Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are often used as a collection of common questions and answers on a single FAQ page. However, they can work much harder to improve your organic search ranking and even provide you with rich results if implemented properly for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
When Google adds additional information to a standard search results list, it’s called a rich search result or rich snippet. FAQ Rich Results (see below) is just one of the many forms of rich snippets available, including reviews, how-tos, videos, sitelink search boxes, and more.
Google uses FAQs to provide searchers with answers directly in the search results. However, FAQ-rich results are also good for your website as they make your result more visible and help rank the competition further down the page.
The Benefits of Using Optimization FAQs
The benefits of FAQs go beyond answering your customers’ most frequently asked questions. When you place optimized FAQs on different pages of your website – category pages, product pages, information pages, blog posts – you enrich the page with more useful content and ensure a better user experience. FAQs allow you to integrate question-based keywords naturally into the page. You can also add internal links in the answer area to improve the flow of link authority through your site.
Frequently Asked Questions are great for eCommerce customers as customers have many questions when purchasing products. You can differentiate yourself from the competition by answering the most frequently asked questions of searchers.
Triggering rich search results using the faqPage schema
In order for FAQ-Rich Snippets to be displayed in Google search results, you must mark up your FAQs with faqPage-structured data. This structured data, which is simply data that tells a search engine what kind of information it is crawling, helps Google decide whether or not content should be eligible for rich results. However, using structured data does not guarantee that Google will show your content as rich results in the organic search results for a specific search query. To see how your flagged FAQs might appear in the SERPs, test your pages with Google’s Rich Results Test.
9 tips for writing optimized FAQs
If you’re trying to get the FAQ-rich results in organic search, we’ve rounded up nine of the best ways to optimize your FAQ for SEO. Here are nine tools and ideas that can help you choose the best types of questions to include based on the things people are searching for.
- AnswerThePublic
This tool will give you suggestions on the types of questions people are asking related to a specific keyword you’ve entered. The downside of this tool is that it doesn’t have search volume data, but it gives you a starting point for doing additional keyword research. For example, if you entered the keyword “lipsticks” into the tool, it would look like this:
AnswerThePublic provides you with “Questions” in the form of a graphic that you can download into a spreadsheet. Downloading the questions with the free version gives you 30 suggestions on the things people want to know about “lipsticks”. Build on that to create SEO-optimized FAQs.
- Google Keyword Planner And semrush
Google Keyword Planner is the gold standard for keyword research. As part of the Google Ads tool suite, Keyword Planner provides the number of searches per month – and other related data – for each search query you enter. It’s a solid foundation for planning any content creation strategy, including FAQs.
Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool combines data from Google Keyword Planner and its own clickstream data to provide an alternative source of keyword research data. SEMrush provides data in the form of search volume per keyword. Searching for a keyword and filtering on “questions” gives you a list of questions being searched for, with volume associated with the number of monthly searches for that query.
In the example below, we’re using Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool to search for questions related to the search query “lipsticks”. You will see a list of questions with the associated search volume for each question.
- Google’s “People Ask Too” feature in the SERPs
The “People Also Ask” feature in the Google SERPs provides searchers with a list of questions related to their original query, with an answer right in organic search. These additional questions can help you gain insights into what users might want to know about your product offering and use these questions for FAQs on your site.
Below is an example of the “People Ask Also” feature when searching for “lipsticks”.
- ChatGPT
ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, has garnered a lot of attention not only in the SEO field but also on the internet. Read our previous article – “Should you use ChatGPT for writing SEO copy?” – to see our thoughts. One thing we used ChatGPT successfully for was asking the chatbot to draft FAQs for specific requests. Always check the facts that the AI tool gives you and rewrite the answers. However, you will be surprised at what the tool can provide as a starting point for your FAQ content.
For example, we commanded ChatGPT to “write 5 to 7 FAQs about lipstick” and it returned the following seven FAQs with answers.
- Google Search Console
Use your Google Search Console account to see what searches you’re currently ranking for on the given page. Go to “Performance” and then to “Search Results”. Select a URL on the SITES tab, then search for that URL on the QUERIES tab. This will give you some clues as to what people are looking for when they land on your page. Use them to your advantage to write SEO optimized FAQs.
- Ask your customer what types of questions they get asked frequently
Reach out to your customers and ask them about the types of questions they get. Your customer service department can potentially help in this area as they are the primary point of contact for customers and hear many of these most frequently asked questions on a daily basis. The sales or marketing teams will also likely have their own versions of high quality questions that can be answered with meaningful FAQ content.
- Use questions from the site’s main FAQ page for inspiration
Some of the most common questions already included on your main FAQ page might be suitable for use on other pages. It can be helpful to explain them in detail about each type of product or service you offer. These questions may not show up as keywords that are commonly searched for in Google Keyword Planner. However, they can be answered well to give contextual relevance to the page.
- Use template FAQ types for other pages
When optimizing and writing FAQs for each page on your website, you can borrow from other pages by using similar patterns. Some of these types of questions may not have search data associated with them, but they may still be good questions to answer to provide your customers with more information about your products and services and add additional contextual relevance to the page.
- Examine competitor websites
Check out your top competitor’s websites to see if their pages have Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Use the available FAQs as inspiration as you write your own frequently asked questions, with your own unique interpretation of the content of course. If they don’t use FAQs on their collection pages, you have an opportunity to provide richer text than your competition, which could lead to a chance to rank in the SERPs with an FAQ-rich snippet.
Guidelines for writing SEO-optimized FAQs
We’ve found that writing about five to seven FAQs of 50-75 words to answer the question is good standard practice for common SEO questions. The headline should contain keywords and be based on your insights into what people search for when searching for items similar to your products. The answer to the FAQ should also include the keyword topic. The order of the FAQs is also important as Google usually picks the first two that appear in the SERPs. We recommend aligning the order with the search query if data is available.
Writing optimized content as FAQs gives you the opportunity to display the FAQs in the SERPs as a rich search result. An FAQ-rich snippet expands your organic search result and includes two FAQs under the title tag and meta description, pushing the competition further down the SERPs.
If you haven’t tried using FAQs in your SEO content strategy yet, use these nine tips as a starting point to get great ideas for writing your own FAQs. They give your pages additional contextual relevance and may also improve the way your pages appear in search results, with results spanning FAQs.
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