Where should the questions on your FAQ page come from?
The fastest way to build an FAQ page nobody reads is to guess. A better source is the questions your front desk already answers on the phone every week: which insurance networks you're in, your cancellation policy, what to bring to a first visit, whether a referral is required. Pull five to ten of these from call notes, intake forms or patient portal messages and you already have a working list. Check your online reviews too; patients often explain in a review exactly what confused them before they booked, which is a free record of gaps in your current pages. If your practice takes referrals from other providers, the same questions tend to resurface at the handoff, which is worth reading alongside referred patients still search you first. Once you have ten to fifteen real questions grouped by topic (insurance, scheduling, first visit, telehealth), that is enough for one clear page, not an attempt to cover everything a patient could possibly wonder.
What does an answer-first format look like for a patient?
Patients and AI assistants both skim. Write each question the way a patient would actually say it out loud, for example 'Do you accept Medicare?' rather than 'Insurance information.' Answer it in the first sentence, plainly, before adding detail: 'Yes, we accept Original Medicare Part B for evaluation and treatment visits' comes before the paragraph explaining what that covers. Organizing by topic helps too. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services groups its own consumer fact sheets and FAQs by subject such as coverage, appeals and enrollment, so a reader can scan headings and land on the right answer without reading the whole page1. Keep each answer to two or three sentences. If a topic needs more room, link to a full service page instead of turning one FAQ answer into an essay, which pairs well with writing service pages patients understand.
Does FAQPage structured data get a rich result in Google?
Adding FAQPage schema does not guarantee a rich result. Google's own general structured data guidelines are direct about this:
Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly according to the Rich Results Test.
The same page explains that a feature can fail to appear if the structured data is not representative of the page's main content, or if the content it describes is hidden from the user2. Separately, Google's own documentation changelog lists an update titled 'removing FAQ rich result'3. The full text of that entry was not visible on the page we could check, but the title itself is a signal worth taking seriously: Google has been narrowing which pages qualify for the FAQ snippet in results. Treat FAQPage schema as a way to describe a page that is already useful, not as a guaranteed traffic feature, and check the FAQ rich result status in Search Console rather than assuming it is working.
FAQPage or QAPage: which one fits a practice website?
Most practice FAQ pages are written by staff answering common questions, which makes FAQPage the right type, not QAPage. Google's documentation is specific here: QAPage markup is meant for a page where visitors submit their own answers to one question, such as a forum thread or a product support page. It explicitly lists 'an FAQ page written by the site itself with no way for users to submit alternative answers' as an invalid use of QAPage4. In other words, if your team wrote every answer, QAPage is not the right choice. Use FAQPage on a page of your own questions and answers, marked up in one of the three supported formats: JSON-LD, Microdata or RDFa2. Here is how the two compare:
| Question | FAQPage | QAPage |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes the answers | Practice staff, one set of answers per question | Visitors submit answers; multiple answers possible |
| Typical practice use | Insurance, scheduling and first-visit FAQ | A patient forum or open Q&A thread (uncommon for small practices) |
| Eligibility per Google | Allowed for a staff-written FAQ page2 | Not valid for a page with no user-submitted answers4 |
| Format required | JSON-LD, Microdata or RDFa2 | JSON-LD, Microdata or RDFa2 |
| Rich result guaranteed | No, subject to Google's discretion2 | No, subject to Google's discretion2 |
What should a practice skip, and what mistakes come up often?
An FAQ page is not the place to make claims about outcomes you cannot support, and it is not a substitute for a full service page when a topic needs real explanation. Skip questions nobody actually asks; padding the page with generic wellness questions dilutes the answers that matter and reads as filler to a patient and to an assistant summarizing the page. A few mistakes turn up often:
- Hiding answers behind an accordion built entirely in JavaScript that never renders as text a crawler or screen reader can read.
- Copying the identical FAQ block onto every service page, which reads as duplicate content rather than useful answers.
- Leaving outdated insurance or telehealth answers live after a policy changes.
- Writing questions the way a marketer talks instead of the way a patient talks.
- Treating FAQPage schema as a ranking strategy rather than a way to describe a page that is already useful.
An FAQ page like this works well for recurring administrative questions: insurance, scheduling, cancellation policy, first-visit logistics. It works less well as a place to explain a clinical topic in depth; that is what a service page and a practitioner bio page are for. If you are updating structured data across the rest of the site at the same time, schema markup for a health practice covers the other types worth adding. And if you want an outside look at whether your current FAQ content and markup are actually working together, our free credibility check reviews that alongside the rest of what patients and AI assistants see. This week, pull the five questions your front desk answered most often and check whether your FAQ page says them the way patients actually ask.