An effective website will answer your customer’s questions before they even realise they want to ask them. You don’t want to leave your customers wondering… otherwise you’ll lose them. This rule not only applies to your potential customers, but also your SEO strategy with Google. If Google can’t quickly find an answer to its customer’s problems, then it will go elsewhere, which means pointing the user in the direction of your competitors. One of the simplest ways to tackle this problem is to set up a well-optimized, effective FAQ page, otherwise known as Frequently Asked Questions. Your FAQ page is essential to providing both your customers and the search engines all the key information they need about your product, service and brand.
Why create an FAQ page?
An FAQ page builds trust
If you can be completely open, honest and transparent about your company policies – from shipping & handing to return policies to time estimations on projects – you’ll be able to build trust with your customers. And one of the most important rules of customer conversion is that for someone to become a customer they need to know, like and trust you. An FAQ page helps you with all three of these points. Remember, if your customers trust your website, Google will too.
Decrease your team’s workload
If you do it right, your FAQ page will be your customer’s first point of contact. All those questions bubbling away in their mind that they’re dying to ask are already answered, in one convenient place. This reduces the need for them to contact you and your team, as well as saving you time answering the same questions over and over again.
Improve your internal linking
Something the search engines look at is internal links on your website. What that means is – are you linking to other pages on your website? Doing this tells Google that you know what you’re talking about and you are an expert in your field because you have so much information that’s related to each other. From a customer’s point of view it’s great too, because it saves them hunting through your site trying to find what they don’t know they’re looking for. All the answers are there, and linked to other related information.
How to start?
A lot of our customers don’t know where to start with an FAQ page, and my first suggestion is to review old emails and pick out common questions you get asked. By doing this, you know 100% that the questions and answers you write will be beneficial to your customers because if one person is asking these questions, it’s most likely other people either have asked the same questions or will ask them in the future.
Another option to develop a well-optimized FAQ page is to do some keyword research. There are heaps of tools out there to help with this. Have a look at Text Optimizer to start with. Type in a topic and it will return a list of questions for you. Here’s an example on ‘Website design’
Once you have your questions, start writing your answers. They should be clear, concise and factual. Try to keep your answers under two paragraphs long. If you find you need to write more, create a separate blog post or page and link to it within the FAQ answer. Click here to read more about the benefits of business blogging.
In summary, an FAQ page is definitely a good idea for your website and if you don’t have one, what are you waiting for!? Save time for yourself and your customers and focus on delivering to them a high level of customer service through answering their questions and guiding them in the customer journey.
I’d love to hear how you go creating your FAQ page. Let me know in the comments below.
