Written by Market My Market’s content team, with contributions from Tyler McNulty, Lauren Dominguez, Gina Ritch, Jordan Kimmel, Jessica Unkel, Amanda Guglietta, and Ryan Klein
Just like your website’s “About Us” or “Contact Us” pages, frequently asked question (FAQ) pages are non-negotiable. They’re a gold mine for your SEO marketing strategy, filled with keyword-rich content directly targeted towards your ideal client, audience, and market. However, FAQ pages are only a powerful tool when done right.
A weak or nonexistent FAQ page can turn legitimate visitors away from your website, steering potentially high-value clients into the hands of your competitors. If your intention is to scale organic traffic, improve conversion rates, and grow your business, you don’t want to miss out on any opportunities to convert web visitors into prospective clients.
That said, an effective FAQ page does more than just provide answers to commonly asked questions. They act as a transportation hub, providing visitors with on-the-spot answers to their questions, thus helping break through your website’s traffic barrier by guiding them to relevant pages. Put simply, this leads more web visitors to their proposed destination— and can help your firm reach its fullest potential.
Contributed by Amanda Guglietta, Content Specialist
How can FAQ content improve your SEO?
Did you know that the FAQ page is often the second page users check out after stumbling upon the homepage or a landing page? An FAQ page on your website becomes the go-to spot for the most commonly-sought information about your business. If you notice that clients are frequently asking the same questions over and over again when they’re considering using your service, it’s a sign that the information they need may not be available online. Having an FAQ page or section on your site, or including FAQs on service pages to cover the basics, greatly improves user experience.
FAQs make it easier to navigate your website, meaning users will be less inclined to leave the site out of frustration when they can’t find answers. The more questions you answer about your business, the more time visitors may spend on your website. All this time signals to Google that users are finding what they’re looking for, which helps SEO. The more robust your FAQ content is, the more knowledgeable and trustworthy your business appears, also giving your SEO a bump.
A dedicated FAQ page or section is the perfect opportunity to provide relevant content that helps your clients –– and Google –– understand your business. It’s also a good spot to include longtail keyword phrases people might be using. Longtail keywords are those that are made up of more than 3 words, meaning people are adding modifiers to get more specific information. For example, if you’re an estate planning lawyer, you might include questions such as What is a will? or How do I set up a living trust? Questions like these are more targeted to users who are actively looking to begin estate planning. With some research, you can begin to collect questions that draw qualified leads.
Contributed by Lauren Dominguez, Content Lead
Do FAQ Pages Make it More Likely Readers will Contact You?
No matter how clear and easy to navigate your website is, users will undoubtedly want some information about your services before contacting you. By compiling answers to common questions on an easy-to-find FAQ page, you give visitors just enough information to pull the trigger (or pick up the phone). Visitors who deduce that your business is best-suited to address their concerns are more likely to contact you.
When writing FAQ content, remember that people have short attention spans. In fact, some studies show visitors may read as few as 20% of the words on a webpage. The sooner you give readers the answers they want, the likelier they are to take the next step. If they cannot find the answers they are looking for, they will go to another website. Remember, if a user encounters a large block of text, they most likely will not read it and may look elsewhere. When answering FAQs, write short, concise answers that are easy to follow.
Like any other page on your site, you’ll want to nudge visitors to take action. Be sure to include a call to action in the conclusion of your page. List your phone number, email address, or link to your website’s contact page.
Contributed by Tyler McNulty, Content Specialist
What Goes Into Creating a Quality FAQ Page?
Now that we understand the benefits of an optimized FAQ page let’s go over the mechanics of creating one that attracts future clients at the beginning of their buyer’s journey.
How to Find Questions Your Clients Are Asking
Two indispensable tools you can use to dial in on the questions your clients are asking includes:
- Google Suggest: Google’s auto-completion feature that reveals other users’ queries.
- People-Also-Ask results: Alternative questions Google provides that are similar to your original query.
- Quora & Reddit: Forums with innumerable questions to help discover your client’s pain points for which they’re seeking answers.
The best part is that these tools are free and accessible to anyone with a browser window and time to analyze.
To get started, type a few keywords related to your business or brand in the search bar, form those keywords into questions, and see what suggestions come up. When using Google Suggest, Google auto-completes your question based on how others usually search. If you don’t know how to begin your question, you can manipulate Google Suggest into providing the middle of your question by:
- Typing your main keyword and search
- Move your cursor back to the start of the question and write “How”
- Get ready for the big reveal of other popular queries
Best Practices for Answering FAQs on Your Site
When answering FAQs on your site, you want to keep them concise and avoid writing more than two or three short paragraphs per question. Anything longer will make your FAQ page look cluttered and may also prevent Google from displaying your answer in the SERPs.
If two to three paragraphs aren’t enough to fully answer the FAQ, consider creating a detailed page as an article or blog post dedicated to answering that particular question. Another option to consider is incorporating a short video with your answer. Not only will that appeal to clients who enjoy visual content, but it’s a great promotion tool to use on YouTube and social media that can open your business up to a broader audience.
Contributed by Gina Ritch, Content Specialist
What is FAQ Schema and Why Should I Use It?
We now live in a time when most people will ask Google more questions than they’ll ask their friend, family member, or spouse. Accordingly, Google has been continuously updating and manufacturing algorithms and processes that accurately and instantaneously help users find their answers. This includes the rise of rich snippets, knowledge graph panels, and question-and-answer boxes. If your goal as a business is to stand out in search results and capture users’ attention to acquire that oh-so-precious click-through, “schema” is a great way to convert searchers into website visitors.
Schema is a custom code that can be added to your website to help search engines return more instructive results for users. Though search engines can read the code, it isn’t actively visible on a webpage and is only seen on the backend of your website. You may hear it referred to as “schema markup,” “microschema,” or “microdata.” There are several schema types, from article schema to event schema, and pretty much everything in between.
FAQ schema, in particular, is code you place on your site that tells search engines that the content on your page is presented in a question-and-answer format. When the page is correctly marked up, it means those pages may be eligible for rich snippets in the search results and appear in Google Assistant searches. Rich snippets are separated on the search engine results page and stand out from the rest, whether it be a list of items, song lyrics, statistics, the weather, a recipe, or an FAQ page answer.
FAQ schema allows you to contend as a resource for frequently answered questions and provide quick answers to specific questions users ask. This can be targeted at both generic and brand-related queries and highlights the importance of having an actively updated FAQ section. As you establish yourself as a go-to source of information, you can also attract traffic from users wanting a more in-depth answer.
Part of what makes FAQ schema markup so critical is the amount of real estate it employs. Currently, Google shows your first three FAQ results, which doubles the amount of vertical space your snippet takes up in search results. Ultimately, the most significant facet of FAQ schema and rich snippets is that it typically generates high-quality leads. FAQ schema helps put the odds of attracting these higher quality leads in your favor. Through your questions and answers, you can give a sneak preview of what’s to come if they click through.
Contributed by Jordan Kimmel, Content Specialist
How to Narrow Down the FAQs You Should be Answering
Sometimes, you may find yourself with a page that could potentially answer dozens of questions around a particular topic. If you have a few topics in mind, typically based on the volume you are currently getting from potential clients and customers, you should validate the search volume on a larger scope by using an SEO tool such as SEMRush, Ahrefs, or SpyFu. These tools all have a variation of a “keyword overview” or “keyword manager” tool that will not only be able to predict consistent monthly searches, but also analyze variants of the questions you plan on answering to be inclusive of additional potential searches.
One of the easiest ways to accurately anticipate the amount of search volume you’ll receive from adding FAQs to your website is to look at your website’s Google Search Console.
We get to this page by going to our GSC dashboard, clicking “Performance,” and narrowing down a particular page we want to augment with FAQs. If we click on this specific page, we can see all of the keywords (or queries) that this page is getting impressions for. We want to narrow this by impressions to get some of the most outstanding queries available for our website, and then consider if they are already phrased as questions or could be phrased this way.
These featured top queries, however, may not be the most useful for the creation of additional questions. As we move through additional keywords, we start to see more long-tailed queries that can be formulated into helpful FAQs, such as:
- Are there directories just for Personal Injury lawyers?
- What are the best lawyer directories in 2021?
- Is there a list of free legal directories?
- Are there separate directories for lawyers and law firms?
Contributed by Ryan Klein, Managing Partner
Should I add FAQs to Existing Pages or Create Dedicated FAQ Pages?
Building FAQ pages into your website has a variety of advantages when it comes to SEO and educating the client, but many companies wonder how to choose between adding a series of FAQs to an existing service page or creating independent pages dedicated to the category of FAQ questions.
As a general rule, any service that you offer should have its own FAQ page, separate from the service page itself. This allows you to provide a more in-depth explanation on the finer points of the information that your clients are seeking. For example, if you are a lawyer who provides defense for victims of traffic accidents, you would create a page related to your service as a traffic accident defense lawyer. There would also be a separate FAQ page that has questions related to the client’s rights and the standard process for building a case after an accident.
Another option is to have an index page that covers all of your FAQs. This can be useful for businesses that receive fewer frequent questions about their services, such as a small consulting firm that only offers two or three different packages. To follow the example, you should still allow each of the unique packages to have its own page—both for the service and the FAQ—but on the global FAQ page, you can combine all of the questions across multiple areas into one organized place. This is something that can be useful for larger companies, as well, since allowing clients the option to search all of your FAQs at once might make it easier for them to navigate your website and locate the information they need.
Contributed by Jessica Unkel, Content Specialist
Is my FAQ Structured Data Working?
Structured data is a way of describing your site to make it easier for search engines to understand. And to describe your site to search engines, you’ll need a vocabulary that presents content in a way that search engines can understand. According to Google Search Central, the steps to do so are as follows:
- Add the required properties
- Follow these guidelines.
- Validate your code using the Rich Results Test.
- Deploy a few pages that include your structured data and use the URL Inspection tool to test how Google sees the page.
If implemented correctly, your FAQs may look like this on Google Search results pages:
The most straightforward way to validate whether your structure data is working is by typing up keywords that would display your FAQ pages in search results. Google’s structured data tool will also tell you the data it’s successfully picking up. Lastly, going back to your handy Google Search Console dashboard, there’s a section dedicated specifically to telling what FAQ structured data is continuously being indexed on your website, and the last date it was acknowledged.
Contributed by Ryan Klein, Managing Partner
An Interactive FAQ That Aims to Solve Your Clients Problems
If you want to get the most value out of your FAQ page, you need to understand your clients’ journey, needs, touchpoints, and goals to ensure your content substance is informational and impressionable. You also need to know how users behave when they visit a website, so that you’re incorporating your FAQ page in a location that drives maximum retention and engagement.
A successful FAQ page that provides the answers your clients crave while boosting your online presence calls for a sophisticated marketing strategy and content plan. If you want to dig deeper into your web analytics and figure out the best web approach to make your business boom, arming your company with a dedicated digital marketing partner could be exactly what you need to stand out.
At Market My Market, our savvy team can help elevate your creative game and promote brand recognition with a custom-tailored strategy that delivers continuous exponential growth. If you’re serious about taking your business to the next level, contact us for a free consultation today.