Tips to Help Ensure Your FAQ Page Is a Valuable Business Asset

It might be the least likely SEO asset to come to mind, but your website’s FAQ page is an essential element in online success and visibility. However, over time, you may find that traffic to that page dwindles, or maybe it never takes off in the first place. That’s a terrible position in which to find your business, but the good news is that there are ways to prevent your FAQ page traffic from drying up, or to reinvigorate the page.

Why Do FAQ Pages Matter?

FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, and these pages are perhaps your most significant opportunity to deliver valuable information to your customers or clients outside of blog posts, articles, and other similar content. FAQ pages are highly visible in the SERPs now that Google is focusing on serving up answers to common questions in featured snippets. And, because FAQ pages are structured in a question and answer style, they’re ideal fodder for search engine spiders.

FAQ pages are about more than just good SEO, though. They’re actually a critical element in your user experience. Suppose a visitor lands on your website, and they are not familiar with what you offer. They peruse a page or two looking for specific information, but they are unable to find it.

The next place they go is likely to be your FAQ page, where they can peruse your answers to frequently asked questions, learn the answers to their questions, and more. However, if you lack a FAQ page, or you don’t have robust answers to common questions your customers or clients ask, those visitors are going to leave your site and go to a competitor.

Why FAQ Pages Suffer

It’s not uncommon for FAQ pages to fail to deliver on their potential. This is usually due to a combination of the nature of the page itself, plus failures on the part of the website owner.

  • Unstructured – Too often, FAQ pages are not structured in any sort of logical way. Rather, they’re simply a jumble of random questions and answers.
  • Slow – FAQ pages can be content-heavy and may load slowly, which will affect usability and user experience.
  • Content Duplication – Often, FAQ pages are afterthoughts, and they have the same information available on other pages of the website. This leads to issues with content duplication and redundancy.
  • Failure to Maintain Brand Standards – Again, FAQ pages are often thrown together as an afterthought, which means the content may be poorly written or may diverge from brand tone and voice standards, which can be damaging.

The good news is that ensuring your FAQ page is a valuable asset is as simple as avoiding the errors we’ve listed above. Of course, that will require some strategy, but we’ll explore that below.

Questions Matter – Perhaps the single most important consideration here, both for providing real value to your website visitors and providing good information for Google spiders, is to list the right questions. It’s not enough just to come up with a list of things that you think your customers might ask. You need to know your audience well enough that you can anticipate what they actually want to know, particularly questions they are likely to search with. Create your FAQ answers based on those questions and you’ll be a leg up on the competition and still be able to deliver a positive user experience.

Logical Order – You cannot simply toss your questions and answers on the page without any thought for logic or order. Ideally, you’ll group them by category or topic, but even listing them in descending order by frequency of asking is better than not having any strategy at all.

Update – Google likes fresh content, and your FAQ page is a great way to deliver that. Update your page regularly with new questions and answers, lengthier answers to previous questions, and more.

Be the Expert – You’re the expert here. Make sure that your FAQ page maintains your brand’s tone and voice. The more authentic your FAQ answer tone/voice, the better.

Don’t Overcomplicate Things – Avoid the urge to turn every answer into a 500-word mini-article. Sure, content length matters, but Google focuses more on quality. A shorter, but more accurate answer will actually get you more traffic and will give better value to your customers.

Conclusion

Ultimately, your FAQ page can and should be a powerful tool for your business, boosting SEO success and improving your ability to deliver a positive user experience. The key is to remember the tips we discussed above and to avoid the errors and mistakes that so many business owners and decision-makers are guilty of making.

Celia Deverell
Celia Deverell

A driven digital marketer who is passionate about education. Trained in Community Rural Development and skilled specifically in Project Management. A team player with a common-sense approach to coordinating team activities.