Why Your Site Needs an FAQ
When we visit a Web site, often we see a page called FAQ. That stands for “Frequently Asked Questions.” You might ask whether your site needs an FAQ page–what good are they, anyway? It turns out that there are important good things that an FAQ can do for your site.
Emphasize Your Strengths
The FAQ page is a good place to give some emphasis to what you think are the particular strengths for your product or service. One way to do this is to simply pose a question such as “what are the greatest strengths of your product?” Another approach is to ask a question about the feature that you want to emphasize, by asking a question such as “why is it important for accounting software to produce year-end summaries?”
Answer the Skeptic
The FAQ page is a chance to pose questions that a skeptical visitor might pose, and answer them. For example, for a Hong Kong custom tailor I once put “a question on the FAQ page “what if my clothes don’t come?” The answer to this question was intended to deal with a visitors worry that perhaps delivery might never take place. It’s hard to deal with a issue like that on another part of the site.
Better Search Engine Results
Search engines love FAQ pages. Search engines love content that has a lot of keywords. Your FAQ page can easily be written so that it is keyword–dense. Search engines also like links within the site. In your FAQ, you can pose questions that cover topics that are in many different parts of the site, and include links to those parts of the site in your answers to the questions that you pose.
Savings on customer support
Your FAQ page can save you money on customer support. Ask your customer support people to write down simple questions that they are asked frequently, and then put those questions and the answers on your FAQ page. Future customers will be able to answer some of their simpler questions right on the FAQ page. At the same time, you’ll have added more keyword – rich content to your site.
Don’t stop with just one or two questions. Keep collecting frequently asked simple questions from your support people, and add one or two a week. Search engines love fresh content, and this is a way to keep continuously adding new content that’s relevant.
Start a dialogue
Put a form on your FAQ page so that a visitor who doesn’t find an answer to their own question can use the form to submit it to you. This will allow you to learn about questions that visitors have, while also making contact with potential customers.
The Bottom Line
If you don’t have an FAQ page, now’s the time to start one. If you do have one already, good for you! Perhaps one or more of these ideas will help you make it even more profitable for you.
