Having a good FAQ page is important! But having the right FAQ page is necessary! A quick side note before I get things rolling with this latest blog post.
I wrote a blog post once on the variety of ways reading can help your digital content. The post is short and worth the read if you have a few extra minutes. And if the post inspires you, I have some book suggestions to get you started. Check out my 5 Must Read Digital Marketing Books post or look at Laura’s 10 Entrepreneur Must Reads post.
Shameless plugs aside, there’s a point to this story. Reading is how I came up with this latest post.
I read the blogger Neil Patel. He is incredibly insightful in the digital marketing space. Patel keeps up with the trends and has a deep understanding of what they mean for you and your business. He’s worth the follow.
In a recent post on his site, Patel took a look at how Google is changing its algorithm constantly. That constant change is making the FAQ page on your website more and more important.
How it Works
If you have a quality FAQ page and you structure it with “Markup Action”, it can rank higher in searches. Plus your page may be cited by Google to answer search questions.
Unfortunately for you, I’m not a tech person so I can’t tell you exactly how to do markup for Google. However, I can share a link to how it works.
What is a FAQ page?
So let’s start at the beginning.
FAQ, also known as, Frequently Asked Questions, are just that, questions that are asked A LOT. However, the page must be formatted properly for Google to consider it rich in content. Google has an entire page dedicated to how it must be formatted at this link here. Let me just go through some of the highlights.
On an FAQ page, there can only be one question and one answer. The answer must be provided by the page creators. If there are questions with more than one answer or if the answers are contributed by users, then this is considered a Q&A page. That’s a different format.
FAQ Rich Results
Here’s the thing, Patel’s FAQ page is unlike all the others. Yes, it offers the answers to frequently asked questions. But his page contains what are considered to be FAQ rich results. That is, they have the keywords and phrases that Google is looking for.
Patel’s FAQ page includes headlines and sub-headlines like “What is digital marketing?” and “Why digital marketing matters.” The reason these are so important is that these are the exact questions that are searched for frequently on Google.
Google recognizes this. So not only does it put Patel’s page on the front page of the Google search. It also includes some dropdowns with the questions that appear on his FAQ page. As a result, Patel’s website gets more recognition than the other sites on page one of the Google search.
How do I Know What People are Searching for on Google?
There are a few ways to find out what people are searching for on Google so that you can craft the best questions for your FAQ page.
One is to download the Keywords Everywhere add-on. It’s a free add-on for your internet browser. Every time you search Google, you find out how often the phrase you’re searching for is inputted into Google. You’ll also be guided to similar search terms.
Answer the Public is another good page to use. However, there’s a limit to how many searches you can conduct in a day. I think the limit is between three and five, so make your searches count. Or you can pay for more searches.
You can also get your answers straight from the source at Google Trends. Google allows you to search as much as you like and over specific time frames. The cool thing is you can find the top searches for a certain day in recent history.
As I said before, Patel’s blog is a lot more technical than what we have here. In addition, it has an amazingly rich look into how Google uses rich results on FAQ pages. If you want to learn more, your best bet is to go there next.
Good luck!
Written by Erika Towne