Promotion Tip:
Give Visitors The FAQs

by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.

As any parent of a small child can tell you, it's both boring and frustrating to answer the same question over and over. If you're constantly responding to questions like "how do I change my password" or "do you have a money-back guarantee," then consider answering all those questions at one time on a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

A good FAQ page will help customers get answers more quickly, reduce your workload, and give search engine spiders good, keyword-rich content to index.

Reduce Your Workload

It's boring and time-consuming for you to answer repetitive questions and it's not much fun for visitors to ask questions of any type. Taking the time to fill out a form or open an email program interrupts their browsing experience. Many are reluctant to send any email questions because they're concerned about having their email addresses harvested and sold to spammers.

So if visitors can't find the information they need on your site, don't assume they'll ask. Most just leave and you lose the opportunity to turn them into customers. You can avoid this with a FAQ page that clearly communicates with customers and fully answers their questions.

That's good for you too because it should reduce the amount of customer support and request for information messages you receive. Once you eliminate repetitive email questions, you focus more on the other visitor questions and comments.

Designing Your FAQ Page

FAQ pages are easy to create: no fancy graphics or logos, just questions and answers. Take a few minutes to think about the questions you get and jot them down. Then include your standard answers and links to other pages where appropriate.

Make the page easy to navigate by breaking the page into sections and linking to each section. That way, visitors wondering about your return policy can instantly click to the appropriate section. Once you have all that, you're ready to include the page on your site.

Remember that a FAQ page is no good if visitors can't find it. Place links to your FAQ page inside your page text and in your navigation bar. If you use a form for comments, place a link to the FAQ page above the form and encourage visitors to check there before asking their question.

Be diplomatic about it! "We're busy here, so read the FAQs before sending us any dumb questions!" just won't cut it. Instead, carefully phrase your instructions so that visitors instantly see the benefits. "We love getting comments and answer every one! But if you're asking a question about our products, you may be able to instantly find the answer on our Frequently Asked Questions page."

FAQ Pages Appeal To Search Engine Spiders

A FAQ page is a golden opportunity to include a lot of keyword-rich content, so make the most of it. Be sure to include all your targeted keywords in the questions and answers - even if you have to make up some questions.

If you have a lot of keywords and/or several distinct topics, you may need several different FAQ pages. For instance, here on the NetMechanic site, we have a different FAQ page for each of our products:

The main reason is because a single page would be huge. Even with good navigation, visitors would probably get lost before they ever found an answer. But also consider the wide variety of topics covered. The keywords for HTML code checking are a lot different than for search engine optimization or browser compatibility. If we tried to force them all onto a single page, they'd be so diluted as to have almost no impact.

We've already noted that it's important to make the FAQ page easy for visitors to find, but search engine spiders need to visit it too. You may have to give them a little help if you haven't included a link on your home page. When FAQ pages are added after the initial design process is complete, they often get buried deep in the site. Search engine spiders may not find a FAQ page that's linked on an internal page three or four levels down from the home page.

Since you can never be sure just how deep spiders crawl through your site, deep submit your FAQs and other important internal pages. NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack has a deep submit feature that lets you automatically submit any page of your site to your choice of 100 search engines.

A More Personal Touch

It takes time to personally answer every email request and many webmasters just can't do it. So they resort to a cheery auto responder message "We received your message and will respond to you shortly!" and then reply with a canned email answer that may or may not address the actual question.

But if you're using your FAQ page to answer the everyday questions, then you have time available to respond to other inquiries more quickly and accurately. Visitors who are used to receiving a stock "thank you for contacting us" response will be pleasantly surprised by your personal touch.