You may already know the SEO basics that help you get higher ratings in Google search, but have you paid attention to your FAQ schems and how it affects you Google rank?
Google is constantly evolving how it approaches SEO. In March, Google tightened its FAQ markup guidelines, which meant developers could no longer markup the same question and answer with FAQ schema unless those questions and answers were on multiple pages throughout your site. Google is also becoming more visual and interactive in its search result pages, so what can you do to improve the ROI on your FAQ schema?
A FAQ rich snippet, when properly developed, will appear as a rich result in search and in Google Assistant. This will help your page outperform competitors that have not taken such a careful approach, which is why so many companies are taking a new look at their FAQ.
Creating Your FAQ Page
What is your target audience asking about your products/services? If they’ve got questions, then it’s your job to supply the quick answers. When done correctly, this page will keep your visitors on your site instead of going elsewhere. Rather than having to email you or call customer support, your FAQ page keeps them informed and in the buy cycle, uninterrupted.
You should continuously look up the latest search trends in your industry to ensure that you’re always including the most relevant questions in your FAQ. How are your customers wording their questions? You can use something called a Text Optimizer, which is a semantic analysis tool that helps you identify various concepts in search queries. This is integral in understanding the search patterns of users.
Organizing Questions
By using the Text Optimizer you can weed out questions that have been deemed irrelevant or just not as important as others. You’ll want to look at main subtopics behind the questions though, which might be related to pricing or perhaps DIY user instructions. Don’t include questions that are too similar, because you are basically supplying the same answer over and over. However, if you see a similar search intent within questions, be sure to group those together.
Watch for Restrictions
Google has included guidelines to help you avoid making mistakes with your FAQ structured markup. For example, you can’t use it in a promotional way, as the schema is for informational purposes only. You also have to mark up your Q&A with the code, which means you can’t provide excerpts – the full Q&A has to be there. Also, all FAQ content must be visible to the user on the source page.
Navigating the various changes that frequently come up with SEO rules and restrictions can be a difficult task, but when you partner with SJC, we take care of all of that for you.