FAQ pages 'could boost SEO'

Businesses may benefit from expanding their FAQ website content to capitalise on the trend of consumers entering longer search queries into search engines, it has been suggested.

Writing on the Ask.com blog, Keith Hogan, technology vice-president at the search engine, cited recent research by Hitwise suggesting that more web users are inputting search queries that are five words or more in length.

He indicated that this could be due to more web users inputting specific questions into search engines, as they seem to assume that such engines are capable of processing data on the web rather than just indexing content.

"Searchers don't consider their query to be just keywords; they are starting to expect that the search engine will understand the intent of the query better," Mr Hogan commented.

He went on to advise website owners to look into producing more content that addresses long questions likely to be typed into search engines to take advantage of this trend.

Hitwise's research indicated that longer search queries have increased by ten per cent in the last year, with shorter queries dropping by two per cent over the same period.