A wealth of content opportunities
to soft sell your business
Your “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) section on your website is undoubtedly one of the most visited pages on your site. It’s a straightforward way for curious readers to find the answers to their questions about your business and its offerings. Your FAQ page is an indispensable element of your overall customer care strategy.
In addition to providing a wealth of helpful information for your visitors, your FAQ section can pull double duty as a means of getting your website to rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs). Appearing high on the SERPs will drive new traffic to your website. You can get your FAQ pages to appear high in the SERPs by leveraging their content to gain greater exposure for your keywords.
How can you utilize your FAQ section to drive more traffic (which can translate to sales) to your website? Of course your FAQs need to be written in clear and uncomplicated terms but using some search engine optimization strategy on the page will help it come up contextually in an Internet search.
Anatomy of an FAQ Section
Let’s dissect a typical FAQ page into its individual components to discover how to optimize each so that it will help the page itself be ranked high in searches.
- Heading - Title your page descriptively, being certain to use keywords in it. When the title is displayed as a heading in the page’s code, the search engine is even more likely to discover it.
Example: Instead of the heading on the page reading a generic FAQs, name it using a keyword or two about your services, such as, FAQs About Care for Curly Hair. By embellishing the heading title with the keywords Curly and Hair, the search engine can latch onto those words which describe your services and display them in its results.
- URL – The URL of the page displayed in the web address box is an important way that search engines locate information. Rather than a default URL that may be automatically generated by your website’s content management system (CMS), customize yours to include the actual page title.
Example: Your content management system will create a “name” for each page of your website automatically but it may consist of numbers, letters and characters that have meaning only to your CMS itself. You can manually access this system and change the default URL to include whatever you have named your individual pages. A search engine friendly URL will look like this: www.hairaplenty.com/FAQ-care-curly-hair. By using actual words, the search engines will find your keywords.
- Questions and Answers – When crafting your frequently asked questions and their answers, be sure to include your keywords, as appropriate.
Example: To a reasonable extent, make certain to utilize your keywords generously so they will be present on the page when the search engine spiders crawl your content. Instead of a question reading, “Do you do bridal styles?” try something like, “Does Hair-a-Plenty do bridal hair styles for wedding parties?” Those extra uses of your keywords will help your FAQs appear in SERPs for your keywords Hair-a-Plenty, bridal hair styles and wedding parties.
- Anchor text - When linking to other pages on your website, be sure to create your links on your actual keywords.
Example: Rather than linking to the words, click here, click to the keywords that actually describe the link, such as, hair conditioning treatments.
- Embedded media – This includes any photos, diagrams, videos or audio files that are used in the presentation of your FAQs. Be certain to add your keywords to the titles and alternate text for this media on your website. Search bots crawl that text as well, so it presents yet another opportunity to have your content found in audio, image and video searches on your keywords.
- Tags – Tag your page content with descriptive tags that are your keywords. Search engines look at tags, too, in order to discover the content of a webpage.
- Sitemap – First of all, have one! While not a part of your FAQ page, it is important to make certain that your Sitemap does include your FAQ page.
- Keywords - A strategic note on writing click-worthy FAQ pages – Be conscious of keyword placement on your FAQ page. Because SERP readers are more likely to consider a result relevant when they see their search terms appear in the snippet that is displayed on the SERP, it’s especially important to use relevant keywords as close to the top of the page as is appropriate.
These strategies for search engine optimization present a wealth of opportunities for your FAQ page to be one of your most effective at driving traffic to your site. Qualified traffic that comes from strong keyword placement means more sales.
Debra Leitl is the Mentor in Residence at eMentormarketing.com you can find her on twitter@MentorMarketing. Her specialty is interactive marketing with a focus on ecommerce and online marketing strategy. She has over 15 years of professional experience in online retail, ecommerce consulting, and new business development.
