December 15, 2020

3 steps to creating an SEO friendly FAQ page

When you’re first creating a Shopify store, your FAQ page - Frequently Asked Questions - is one of the first basic pages you put together. It’s seen as one of those “have to haves” for an ecommerce store, but it’s also one of the most overlooked pages when it comes to SEO. With some easily implemented steps, you can create an FAQ page that’s both incredibly useful for your customers and fully optimized for SEO. 

Why you need a great FAQ page

Creates a better customer experience

There’s a good chance that your store has competitors - every niche does! What’s going to set you apart is your customer experience which includes everything from the product itself, to branding, content, and your customer service. Your FAQ page is part of that, and 84% of consumers say customer service is a key consideration when making a purchasing decision. If you can satisfy all the burning questions your potential customers may have, you’re only making it easier for them to want to click “Checkout”.

Saves time spent on customer enquiries

Whether you’ve two or twenty people dedicated to customer service, it’s a pain to have to answer enquiries that would easily be satisfied by looking at your FAQs. Your team’s time is precious, and what is spent on those enquiries could be better used elsewhere in your business. Having a really robust FAQ page is not only beneficial to your customers, but allows your team to use their customer service time on more complex situations and enquiries.

It’s great for your store’s SEO

And so we come to one of our most important reasons for having a great FAQ page. Your FAQ might not immediately spring to mind when you think of what pages are valuable SEO real estate, but it actually offers some really unique opportunities. A well optimized FAQ can drive more targeted traffic to your store; when potential customers are searching for products along with potential enquiries, they have a better chance of coming across your store if you’ve covered their enquiry in your FAQ. Search engines love a good FAQ too, as they’ll value that your site has focus on being informative and helping people make an educated purchase. Writing a great FAQ allows you to send extra trust signals to both Google and potential customers.

#1 - Answer the right questions

The first step in building a great FAQ is to look at what questions your customers are asking. It sounds obvious, but it will actually require a bit of research, both on your own store and on those of your competitors. Here’s where you need to look:

  • Your customer service inbox both on email and social media. Note down the questions that come up most frequently.
  • What questions do your competitors answer in their FAQ?
  • Comments and complaints on both your own store and competitors. Look for the pain points for customers - is it shipping updates? Sizing info?
  • Google Suggest and “People Also Ask”. Google will only show results they’ve found evidence to believe are helpful for people, so this will give you a good indication of what you should be including on your FAQ.
  • Discussion boards and social media related to your products, industry and niche. What are people asking about there? What are they complaining about?

The more relevant the questions, the more search engines are going to love your store. By answering the questions people are actually searching for, you’re showing Google that your store is informative and trustworthy. It will also ensure that you’re adding to the customer experience as you’ve put the research into what information they actually need to know.

#2 - Keep answers factual and concise

As with most things in the world of SEO, less is more when it comes to content. You want to make sure your FAQ page is detailed with all the right questions and information, but you want to keep it short and sweet. This is a win for both your customers and your store’s SEO. For your customers, it means they don’t need to read a wall of text just to find out what regions you ship to. Answers should be no more than a few sentences - if something requires a little more detail then a longer answer is fine so long as the information is kept to-the-point and relevant. If you need to add even more explanation, consider writing a blog article about the topic and linking it in your FAQ along with a summary. This gives the added bonus of being able to link internally, and increase the amount of time a customer spends on your store.

#3 - Create a clear navigational structure

Much like the rest of your Shopify store, your FAQ should be easy to navigate and simple to use. It shouldn’t take a while for your customers to find the answers they’re looking for - the more time they spend searching for an answer, the less likely they are to make a purchase. After all, if it’s that hard to find information about shipping then how are they to have confidence in the shipping process once they’ve ordered?

Creating a very clear structure for your FAQ is essential to both the customer experience and SEO. Search engines will take notice of how helpful your FAQ is for customers and it makes it easier to crawl. Especially if you have a fairly detailed FAQ, you’ll want to consider the following:

  • Divide your FAQ into sections, for example Product Information, Shipping, Returns, etc.
  • Offer a search function so that customers can quickly find what they’re looking for.
  • Offer suggested additional questions for different topics in case a customer doesn’t quite find what they need on the question they first click on.
  • Create anchor links so that customers can jump between different topics as they need the information.

Bonus Tips!

Keywords

Believe it or not, you can get plenty of keywords on your FAQ page. Include keywords related not just to your brand and products, but to common customer service enquiries in your niche and industry. Over time this will help your FAQ build authority as customers use it and find it helpful.

Internal Links

You can use your FAQ page as a sort of internal sitemap to the rest of your store if you’re strategic in where you use internal links. As we’ve already mentioned above, you can create a series of blogs related to different aspects of your products and services that you can then link in your FAQ. For example if your product requires specific care instructions, or you want to go into more detail about your returns process.

Monitoring Feedback

There are two great ways to monitor feedback on your FAQ. The first is a simple “Was this answer useful?” question on each answer, so customers can let you know if your FAQ is actually helping them. The second is to request feedback from customer service enquiries. Ask them why they contacted customer service instead of consulting your FAQ - was it difficult to find information they needed? Was the answer given unsatisfactory? By keeping tabs on what people actually think about your FAQ page, you’ll be able to continue to develop it and keep it fresh and relevant.

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A great FAQ page can be a lifesaver for your team and customers, especially during busy periods like summer sales, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and the holidays. By optimizing it for both your customer experience and SEO, you can make it an invaluable asset to your Shopify store.