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Answer your audience – FAQ Content

Answer your audience – FAQ Content

Updated 24 October 2022

Answering your audience's questions is an importnt part of your blog and content strategy.

Google is the most popular search engine. So popular that there are approximately 3.5 billion searches a day. 280 Million (8%) of these searches being questions people search to find answers.

Google itself has changed and transformed over its existence. There is no doubt that Google has become an answer engine. This is in line with the trend for voice search. As the consumer's style of searching moves towards a more natural and conversational style.

An example of this transition in search is the following. A person has a problem with the leaves of their house plants turning yellow. A typical search used to be something as simple as “yellow leaves”. This has now transitioned into searches such as “how to fix yellow leaves on plants?”.

Why is answering your audience important?

It represents a massive content opportunity. Helping increase your top of funnel type searches to your website.

Why is this important? Well if the search term relates to your product or service. This means that the person looking for the answer could be a potential customer.

While that website visit may not yield a new customer. You may be able to gain a new contact through a lead magnet as part of your content. It also allows you to do some top of funnel re-marketing.

Answering your audience's biggest questions as part of your blog is important. As it is a foundational exercise in SEO focussed content. It’s a great stepping stone for a solid internal linking strategy.

Content related to your products and services will help build depth in content. A framework of pages which can send link love to hero ‘money’ pages. This will help boost these pages relevance for whatever anchor text you link from.

Remember that Googles crawlers do lots of learning whenever they hit your site. As you create a cluster of FAQ content. The internal links you build for a specific anchor term back to money pages. Will help teach Google that the money page should be indexing for said anchor term.

How to find what questions to answer for your content

There are several ways you can find this answer style content:

  • Using a keyword search tool which has a questions filter such as Semrush or Ahrefs. Enter a seed keyword and then click the questions filter. As per below in Semrush:

  • The other method is simply to use Google search auto-complete. Google will tell you what the most popular search terms by their auto-complete. Type in your seed keyword with a complimenting interrogative term. For example “How FAQ”.

This can be quite a manual process. I prefer it as I always find little nuggets that keyword search tools sometimes don’t show. Keyword tools volumes are 'indicative'. The potential monthly volume on these FAQ Content is usually a lot more than what these tools tell you.

Validating your content opportunity

When you have finalised your FAQ Content list, it’s time to see what competition you have out there. Time to use Google search once again.

While it’s not an exact science. Using the “allintitle:” search modifier is a good starting point. A simple check if that specific question exists in a page title on the web. In this case, I am searching for: "allintitle:how do you treat yellow leaves on tomato plants"

Amazing right? Not one single document on the whole internet has a page title that has this search term. Looks like a good opportunity. Big tick. If you are an authoritative website in your category. Writing a piece of content around this should see you rank fast.

Also, search the term without the allintitle modifier to see what the results look like. It gives you an indication of the types of websites that are ranking. Also, look out to see if you have a rich snippet result as per below. This means by optimising your content you can also be in the running to land this snippet as well.

The other thing to note is the length of content across the top 3 ranked articles. This will give you a guide to the depth of content in word count which ranks for such search terms. If the top three are around 1,000 words, try 1,200 words.

Follow this process for your content ideas, so you can rank them in order of easiest to rank for. Plan this content into your content calendar and start producing and publishing.

How many questions should you answer?

How long’s a piece of string?

I would suggest if you are taking your SEO content game seriously then write as much as you can. Aiming at publishing a minimum of four per month. Don't forget the most important part. Build internal links.

The benefits of this content is:

  • Builds site depth for relevant search terms.

  • Allows opportunities to internal link across your site.

  • This content is typically engaging and if answered well can land a long page visit helping with your website engagement metrics.

  • Sends potential top of funnel customers to your site to potentially capture a lead, remarket or buy!

Let us help you implement a great content strategy your business.

Written by

Jay Clair

Head of Marketing

Jay is a full stack marketer with a passion for business transformation through digital strategy. Understanding current frameworks and creating a better way forward is Jay's jam.