Ever wondered what is the basic difference between Frequently asked questions schema and Question and Answer schema?
Every Schema snippet is used for different purposes. Many people want to know the difference between the FAQ and Q&A schema and understand the workflow of these schema types. This will help them implement structured data on their website or blogs for SEO enhancement purposes.
As a marketing consultant in Australia with a proven track record of SEO Services in Melbourne, we thought to explain the difference. Our insights can help solve problems and can be useful for creating better Digital Marketing Strategies. Today, we will learn about the difference between FAQ and Q&A schema and some SEO benefits of using these schema types on your website or blog. Before we discuss the benefits, workflow, implementations, codes and SEO results, let’s understand what these schemas are and how they work.
FAQ Schema
A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Schema represents a question and answer combination which are frequently asked about a topic, service or product on a web page. It contains a list or set of questions and answers based on information provided on a web page. It helps to answer frequently asked questions in a complete, timely and accurate manner to maintain the quality of information on service, information or product pages. However, you can also list FAQs related to your website on a contact us page to serve your customers with better information. If you use the correct mark-up for questions, it will show up as rich results in SERP. Let’s understand this better with an example.
FAQ rich snippet- Sharp Instincts Knowledge Graph
This rich snippet is a feature of the Google Search Engine. Every user who uses Google as a search engine will see rich snippets. This feature works for both Desktop and mobile devices. Creating this schema type is easy and it requires basic HTML knowledge to edit or develop the code. For detailed instructions, visitGoogle Developers platform . According to preference, you could choose between JSON-LD or Microdata. Given below is the example JSON for FAQ Schema.
JSON for FAQ Schema
The example above is an edited mark-up for frequently asked questions. We have edited the sample schema according to basic SEO Services questions. Apart from title and headings, there are three sections which you need to edit in order to adjust the mark-up.
- Itemtype
- Itemprop
- Itemsope
As you can see in the image above, we have adjusted the items according to content requirement. While editing, you can use basic HTML features to make it look more appealing as shown in example. 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>.
Content Guidelines
You need to follow the guidelines strictly to get positive results. Use this feature wisely in your website content. Use FAQ schema where you have a set of questions and answers. Don’t use it if your page has a single question. It should be used where a question has one possible answer or users can’t submit another answer to a question. For example, if you are answering a question related to a product on your website, then there should be no alternate answer.
- It should not look like a forum page where users can visit the site and submit their answers. Apart from this requirement, there a few more things to keep in mind when using an FAQ Schema.
- Never use it for marketing purposes.
- Make sure to write a complete question or a question which contains complete text. Answers should have complete text in the answers section.
- All the answers should be visible to users.
Now let’s move on to the Q&A Schema Type and understand its functionality for web pages. We will also learn how to apply this schema type on pages.
Q&A Schema
Question and Answer pages are those web pages which contains questions and answers based on a topic. In this schema type, a question can have multiple answers. This is the basic difference between Q&A schema and FAQ Schema. In FAQ Schema one question has only one answer but in Q&A schema, one question may have multiple answers. For example, let’s take the example ofWhat are the top 11 SEO Tools Every Marketer Should Use in 2023. This question could have multiple answers related to tools used by marketers for better SEO performance.
Let’s work through another example here:
As you can see in the image above, if the pages are marked correctly it shows a Q&A Snippet in SERP. For example, whenever someone types how to get an admission in a marketing course, they get options of questions asked by users which could have multiple answers. Since every college has its own criteria of admission, there will be many question and answer combinations. According to best or highly rated answers, Google will show you the results and a snippet of the related questions and answers.
Let’s have a look at Microdata for the Q&A Schema
JSON for Q&A Schema
We have highlighted the area where we have edited the information according to the question. You can see in the results on the right-side panel that it is showing the complete FAQ with details provided.
You can followQ&A Schema Guidelines for this mark-up and use it productively on your website or blog.
