In March of 2020, we started working with an educational institution that provides TEFL Certifications for teaching English abroad and online. COVID-19 was affecting their teach abroad business negatively, but their online teaching business was starting to pick up. They had a lot of information-rich content within striking distance of the 1st page of Google that just wasn’t generating the kind of traffic they’d hoped for. Hoping to capitalize on both the increased interest in online teaching and increased CTR from FAQ rich snippets, we identified content rewrites and the inclusion of Schema.org FAQ markup as tools for organic growth and got to work.
Goals
Rewrite and relaunch both blog and non-blog content with FAQ sections and FAQ markup. Improve organic search traffic by capturing FAQ snippet results.
Approach
After identifying all of the content on the client’s website that would benefit from FAQ sections and FAQ markup, we used an in-house method of deducing the most relevant questions to include that Google found relevant and closely-related to the topics under discussion in the client’s web content. We used a rigorous selection process to cull the list of questions down, worked with the client on writing carefully researched answers, and included FAQ markup with the newly updated content.
The content updates were separated into two batches (blog and non-blog) launched about 8 months apart.
Results
Within a few days of the first batch of FAQ content launching, it quickly started showing in FAQ rich snippets. An overall increase in average position, CTR, and clicks was observed.
Several months later, when the 2nd batch of content was launched, it also quickly started showing FAQ rich snippets, and clicks and impressions jumped up substantially.
8 months in and the FAQ results for 85 total pages have generated a net gain of over 40,000 clicks to the client’s website from content that previously generated almost no traffic. Overall, the client’s website experienced about a +15% net gain in clicks over that period of time.
