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In order to boost our online-presence, my employer wants me to incorporate a FAQ on our website. It's a Wordpress-site running a premium theme, and I have a couple of options available to me.

  1. Do a single-page accordion-style layout with all the FAQ's on a the same site (eg www.mysite.com/faq/)

  2. Do multiple pages with their own FAQ (eg. www.mysite.com/faq1/, www.mysite.com/faq2/, etc.)

We're imagining the FAQ's will be divided by subjects and subanswers, which an accordion should handle nicely. However, in terms of SEO, does having content in an accordion, and on a single-page boost our SEO or will it be to cluttered and non-detectable by search engines?

I think the accordion method would suit our needs best, but if it's a wasted effort in regards to SEO, the single-page-per-subject would be the ideal way to go.

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  • Maybe you should ask yourself, what's better for your users?
    – John Conde ♦
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 19:49
  • You're right John. The question is a bit hard to answer though. We're in the business of it-consultancy, and based on our experiences, our users would like to be able to tell what we do, and how we do it. The FAQ is supposed to highlight these things in a way that's easy to decipher. The accordion - while being nice to browse - can also potentially become overwhelming if our list of topics grows to wide (we haven't made a 100 % bulletproof topic-list yet). The single-page option would likely require more clicks, but will be able to provide more thorough explanations. Both have pro's and cons'.
    – TheRecruit
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 20:27
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    I suggest that FAQ stands for frequently Asked Questions not damn near all the questions anyone might ask. Stick to the simple to xx not xxx questions and stop. You can also consider faq/topic area/faqs.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 22:45
  • I agree with closetnoc. I think there should be a difference between a FAQ page, and an online Knowledgebase. A FAQ should be just that, FREQUENTLY asked questions. An accordion style will work well for this. If you want to create a Knowledgebase with as much information as you can fit in, you're better going with the single page per topic approach.
    – Sherwin Flight
    Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 4:22

2 Answers 2

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A FAQ should first and foremost be searchable within the browser - users will usually not read every item in turn but rather try to ctrl+F and input the word(s) they're interested in. So why not a (however) long page, well structured with h tags and skiplinks? If for some reason you are constrained to only the two options given, the single page should have a slight advantage - as there are more possible syntax associations. You should have a very good reason to break them up (like keyword density per each piece, specific links etc)

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Remember what FAQ stands for. The first letter is the key here.

A FAQ is not a massive information repository or help system.

It's simply the most frequently asked questions. When it exceeds a certain size, it's time for a more comprehensive help system or records base.

It sounds like you probably need the latter. And it sounds like you probably need a search interface up top somewhere.

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