If you have read our Writing Health & Medical Content post, you may have noticed that we mentioned natural search query optimization. Natural search queries simply means that users are now selecting their search query according to the exact information they require rather than the entire topic. Basically this is the spoken language versus library catalogue methodology.
In previous years, search queries were 2 to 3 words in length and this increased to 4 to 5 words per query. Well now it is being reported that many search queries have been surpassing the five keyword length, often incorporating the five W’s and one H (also mentioned in the Writing Health & Medical Content post). What, Why, When, Where, Who and How. This means that search engine users are often asking a question in their search query with the hope that the SERP’s will display the most appropriate answer.
Identifying and understanding this trend in search queries can be hugely beneficial in topping rankings. It may often be difficult to relay content in this manner and a FAQ page can be of assistance in your SEO campaign. Writing content with headings/sub headings containing questions may seem both informal and unprofessional especially in the health and medical niche. But a good FAQ page is expected to have a question and answer format and will often be well received by both your readers and the search engines.
An important point to note for your FAQ page is the appropriate use of heading tags for your subheadings. Don’t abuse the heading tags but optimizing your content subheadings with an H2, H3 and H4 tags can result in some good rankings. If you are unable to optimize your content with heading tags, opt for bold, italic and color fonts. Search engines take note of these slight variations in layout although they are not as beneficial as heading tags.
Lastly, consider optimizing your incoming links (backlinks) with questions as anchor text. This is also useful in ranking content for natural search queries without having to restructure your content. Remember Adobe Acrobat’s dominance for the search query ‘click here’? This is achieved solely by backlinks with appropriate anchor text.