You know that story about the Cobbler’s son having no shoes? It’s true about the mechanics son too. And in the case of this WordPress Developer, it’s sadly true here too.
I’ve been building websites with Pages, Posts and fairly recently also including other custom taxonomies for things like Testimonies and FAQs. I built the Testimonials into this site a long time ago but for some reason – never got around to a FAQ.
That just changed. You’ll see it now in my Menu Bar above.
In building my FAQ Page I included a FAQ only search at the top. Below that it’s segmented into different Categories. Click the question and it’ll expand into a full post for the answer. At the bottom of the FAQ I created a simple form for readers to submit their own questions.
If you are a regular reader of this blog you’ll know when someone asks me a question, it usually becomes a blog post.
So WHY have a FAQ?
- The FAQ puts all the questions in one place. While I might have written about a topic before – it’s also moved down the river of information. It today’s world that is a mighty swift river. Can I really expect you to search the Archives?
- The FAQ also allows me to direct you to those posts. I did that with the Do I need a Facebook Page? question. This could be a simple ‘…read more’ or a series of bullet points with each going to individual posts.
- The FAQ naturally draws visitors deeper who are looking for something – maybe that something wasn’t answered in the original post. This increases the possibility that they’ll convert to clients. It also increases ‘Time on Site‘.
- The FAQ allows me to blog in short format. I tend to write too many words. Quite often a simple post like “How to Write a Blog Post” turns into a huge essay. That takes up a lot of my time as it does for the reader. Hopefully I’ll be able to use this FAQ to write quicker, shorter, more easily digestible ‘posts’ and do so more often – if that makes sense.
- My FAQ is also fully indexed by Google. (hold on for a little bit a little techy stuff) While the entire FAQ Page is one unit, each Category is it’s own unique segment. Drilling deeper, each individual Question is it’s own unique post. This all happens automatically and delivers a wonderful buffet of content for the Google Spiders and Bots to feast upon.
- The FAQ has it’s own sitemap. Each Post, Each Category, and the entire FAQ, each has it’s own unique URL. That all get’s listed in what is called a sitemap (it’s an .xml file). I’ve then set it up so that when there’s a change in content (as in new post, or question) that sitemap is then delivered directly to Google, effectively telling it “Hey we have new content over here!”
So this Cobbler built himself a FAQ
Yippee for me! I wrote a FAQ on WordPress and another on Facebook Pages. And that’s just about when writers block set in.
I desperately need your help! I’m stuck.
Take a few seconds and give me ideas on what Questions I should write about. Do it in comments, on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or even in this short form. Give me a single question or 20. Have FAQ yourself? I’ll return the favor and come up with questions for yours.
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