How to get FAQ pages right
This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. The short answer to FAQ pages is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
Why this earns attention
Answer the questions sales actually gets asked. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Do not use it to hide bad news
- Well-structured FAQs can win rich results
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Well-structured FAQs can win rich results. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
A reasonable first step
The short version
Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. Three things worth confirming about FAQ pages before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Answer the questions sales actually gets asked — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.