly FAQ answers, you need to:
- Keep them concise and easy to understand. Make sure they answer the questions directly, preferably in 1 or 2 sentences. Remember that the answers should also be suitable for voice search, so their structure must be simple.
- Formulate them according to the standards of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Google understands the queries better when the connection between the question and the answer is as straightforward as possible. The easiest way to ensure it is to simply rephrase the question into a plain statement that contains the answer.
Add Internal Links to Relevant Pages
As mentioned earlier, internal linking is vital to ensuring a high-quality overall user experience on your website. As it can also improve user engagement, you should include internal links to applicable pages on your FAQ page.
The first step you should take before implementing links into your FAQ content is to put yourself in your users’ shoes. Analyse your FAQs and think about what your users will likely do next once they get the desired answer to a particular question.
For example, if your users ask about the estimated delivery time and shipping costs, they might be close to the final product purchase stage. In this case, you can redirect them to the general shipping information section by inserting the link to the relevant page and referencing your shipping partners.
Determining your users’ intent is crucial to building an effective and user-friendly internal linking structure on your FAQ page.
Final Thoughts
FAQ pages are a valuable asset that you should add to your website for better navigation and visibility of your page. If done correctly, FAQ sections can improve the overall user experience and allow you to rank higher in the search results.
A well-structured FAQ page with thoroughly thought-out questions and answers can be your secret weapon to nail your SEO game.
And once again, don’t forget to make use of your free FAQ Scheme Generator!
