Search Engine Marketing

How do I structure an FAQ section for the best SEO impact?

Many sites reduce the search engine optimisation benefit of their FAQ by having all of the questions and answers on one page. For small sites, with only a handful of questions, this may not be so much of an issue. However, if your website FAQ is substantial, and covers distinct topics, then it is advisable to use separate pages. Keeping all frequently asked questions and the responses on one page means that the keyword phrases compete with one another. This results in ‘noise’ when a search engine tries to identify prominent keyword phrases.

Continuing with our SEO example, the perfume shop may have FAQs about particular kinds of products, postage, allergies, money back guarantees and gift wrapping. As these are such disparate topics, we would recommend splitting the FAQ into distinct sections. For example, the FAQs dealing with postage could then have an H1 title of 'The Perfume Shop's Postage and Packing FAQ'. Below this, the questions can be listed, with the question itself forming a link to a page containing the answer.

This may seem harder work than simply entering the FAQs and responses in one page, but in a large FAQ it can make searching for an answer much faster than scrolling down a long page of questions and answers. It also means that the keyword focus of each distinct FAQ answer page will be much tighter, and thus more likely to perform well on long tailed keyword phrases.