Tips for FAQ pages

Tips for ensuring your frequently asked questions content is discoverable and scannable.

How to write helpful FAQ pages

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) are a go-to content choice for many organizations. They’re used both to anticipate questions about services and to highlight actual questions from the public.

FAQs, however, can be overwhelming and hard for people to search through to find the information they need. In general, it’s better to write your main content to answer people’s questions, rather than relying on an FAQ. An FAQ ideally should supplement your main content, rather than replace it.

If you do go the FAQ route, here are a couple of tips to make those pages more effective.

Group your questions

FAQs are typically published as Info Details pages, with the questions appearing in the table of contents.

Because questions can be lengthy, the table of contents can become hard to read, especially on smaller screens.

An alternative approach is to group similar questions and give each group a title based on the subject matter, such as “FAQ tips” and “FAQ resources.”

For an Info Details page:

  • Group each set of questions within a section using a rich text field

  • Use the group title as the section header that will display in the table of contents

  • The questions themselves can be set off within the rich text field using H4 tags.

This should result in a more scannable table of contents and page that will make it easier for people to find the information they need.

Use a searchable page title

Most Mass.gov content is discovered by people typing terms into Google, Mass.gov's Google-powered search box, or other search engines.

So it's important to write a page title, if you have created an FAQ page, that focuses on the actual content, not the term "FAQ."

For example: "Organization A's COVID-19 policies explained," rather than "Organization A COVID-19 FAQ."

Read our "Best Practices for Page Titles and Short Descriptions" Knowledge Base article for more recommendations about writing unique titles.

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