Most FAQ sections are written by someone guessing at what customers might want to know, and it shows. They answer questions nobody asked, avoid the ones everybody asks, and read like a legal disclaimer.
Done properly, an FAQ is one of the highest-value things on a site. It handles objections before a conversation starts, it matches how people actually search, and it is the format AI assistants find easiest to quote.
- 1
Harvest questions from real conversations
Go through enquiry emails, contact form submissions, phone notes and any live chat logs from the last six months. Write each question down verbatim. The awkward ones — about price, about what goes wrong, about how you compare — are the ones most worth answering, and the ones most sites duck.
- 2
Keep the customer’s wording
Write the question as it was asked. "How much does it cost?" not "What is our pricing structure?" People search in the words they think in, and matching that phrasing is most of why an FAQ gets found at all. Formalising the question is the most common way to make it invisible.
- 3
Answer in the first sentence, then explain
Lead with the direct answer, then give the context. "Between four and eight weeks, depending on how much content is ready." If the honest answer is that it depends, say what it depends on — that is still a real answer, and far better than a paragraph that avoids committing.
- 4
Make each answer stand alone
Assume the reader has seen only that question and answer, because that is exactly what happens when an assistant quotes one. Do not write "as mentioned above" or rely on the previous answer for context. Each pair should survive being lifted out of the page entirely.
- 5
Answer the uncomfortable ones
Are you the cheapest? What happens if it goes wrong? Why are you more expensive than the alternative? Answering these honestly builds more trust than any testimonial, and it filters out enquiries that were never going to convert — which saves everyone’s time.
- 6
Put FAQs on the page they belong to
A question about pricing for one service belongs on that service page, not on a general FAQ page three clicks away. Page-level FAQs match how people search far better. A central FAQ page is useful as well, but not instead.
- 7
Add the structured data
Mark FAQs up with FAQPage schema. This is what allows the individual question and answer to be understood as a discrete unit rather than a wall of text, and it is how they become independently quotable. Most content management systems handle this if you use the proper FAQ field rather than typing questions into the body.
How many is enough
Five to eight per page is usually right. Beyond about twelve, people stop scanning and the section starts hiding its own best answers. If you genuinely have thirty questions for one topic, that is a sign some of them deserve their own page.
Keeping them honest
Re-read the FAQs every six months against your recent enquiries. Questions change as the business changes, and an FAQ still answering a question about a service you stopped offering does more harm than an empty section.
Frequently asked questions
Rarely now — Google restricted FAQ rich results to a small set of sites. The markup is still worth adding, because it helps search engines and AI assistants parse the content as discrete questions and answers regardless of whether a rich result appears.
Would rather we did it?
These guides are here so you can do it yourself. If you would rather hand it over, that is what we do.
Start a conversation