NB: This is the 16th installment in The Inspired Solo’s Build a Better Business Blog in One Month series. Designed to help solo lawyers and other professionals boost their blog’s performance, the series consists of a daily lecture and task (or tasks) that focus on one “blog improvement project” at a time. Each post in the series is tagged with “[BBBB1]“. You can start the program at any time. Catch up with other BBBB1 posts here.
Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time
Day 16: Lecture
Today’s topic and task concern creating FAQs for your business blog.
What Are FAQs and Why Should You Have Them On Your Blog?
Every business owner knows those questions — the ones you always get asked, when you’re out with friends, or networking, or marketing, or whatever — when you tell a new acquaintance what you do for a living — when a new potential client calls — those questions. The ones that pop up, perhaps slightly rephrased, but essentially asking the same thing, over and over.
The substance of your most Frequently Asked Questions will vary depending on your profession, your targeted clients, your area of expertise but the common thread is this: we all get them, and we get tired of answering them over and over. We may even develop little scripts to cover the answers to these questions in one fell swoop, and over time, we can find ourselves falling into the trap of delivering this speech in a bored, rushed monotone, which makes it hard for the folks asking the questions to understand the answers.
Instead of treating these questions as an annoyance, however, recognize them for what they are: a veritable goldmine for your blog. FAQs are a fabulous source of content for your blog. Since most people know what FAQs are, they’ll know exactly what you mean when you post a new page on your blog labeled “FAQs” — they’ll know what to expect — and moreover, a good many visitors to your site will even be looking specifically for those FAQs. If you don’t have them, or if they’re not high-quality content, that can result in a lost sale or conversion.
By contrast, well-written FAQs that cover the basics in plain English written for the audience you’re targeting (your targeted readership, which is also your targeted potential client base, of course) can actually increase your conversions. Why? Simple: everything on your blog is a potential interaction with a potential client. Clients form their impressions based on how you handle those interactions. High-quality FAQs, in particular, impress a reader/potential client and help convince them to pick up the phone and make an appointment because they tell readers that you know what you’re talking about, you understand their problems, and you can help solve those problems.
Identifying Items For Your FAQs
Your FAQs don’t require in-depth market research. You probably already know them. Jot down in a text file the eight or ten questions you most often get from new clients, or callers to your office, or new acquaintances who want to know more about what you do. Chances are, you’ll see some patterns emerge.
Now look at your analytics. What keywords are people using to get to your site? There will be patterns there, too — patterns of frequently used words and phrases that reveal what the searcher is thinking about and looking for — i.e., what question they need the answer to. Those patterns tell you what your targeted readers are looking for in a FAQ.
Finally, think about the last few consultations or telephone inquiries you’ve received from potential clients. Jot those questions down, as well. Now you have a fairly good starting point to create your FAQs. Add to this by relying on your professional expertise to think about what you want your clients to know before they walk in the door. What are the main points they need to understand about your services, or the problems you help them solve? Those are also going into the FAQ.
Drafting Your FAQs — The Right Language, The Right Tone
Simply knowing what the questions are is only half the battle. Now you have to formulate them into FAQ-style items, keeping in mind these factors:
- Keyword usage: both the keywords you’re currently optimizing for, and the ones that users are searching for
- SEO principles: the way you phrase the question will impact your SERPs (remembering that search engines love text, and FAQs are basically text)
- Your targeted clients: you need to use language that puts them at ease, that they understand, and that (most of all) communicates the answer well
Here again, reading your FAQ items out loud will help you decide whether you’ve hit the target, especially with respect to communicating with your targeted clientele. See how each item sounds to you, and if you have someone available, how it sounds to others as well. Read them carefully — do they scan well? Do they use the words that your targeted clients are likely to use themselves? Don’t write solely about “foreclosure” if your targeted clients are looking for “how to save my home”!
Formatting Your FAQs For Maximum SEO Results
FAQs are a wonderful place for you to use formatting such as lists, heading tags, and emphasized text. They’re also a really good place to use jump links. This is where you’ll have a list of questions at the top of the page, for instance, and each question is also a link to the place further on the page (or on another page) where the person will find the answer to that question. This is a handy piece of HTML to know and become familiar with because it really helps users navigate your site, find relevant information that is important to them very quickly, and get the answers they’re looking for. It also looks pretty cool.
The key about understanding jump link HTML is to know it has two parts — the original link, and the linked-to destination. So, to create a jump link:
- After you format your FAQ item — both question and answer — copy the questions into one block of text, perhaps an ordered list or unordered list, at the top of the blog page (or text file that you’re going to copy and paste into your blogging software interface).
- Within the list item HTML (i.e., after the opening
litag), place your anchor tag:<li><a href="#question1">Text of First Question</a></li> - Now, create an anchor tag, which can be as simple as reiterating the question itself, that precedes each answer. Give it an
idthat matches theidyou gave its counterpart in step 2. Example:<a id="question1">Question 1 Answer</a>
That’s it! Just make sure that you start the id marker with a letter, not a number, and make sure you use exactly the same id marker — same capitalization, same spelling, otherwise it won’t work. Now, when you publish your FAQs, your users can simply click on the question in the list at the top of the page, and go straight to the answer, saving them time and making you look way cool in the process. Bonus!
Task: Create and Publish Your FAQs
Today’s task is just that: create and publish your FAQs. You can start with a few of the most basic questions — say, three or four — then build them out over time if you like. Use formatting and jump links to ease navigation and improve SEO.
