Using FAQPage structured data of your Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page is an excellent way to have your FAQ page listed by google search in a rich text display.
Properly marked up FAQ pages becomes eligible to be displayed as a rich result on Search and Markup Action for the Google Assistant, which can help your ecommerce website reach the right users. Below is a screenshot of an sample FAQ rich result:
According to Google developers,
FAQ rich results are available in all countries and languages where Google Search is available. The feature is available on desktop and mobile devices.
What is the Best way to us FAQPage structured data in your ecommerce website?
Here is the Google developers Guidelines for implementing FAQPage structured data:
Guidelines for Contents of FAQpage
Only use FAQPage if your page has a list of questions with answers. If your page has a single question and users can submit alternative answers, use QAPage instead. Here are some examples:
Valid use cases of FAQPage:
- A FAQ page must be written by the website itself, users should have no way to submit alternative answers to the questions.
- If it is a product support page that lists FAQs, again, there should be no way for users to submit alternative answers or comments on the FAQs of the product.
- All FAQ content must be visible to the user on the source page.
- Make sure each Question includes the entire text of the question and make sure each Answer includes the entire text of the answer. The entire question text and answer text may be displayed.
Invalid use of FAQPage:
- A forum page where users can submit answers to a single question
- A product support page where users can submit answers to a single question
- A product page where users can submit multiple questions and answers on a single page
- Don’t use FAQPage for advertising purposes.
- Question and answer content must not contain any of the following types of content: obscene, profane, sexually explicit, graphically violent, promotion of dangerous or illegal activities, or hateful or harassing language.
Required data in order for the FAQPage to be parsed by Google and display as a rich snippets:
It must contain the mainEntity which contains the array of question elements which comprise the list of answered questions that your FAQPage is about. See example below:
The FAQPage also must contain the “name” and “acceptedAnswer” structured data. The “name” refers to the question itself, example below:
CAN I TRANSFER AN EXISTING DOMAIN TO YOUR SERVERS?
The acceptedAnswer should follow it immediately:
The Answer type defines the acceptedAnswer to each of the Question on this page. It should be the full answer to the question not a part of the answer.
The answer may contain HTML content such as links and lists. Valid HTML tags include:
<h1>
through<h6>
,<br>
,<ol>
,<ul>
,<li>
,<a>
,<p>
,<div>
,<b>
,<strong>
,<i>
, and<em>
.
The most important thing to remember when implementing FAQpage on your ecommerce website development is to make sure that you do not allow your users to give alternative answers. Our recommendation is to disable the comment section on your FAQPage. Google may penalize your website for doing so. Always follow the rule for implementing structured data for better search engine results, so that your ecommerce website will be eligible for display as rich snippets in Google search results.
If you are unsure about the rule, please check out the google developers page here.
Read our previous article on the benefits of implementing structured data schema, and how Google search engine treats your ecommerce website when it is properly implemented. And how structured data improves your search engine results.
You may also refer to schema.org for further reading on this topic.
If you know of a better way to FAQPage on your ecommerce website, please dont hesitate to share it. We will be more than happy to know it and include it on this post. Please share in the comment section.