Many, many sites have an FAQ page. This is a page where a lot of frequently asked questions get the appropriate answer. It is often a single page filled to the brim with questions and answers. While it’s easy to add one, it’s good to keep in mind that not all sites need an FAQ. Most of the times all you need is good content targeted at the users’ needs. Here, I’ll discuss the use of FAQ pages and show you how to make one yourself with Yoast SEOs free FAQ structured data content block for the WordPress block editor. You won’t believe how easy it is.
For more information on the Yoast SEO Schema structured data implementation, please read our Schema documentation.
What is an FAQ?
FAQ stands for frequently asked questions. It is often a single page collecting a series of question and its answers on a specific subject, product or company. An FAQ is often seen as a tool to reduce the workload of the customer support team. It is also used to show that you are aware of the issues a customer might have and to provide an answer to that.
Do you really need an FAQ?
Usually, if you need to answer a lot of questions from users in an FAQ, that means that your content is not providing these answers and that you should work on that. Or maybe it is your product or service itself that’s not clear enough? One of the main criticisms of FAQs is that they hardly ever answer the questions consumers really have. They are also lazy: instead of figuring out how to truly answer a question with formidable content — using content design, for instance –, people rather throw some random stuff on a page and call it an FAQ.
That’s not to say you should never use an FAQ. Numerous sites successfully apply them — even we use them sparingly. In some cases, they do provide value. Users understand how an FAQ works and are quick to find what they are looking for — if the makers of the page know what they are doing. So don’t make endless lists of loosely related ‘How can I…’ or ‘How to…’ questions, because people will struggle to filter out what they need.
Answer real questions by real users
It has to be a page that’s easy to digest and has to have real answers to real questions by users. You can find scores of these if you search for them: ask your support team for instance! Collect and analyze the issues that come up frequently to see if you’re not missing some pain points in your products or if your content is targeting the wrong questions.
So don’t hide answers to pressings questions away on an FAQ page if you want to answer these in-depth: make an article out of it. This is what SEO deals with: provide an answer that matches your content to the search intent.
Questions and answers spoken out loud?
Google is trying to match a question from a searcher to an answer from a source. If you mark up your questions and answers with FAQ structured data, you tell search engines that this little sentence is a question and that this paragraph is its answer. And all these questions and answers are related to the main topic of the page.
Paragraph-based content is all the rage. One of the reasons? The advent of voice search. Google is looking for easy to understand, block-based content that it can use to answer searchers questions right in the search engine — or by speaking it out loud. Using the Schema property speakable might even speed up this content discovery by determining which part of the content is fit for text-to-speech conversion. Find out more about what’s powering conversational search.
How to build an FAQ page in WordPress via Yoast SEO content blocks
The best way to set up a findable, readable and understandable FAQ page on a WordPress site is by using the Schema structured data content blocks in Yoast SEO. These blocks for the new block editor – formerly known as Gutenberg – make building an FAQ page a piece of cake.
All the generated structured data for the FAQ will be added to the graph Yoast SEO generates for every page. This makes it even easier for search engines to understand your content. Yoast SEO automatically adds the necessary structured data so search engines like Google can do cool stuff with it. But, if nothing else, it might even give you an edge over your competitor. So, let’s get to it!
- Open WordPress’ new block editor
Make a page in WordPress, add a title and an introductory paragraph. Now add the FAQ structured data content block. You can find the Yoast SEO structured data content blocks inside the Add Block modal. Scroll all the way down to find them or type ‘FAQ’ or ‘structured data’ in the search bar, which I’ve highlighted in the screenshot below.
- Add questions and answers
After you’ve added the FAQ block, you can start to add questions and answers to it. Keep in mind that these questions live inside the FAQ block. It’s advisable to keep the content related to each other so you can keep the page clean and focused. So no throwing in random questions.
- Keep filling, check and publish
After adding the first question and answering it well, keep adding the rest of your questions and answers until you’ve filled your FAQ page. In the screenshot below you see some questions filled in. I’ve highlighted two buttons, the Add Image button and the Add Question. These speak for themselves.
Once you are done, you’ll have a well-structured FAQ page with valid structured data. Go to the front-end of your site and check if everything is in order. If not, make the necessary changes.
A video showing how to use the Yoast SEO content blocks
Using the content blocks is easy. This is one of the main advantages of the block editor — it’s become a joy to build content like this. If you’re not sure about how it works — or you are still using the classic editor and to take a peak at the blocks — please check the video below. This’ll show you everything you need to know.
What does an FAQ rich result look like?
We have an FAQ page for our Yoast Diversity Fund and Google awarded that page an FAQ rich result after we added an FAQ structured data content block. So, wondering what an FAQ looks like in Google? Wonder no more:
Keep in mind that an FAQ rich result like this might influence the CTR to that page. It might even lead to a decrease in traffic to your site since you are giving away answers instantly. It is a good idea, therefore, to use it only for information that you don’t mind giving away like this. Or you have to find a way to make people click to your site. Do experiment with it, of course, to see the effects. Maybe it works brilliantly for you, who knows?
What does this look like under the hood?
Run your new FAQ page through Rich Results Testing Tool to see what it looks like for Google. Yoast SEO automatically generates valid structured data for your FAQ page. Here’s a piece of the FAQ on the Yoast Diversity Fund page:
Let’s take a quick look at how it works. The context surrounding the questions is an FAQPage Schema graph. Every question gets a Question type and an acceptedAnswer with an answer type. The name field in the Question is the question, of course. The acceptedAnswer is the correct answer attached to this specific question.
That sounds hard, but it’s not. This is just what goes on behind the scenes. All you have to remember is fill in the Question and the Answer and Yoast SEO will take care of the rest!
Yoast SEO Schema tab helps you set your structured data
Using the Yoast SEO structured data content blocks, the correct Schema will automatically be added by the plugin. Also, Yoast SEO uses sensible default to describe your pages. If you need something more specific, you can change the content type for specific posts or pages in the Schema tab — you can find this in the meta box or the block editor sidebar. Here, you can describe your Contact page as being a ContactPage so search engines can understand. Find out more about selecting the Page or Article type in your Schema settings.
FAQ structured data is so cool
Structured data is hot. It is one of the foundations of the web today and its importance will only increase with time. In this post, I’ve shown you one of the newest Schema additions, and you’ll increasingly see this pop up in the search results.
For more information on our Schema structured data implementation, please read our Schema documentation.
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