FAQ pages are an essential part of your business’s website. They make life easier both for you and for your clientele. However, many people don’t know just what their customers’ frequently asked questions are, which leads to wildly unhelpful FAQs that just leave both your customers and you frustrated. With Google’s recent Helpful Content Update, people-centered content is more important than ever before. Fortunately, the guidelines laid out in this update make formulating your site’s FAQs more straightforward, making life easier for you and your customers.
Here is what you need to know about the importance of a well-put-together FAQ page and how you can use Google’s Helpful Content Update to put yours together. Let’s dive into it!
The Importance Of An FAQ Section
Picture this: you start a business. You’re thrilled to help people and to share your expertise. But… You and your staff find yourselves answering the same questions over and over and over again. Questions like: “Do you do payment plans?” and “What is – insert service here – ?” are far more prominent than you thought they’d be.
This is where your FAQs come into play. An FAQ page makes life easier for both you and your customers by addressing these commonly asked questions in an easy-to-find, to-the-point manner. That way, your customers can quickly find the answers to their questions themselves and you and your employees can answer more personalized questions when the phone goes off.
FAQ pages can also boost your site’s SEO ranking by providing relevant information and concise answers to common questions people ask about your business or industry.
How Can Google’s Helpful Content Update Help?
First off, you’ll want to know what Google’s Helpful Content Update is. We touched on this more in-depth in our previous blog post: Everything You Need To Know About Google’s Helpful Content Update. But essentially, this update means creating people-centered content, rather than content that’s made to rank on search engines. The goal of this update is to make the top results more helpful to people searching specific keywords or questions.
It does this by marking content that is repetitive or that does not fit your site or realm of expertise as unhelpful. The goal of this update is to ensure that the information people are putting on their websites is designed to be helpful – as the name suggests – and to avoid issues like people feeling like your article or your FAQ didn’t answer their questions.
As you can see, this is ideal for your site’s FAQ page! The entire point of your FAQ page is to be helpful and answer people’s questions. By utilizing Google’s Helpful Content Update, you can ensure that the questions you include and the answers you provide satisfy people’s needs, rather than giving potential customers the run-around.
How To Make Your Site’s FAQs With This Update In Mind
This update addresses one of the most common problems with FAQ pages: unhelpful content. It’s unfortunately very common for business owners to think that they know what their clientele will want to know – only to completely miss the mark. It’s also very common for people to see a frequently asked question and to launch into a long-winded answer when your customers just want a simple yes or no with a basic why.
FAQ pages are meant to be simple and straightforward. The more to the point, the better. One of the things that Google’s Helpful Content Update is targeting is content that leaves customers feeling unsatisfied. Your FAQ is the ideal page for this update to target, because if people go to it for an answer to a question only to have to go to another site for the information they need or to have to call you… This won’t reflect well on your site.
So! Let’s look into how you can use this update to make a stellar FAQ page.
#1. Answer People’s Frequently Asked Questions
As previously mentioned, business owners tend to assume that their customers’ frequently asked questions are different than what they actually are. If your business is already up and running, you can ask your employees what questions they get asked all the time to make this page for your site.
You can also use Google’s autofill feature. We’ll use SEO as an example. If you put SEO in Google’s search bar, the autofill brings up keywords that people usually search with it.
As you can see, some of these can work for your site’s FAQ page, such as the 4th result: what is seo and how it works. However, a lot of these aren’t the most helpful.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to find the questions people are asking. Simply scroll down after searching SEO, and then under the paid ads, you’ll see a section that looks like this.
Now, this is just what we’re looking for! Obviously, if you have an SEO company, you would want to change the wording and grammar to be accurate. Rather than “whats seo means?”, you would put “What does SEO mean?”
This is an excellent way to find the common questions that people have about what you do.
#2. Actually Answer The Questions
It’s alarming how many FAQ pages there are where people try to redirect you to other pages or simply evade the question instead of just answering it. You don’t want your answers to be long-winded, as this will bore your clientele. But you do want to ensure that the questions actually get answered.
For instance, if you are a chiropractor, and one of the questions on your FAQ page is: “Is Chiropractic Care Safe?”, people don’t want to read an answer like: “Chiropractic was founded after….” They want to see an answer like: “Yes. Chiropractic care is safe when performed by licensed professionals.”
#3. Update Your FAQ As Needed
One of the things that Google’s Helpful Content Update is watching out for is content that deviates from your site’s purpose. For instance, you wouldn’t look for medical information on a clothing website. As businesses can grow and change, so too do the services they provide. It’s important to keep your site’s FAQ page up to date to reflect these changes.
For instance, if you are a vet and you used to offer care for horses but you no longer do, you wouldn’t want to keep frequently asked questions about horses on your FAQ page. This would lead potential clients to assume that you still provide veterinary services for horses and can leave them feeling misled when they find that that isn’t the case anymore.
You also want to go back and evaluate the questions and their answers from time to time. The world is ever-changing, and so can people’s questions about your services. You can also update your answers so that they are more concise and clear.
Do You Need Help Putting Together An FAQ Page?
Your FAQ page is one of the most helpful pages on your website – when done correctly. It can be challenging to know how to work with Google’s Helpful Content Update and how to put together a strong FAQ page, especially if you’re trying to meet the demands of your business. Performance Driven Marketing is here to help. We provide exceptional content writing and SEO services to make your website shine.
To learn more about how we can help you with your website or to receive a free consultation, please do not hesitate to contact us today!
