Even if you believe your site's content is complete, add an FAQ it's certainly a good idea. This frequently asked questions (FAQ) can help your audience find key answers about your business and your services.
Furthermore, it is excellent for the your site's SEO. Not only because Google highlights it, but also because it increases the value of your site!
Today we'll look at why an FAQ can be beneficial for your website and, above all, how to write a page that is truly useful and effective.
Why create an FAQ page on your site?
Let's start at the beginning: a frequently asked questions, it's a section of your website where you answer requests, concerns, or objections your customers frequently raise.
Whether it's information about your products, your services, or your company, this is where visitors should go to get answers to all their questions (or almost). It should not, moreover, be confused with the "About" page, which is intended to introduce your company and tell its story.
But what are the benefits of such a page for a website? Here is a non-exhaustive list:
- Address certain concerns your potential customers may have;
- Alleviate your customer support load by providing answers to the most frequently asked questions;
- Earn your prospects' trust by showing that you understand their problems and concerns.
- Improve your SEO, especially at a time when voice search that favors question-and-answer content.
Now let's see how to write a useful, relevant FAQ that will drive traffic to your site and increase your conversions.
The two types of FAQs that exist
And yes, there are actually two FAQ formats. You will very quickly understand the difference between them.
Informational FAQs
This is a "real" frequently asked questions page. A page dedicated to answering the most common questions. These pages have no particular purpose other than to address users' problems.
They can be found in a customer area, for example, or on a site that offers a service or products where customers might have questions about how to use them.
This type of FAQ exists solely to help the user.
SEO-focused FAQs
Here, the FAQ aims to provide knowledge on a specific topic to expand it. If the distinction between the two seems minor, it is not at all. The SEO FAQ is designed to be optimized to enrich the page's semantics.
You will often find the main keyword as well as secondary keywords.
Very often, this type of FAQ shows only the question and you have to click to reveal the answer. That's simply because its goal is not to be directly visible to the user, but to target search engines.
Be careful, the SEO FAQ must be formatted with structured data in order to be properly taken into account.
Are FAQs good for SEO?
So it will depend on the type of FAQ in question. An FAQ page whose sole purpose is just to be an FAQ will generally have little SEO value.
This kind of page typically covers many different topics and there isn't a single keyword that stands out amidst this jumble of questions.
However, it is proven that a well-crafted FAQ within a well-optimized page can help rank a page. But in that case, they must be:
- optimized for relevant keywords
- provide an optimal user experience (UX)
- are correctly tagged and structured
Be careful not to fall into the trap of having an FAQ on every page of your site. An FAQ's presence should feel natural and obvious and must truly add value to your content; otherwise users (and search engines) won't be fooled.
If your FAQ is recognized by search engines and appears on the results page, adding an FAQ can then increase your click-through rate (CTR) and set you apart from the competition. In that case, they provide a strong benefit to your SEO.
5 tips for creating a successful FAQ page
1. Find the right questions
For an FAQ to be genuinely useful to your visitors, it still needs to answer the the right questions. The first place to check is probably your inbox: the one where you receive daily requests, suggestions or complaints from your prospects and clients.
Of course, all other channels of interaction with your customers can also provide valuable information: social networks, phone conversations, comments on your blog posts, forums…
You will soon be able to identify the topics most frequently raised and address them in your FAQ.
Moreover, you should be able to anticipate certain barriers and objections that your prospects might not express themselves, thereby demonstrating your understanding of their needs.
With the aim of offering an FAQ as complete as possible, always listen and ask your customers for feedback whenever possible.
Here is a list of people you can question to help you define them:
- Internal team members: Your sales team and customer service representatives interact with users every day! They are therefore ideal resources for building your FAQ. Hold interviews with team members to find out which questions are most common and which are most likely to interest online users.
- Reddit, Quora, and other forums: Although they don't interact directly with your site, forums like Reddit and Quora are excellent sources for identifying industry trends directly from the users themselves.
- Answer the Public site: Type your company name into this powerful tool and you'll get the most frequently asked questions on the web. Answer the Public results show questions that are closely linked to user intent. Use the results to fine-tune your FAQ
2. Provide the right answers
Again, you can draw on existing resources (for example: sales team, terms and conditions, white papers). Doing so ensures the answers are accurate. In fact, many answers are likely already on your site. The key is to gather them and rephrase them to avoid plagiarism.
When you write your answers, make sure they are complete, short, and precise. Users read FAQ pages to find answers as quickly as possible. Include enough information to fully answer the question, but try not to exceed 2–3 sentences for each.
Answer honestly, but in a positive way
For example, to the question “How much does our service cost?”, don’t simply reply “€50 per month.”
Instead, explain why that price is worth paying: “For €50 per month, you not only get full access to our service, but you also receive free 24/7 support, etc.”
Include a link or a call-to-action
An FAQ necessarily covers very varied topics, and you can’t address them all in depth without making your page hard to digest.
That’s why it’s very useful to use it to direct your readers to more in-depth content, such as blog posts. So, don’t hesitate to make use of internal links to direct users to relevant content on your site.
It’s also the ideal moment to encourage your visitor to move further along the purchase path, now that you’ve reassured them with your FAQ. Shopify’s FAQ page, for example, highlights a free trial offer twice:
Include testimonials
In your FAQ, you will state a number of things about your company and your offer. But the most skeptical customers might not be entirely convinced…
So why not let your customers back up your claims: including testimonials in your FAQ helps build credibility and further increase its impact.
The Anglepoise site even went so far as to include a question titled “Do you have customer testimonials?” in its FAQ:
Read also: How to collect reviews and customer testimonials on your site?
Sort by categories
If your FAQ page contains many questions, it may be useful to sort them by category to help your visitors find their way.
This is, for example, what Buffer does:
To provide complete and accurate answers to your customers, don't hesitate to hire a professional copywriter. Some even specialize in writing FAQs!
3. Improve the UX of your FAQ page
In addition to containing the most frequently asked questions and the best answers, your FAQ page must be well structured. Again, the goal is to save your customers time.
A common mistake is to put all the questions on a single FAQ page. This UX is not user-friendly, because users have to scroll endlessly to find the information they're looking for. And in addition to causing a high bounce rateit will be less well ranked by search engines.
So consider dividing your list of questions into several FAQ pages organized by category. This will allow the main page to serve as a reference point and create an organized structure.
If you have the necessary resources, you can consider adding a search bar! From an SEO perspective, creating multiple FAQ pages allows you to target specific terms for each category.
4. Optimize the title and meta descriptions of your FAQ pages
Thus, you can incorporate keywords into the title tag and meta description of each FAQ page. After all, title tags play a major role in your SEO strategy! They help search engines quickly understand your page's content.
Although meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, they have a strong impact on your CTR. By optimizing these two major SEO elements, you provide users and Google with a clear explanation of the page's content.
5. Bonus: how to create an optimized FAQ on WordPress?
Finally, bear in mind that knowing how to code is not necessary to create a visible, optimized FAQ. At least if you are aware of the free WordPress plugin « FAQ Schema for Pages and Posts ».
Indeed, this plugin will help you create your FAQ entirely no-code and enter all the questions and answers you want.
Also read: How do you add an FAQ on WordPress?
Our advice for creating a successful FAQ
Your FAQ page should not be taken lightly: it deserves a significant investment from you. In return, it will reassure your site visitors and increase your conversion rate while relieving your customer support.
The stakes are high, which is why it's important to entrust its writing to a professional: find a freelance web writer now on Redacteur.com.
The article How do you make a successful FAQ page? first appeared on Redacteur.com.
