A Complete Guide to FAQ Schema for 2020

Rich Snippets are an essential part of search engine optimization and has been dominating the search engine result page for a while. For your content to introduce itself to Google's machine learning algorithm, rich snippets are crucial.

Schema markup is a custom code (semantic vocabulary) that is placed on your website to help search engines return more structured informative results for users.

If you've ever Googled something and seen rich snippets that stand out from the rest of the results, then you'll understand what schema markup is all about.

FAQ schema is the new way of ranking for the featured snippet position in the SERP.

FAQ - Take Your SERP Rankings to a Whole Different Level

What is an FAQ? It means frequently asked questions; it acts as customer support content, which points out the possible queries related to the product or service that may also encounter in the user's mind.

Google loves this way of content structuring as the content itself arises a questionable intention within the user, and the answer satisfies whether the product or service is helpful to the user,

It helps in building an illusionary trust factor as all questions are clarified and can improve conversions.

The answer appears in the search results, meaning you don't have to click anywhere. These results are called rich results. As searches have become more conversational, the questions we type in the search bar or through voice assistants are getting more informative.

Google's mission is to answer the questions you have. As a result, they are providing more of these right in the results.

Often these answers are enough, and people don't need to click through to the website. These types of answers are called no click or zero-click searches.

Recent results show that just over half of all searches on Google.com resulted in zero-clicks, so why would you try to get your FAQ listed as an answer in the search if no one clicks-through?

That's a good question, and that is the premise of this article.

Do FAQ Results Pick Holes in Your Click-through Rate?

Rich snippets appear at the top of search results and take up most of the screen space in results. In a recent test of a thousand keywords, they found that there was a higher CTR and more web traffic when an FAQ snippet was present.

This is primarily because the rich snippet takes up so much more space in the search results. You may be wondering how do you do this on your website; this is something you code directly into your website. Let’s see how it’s done.

How to Implement FAQ Schema:

If you use Wordpress, both the Yoast SEO and the Gutenberg editor plugin can automatically add the proper schema markup for you. But first, you must think about placement on your website.

It's a good idea to put FAQ in relevant pages rather than one giant FAQ page that covers all aspects of your business, that way the related info is in context to the rest of the products or services your offer.

Follow the webmaster guidelines to learn more.

Here are the do's and dont's you should follow when preparing a FAQ schema for your site:

Do:

• Ensure the fields in schema contain the entire text of both the question and answer.
• Have a dedicated FAQ page present in the site itself.
• Have the FAQ content displayed the same as the content on the page.

Don't:

• Advertise the FAQ page.
• Use obscene, profane, sexually explicit, graphically violent, hateful, harassing or promote dangerous or illegal activities.
• Use forum pages, as they don't support FAQ schema.

To validate and preview your structured data, use Google's Rich Result Test. Add a FAQ rich snippet to a specific page, ask Google to recrawl and index the page. This is important because it has a direct impact on the Google search result.

“A QA page from a discussion portal like Reddit, Quora, or Stack Exchange is typically about one specific user-generated question and its answer from one or more users.

A FAQ page is typically a collection of curated pairs of QA's potentially organized into a hierarchy that consists of multiple sections of questions & answers, one answer per question & one curator.”

Here is an Example of FAQ Schema JSON-LD Code

The answer type defines the ‘acceptedAnswer’ to each of the ‘Question’ in the page. FAQ schema supports HTML content such as links & lists. Valid HTML tags <a>, <p>, <div>, <b>, <strong>, <i>, <em>, and yes, Emojis too!

Conclusion:

FAQ schema plays a considerable role in retrieving the appropriate answers for users who ask the Google Assistant for information on a topic. Create markup for your FAQ content, and Google can auto-generate an action with your information.

Besides FAQ schema, there is Q&A Schema, How To, etc. All of which offer excellent opportunities to improve organic search traffic with eye-catching listing features.

By strategically implementing these schema types across relevant pages, marketers can dramatically increase the visibility of their web pages in search results for targeted keywords, especially on mobile devices.

Adding schema to your site only makes you eligible for rich results; it doesn’t guarantee you will get one immediately. Even if you’ve done everything correctly in the schema markup code, you may still find that Google is not showing you any affection.

So “patience you must have, young padawan.” Follow the webmaster guidelines, the rich snippets requirements and the tips mentioned above and let Google decide the lotto winner.

I’m probably missing out on some information. Share your thoughts regarding FAQ schema. Let me know in the comments.