Are FAQ Pages Good for SEO?
The simple answer is yes, when optimised correctly. When key customer questions are answered concisely containing valuable keywords where necessary, FAQ pages can give a boost to organic rankings.
Do I need FAQs?
FAQs are particularly effective in industries that have complex or in-depth services, such as the legal industry. Often a FAQ can give concise answers or an easier to understand explanation on a more complex point that the customer can explore further if need be. For a specific look at how we can help someone in the legal industry, check out our SEO for Legal page. FAQs aren’t only effective in complicated industries however. They can be useful just to give information on delivery times or what a product contains.
First things first, to begin optimising, you need to understand you can’t toss a long list of random questions onto a webpage and expect to see Page 1 rankings or an increase in organic traffic overnight. Not by anything other than luck, that is.
Likewise, users won’t find any value in answers that don’t solve their problem or having to surf through blocks of copy to find what they’re looking for and thus, even though this might not directly affect rankings, it could well affect customer relationship.
The goal of a FAQ page is something that is crucial to SEO as a whole: be the answer to whatever your audience is looking for.
Incorporating keywords into on-page copy, and optimizing title tags and meta descriptions are all of practices that contribute to the SEO value of your FAQ page for Google. But Google isn’t who you’re trying to get to convert, users are.
In the end, it all comes down to this. Good FAQ pages are good for SEO. Bad FAQ pages are bad for a number of people. SEO, for Google and most importantly, users.
How Do You Create SEO-Friendly FAQ Pages?
Okay, you’re sold on adding an FAQ section to your site or you’re reviewing your existing FAQ pages. Where do you start? How do you ensure you’re effectively answering questions as well as increasing rankings behind the scenes?
First and foremost: have a strategy. Put yourself in a customer’s shoes. What would you want to know? Start by compile a list of the most common questions users have. Then, to counteract this, write complete and concise answers to those questions.
If you’re doing a designated page for your FAQs, you need to optimise the title tag and meta description for this page.
FAQ pages should include the most common questions amongst your users. That sounds simple on the surface, but it’s often harder than it looks. Chances are you know your business inside out, so whatever you don’t know isn’t worth knowing. If you have a contact us page, have a look at some of your previous enquiries and base questions around these. Even ask friends and family if needs be.
Have a look at social networks. If your brand isn’t big enough to be mentioned by name yet, see what people are asking about the type of products you sell.
Reddit, Quora, and Other Forums: While they aren’t directly interacting with your site, forums like Reddit and Quora are great sources for identifying industry-wide trends and issues from users themselves.
Though you want answers to be thorough, it’s equally important to keep them short and to the point. Users come to FAQ pages for answers, you don’t want to make them lose interest because they have to crawl through mountains of copy. Include enough information to completely answer the question, but try not to exceed 2-3 sentences for each.
From an SEO keyword perspective, creating multiple FAQ pages allows you to target specific terms for each topic or category, so this might be worth considering.
With multiple pages, you can incorporate relevant keywords into the title tag and meta description of each FAQ page. Title tags play a major role in ranking on Google and could be worth producing to drive an increase in traffic.
Once you’ve done all this, your FAQs are ready to go.
Did this all seem too time consuming? Are you not sure how to optimise your content, title tags, meta descriptions or headings? Get in touch today with one of our experts and we’ll discuss a bespoke strategy to get your business reaching its maximum organic search potential.
