How FAQ Can Help Your SEO

In every industry, there are always a lot of questions that are commonly asked by customers and potential customers. These Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) should be included on your website as a way to not only help your users find those answers but to help with your organic search results. 

What is FAQ Content? 

Simply put, FAQ content is content written in question-and-answer format. When this content is on your website, it is usually answering questions your customers might ask of you. 

From a strictly user-friendly perspective, having this type of content on your site can help answer your customer’s questions quickly and easily. The headers and bulleted lists draw the user’s eye to the answer they are wanting. 

How Does FAQ Content Help SEO? 

It can help you rank for conversational questions asked in search engines. This includes voice search since people generally present their voice search in question form.  

When properly optimized, it also has the potential to help you nab a knowledge box (aka Featured Snippet) in the search landscape or be featured in a People Also Ask box. These “position zero” spots at the top of the search results page are valuable organic real estate. 

When we talk about content, we often discuss repurposing content you already have. A FAQ section on a website is a great way to do this while also helping your customers scan your page to quickly find the answers they need. 

Finding the Best Questions to Include in a FAQ 

Start with your staff – talk to your sales and marketing departments about what questions they are most asked.  

Check-in with your reception staff, too. Or better yet, listen to your phone calls and hear for yourself what your customers are asking most often. This is one of the reasons we suggest including Call Tracking in your integrated digital marketing strategy. 

In Google Search Console, you can go to Performance and add a “+new” filter by query. This will give you insight into the questions people are asking before they even get to your site. 

The forms on your website give you even more insight into what your customers want to know. Ask your Team about our LOOP Analytics program for a great example of how it can help you understand what your customers are looking for through your form data. 

If you don’t have LOOP activated, you can also use data from Google Analytics. By searching under Behavior > Site Search, you will see what queries customers have used to search your website. If you are using paid search, you can also analyze the search terms used by customers landing on your site. 

Best Practices for Publishing a FAQ 

When including a FAQ section on your page, keep it user-friendly: 

• Start off with the basics and if you need to expand on them, you can add them in later.  
• If you already have a lot of questions, you should group them into subjects to make them easier to find. 
• Include structured data markup to bring these sections to the attention of the search engines. 
• Make the page easy to find by including it in the navigation, footer or resources section. 
• Adding a smaller FAQ section to relevant pages can benefit your organic search results more than just combining them all onto one page. 
• If you don’t already have an internal site search function, consider including one to make it possible for users to search for specific questions. 

What Does This Mean for You? 

A FAQ section isn’t just a way to fill up your page. It shows you have heard the questions and concerns of your customers and you are addressing them in an easy-to-understand format. In addition to being a user-friendly way of answering commonly asked questions, when properly optimized, they can hugely benefit your search engine optimization efforts. 

Want More Tips and Suggestions Like This? Sign Up for Our Newsletter!