One SEO professional asked John Mueller during a hangout whether it’s okay to use FAQ Schema in order to markup questions and answers that appear in different sections of a blog post that aren’t formatted as a traditional FAQ list.
For example, a post may have 10 headings for different sections.
A few of these are questions and answers.
John double checked the official documentation – that’s where he recommends SEO professionals go for these types of questions as well – and it looks like it’s fine.
The important part, John said, when it comes to FAQ snippets and structured data in general, is that the content should be visible on the page.
It should really be the case that both the question and the answer is visible when someone visits that page. Not that it’s hidden away in a section of a page.
If the questions and the answers are visible on the page, even if they are in different places on the page, that’s perfectly fine. The other thing to keep in mind is that, like all structured data, FAQ snippets are not guaranteed to be shown in the search results.
Essentially, you make your pages eligible to have these FAQ snippets shown. But, it doesn’t guarantee that they will actually be shown.
SEO professionals can also use a testing tool to make sure that everything is implemented properly. And if that testing tool says that’s okay, then you’re probably on the right track.
But, you will probably still have to wait and see how Google actually interprets your pages and processes them to see what is actually shown in the search results.
There are specific reports in Google Search Console as well, which give you information on the structured data that was found.
And the structured data that was actually shown in the search results.
This way, you can roughly gauge whether the structured data is working the way that you want it to. Or, is it not working the way that you want it to?
For things like this, John recommends trying them out and making a test page on your site, to see how these things end up in the search results.
This way, you can double check exactly what you want to do. Then, you can go off and actually implement it on the rest of your site.
This happens at approximately the 05:18 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 05:18
All right, is it okay to use the FAQ schema to markup questions and answers that appear in different sections of a blog post, that aren’t formatted as a traditional FAQ list? For example, a post maybe has 10 headings for different sections. A few of those are questions with answers.
John (Answer) 05:41
So I double checked the official documentation. That’s where I would recommend you go for these kinds of questions as well. And it looks like it’s fine. The important part, when it comes to FAQ snippets and structured data in general, is that the content should be visible on the page. So it should really be the case that both the question and the answer is visible when someone visits that page. Not that it’s kind of like hidden away in a section of a page.
But if they–the questions and the answers are visible on the page, even if they’re in different places on the page, that’s perfectly fine. The other thing to keep in mind is that like all structured data, FAQ snippets are not guaranteed to be shown in the search results. Essentially, you make your pages eligible to have these FAQ snippets shown. But it doesn’t guarantee that they will be shown. So you can use a testing tool to make sure that everything is implemented properly. And if that testing tool says that’s okay, then probably you’re on the right track.
But you will probably still have to kind of wait and see how Google actually interprets your pages and processes them to see what is actually shown in the search results. And for structured data, I think it’s the case for FAQ, but at least for some of the other types there are specific reports in Search Console as well, that give you information on the structure data that was found.
And the structured data that was actually shown in the search results. So that you can kind of roughly gauge, is it working the way that you want it to? Or is it not working the way that you want it to? And for things like this, I would recommend trying them out and making a test page on your website, kind of seeing how things end up in the search results, double checking if it’s really what you want to do, and then going off to actually implement it across the rest of your website.
