Your website is your digital storefront. Most people will Google you before visiting your physical store—and if you have a good local search strategy in place, they’re going to find you. But once they find you, is it easy to find the information they’re looking for?

This is where FAQ pages come in.

FAQ pages help you educate new website visitors and make it easier to turn them into paying customers. Unless they’re returning customers, your website visitors are likely to have questions that need to be answered before they go through with buying from you.

If website users can’t find the information they need to feel comfortable making buying decisions, chances are they’ll browse other small business websites and go with one of those instead.

team working on an FAQ page

What Questions Belong on an FAQ Page

Your FAQ page should cover everything your local customers need to know to fully engage with your business (even if it’s included in your other web content). It should be simple and scannable so that people find the information they’re looking for quickly. After all, convenience is the key to winning the modern consumer’s heart.

Here are a few basic points that every FAQ page should include.

→In-Store Information

By tapping into local SEO, you’re tapping into local customers. Your website visitors are considering visiting businesses in the area—which means you can turn them into physical traffic for your store. Think about what practical information would help them to have a great customer experience in your store. They might want to find:

Your store’s address(es)
Your business hours
Store policies (like return information or payment information)

→Online Store Information

Just because you’ve been discovered through local SEO doesn’t necessarily mean the visitor is going to head in-store. They might prefer to make a purchase through your online store instead, so include relevant information about your online store on your FAQ page. Include information like:

Where you ship to
How long delivery usually takes
Your return policy for online orders

Answers to these questions may reduce the feelings of risk and uncertainty people experience when purchasing from a local business for the first time.

Now that you’ve got your questions sorted, let’s look at what makes effective FAQ answers.

FAQ Section Best Practices for Local Search Visibility

If local search results have brought a visitor to your website and they’re browsing your FAQs, clearly they have a keen interest in your business. That’s the power of local intent. Whether they’re looking to visit brick-and-mortar businesses or want to purchase from your online store, make the most of the opportunity to turn prospects into new customers. An effective FAQ page will help that process.

→ Make it Easy to Find

Most people know to head to the FAQ section if they’re looking for a specific piece of information that they can’t find on their initial browse of the website. If your FAQ page is hard to find, your website visitors might just turn to your competitors.

We’d recommend putting a link to your FAQ section in the menu of your website and even referencing it in other parts of your web content when relevant.

→ Keep SEO in Mind

Your FAQ page presents an opportunity to attract new customers through search engine optimisation (SEO). For local businesses (especially brick-and-mortar businesses that rely on footfall), local SEO is a game changer, because it means there’s less competition with big names who have big marketing budgets.

For your FAQ to rank in local search results, include location-specific keywords in your answers. You can use SEO tools (like Semrush or Moz) to help you choose the right keywords to target. And don’t forget to look into what’s ranking on mobile search because customers on the go will most likely use their mobile devices to find your business.

→ Update Regularly

Keeping your FAQ section up to date helps with local search visibility and ensures you’ve always got effective FAQs that meet the needs of potential customers. Maybe you find there are new common questions being asked that you can add. Or maybe your business hours have changed. How about business updates? From a change in business hours to new features, small businesses are constantly evolving and adapting. Make sure to keep your local customers in the loop.

→ Keep it Organised

An effective FAQ page is scannable so visitors can go straight to the answer they need. If you’ve got a lot of questions, you could organise the page into sections as well. Adding a search bar would also increase the efficiency of the user experience massively, especially if you add voice search capabilities which are growing in popularity.

→ Include Actual Questions from Your Customers

There’s no need to overcomplicate this. To provide a better understanding of your local business for website visitors, answer the most common questions you get asked. Once you’ve attracted new visitors from local SEO, it’s your job to keep them engaged. So your FAQ section should give the information potential customers are looking for and typing into search engines. >

Podium has its own help centre to direct customers to the information they need to use their tool, ending with a variety of supportive resources.

Podium FAQ

How to Build a Better FAQ Page

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