RunCabin Blog · What to put on your site

Does my small-business website need an FAQ page?

October 13, 2026 · 8 min read

Short answer: your website needs the answers, not necessarily a page called "FAQ." The questions you answer on the phone every week - do you come to my town, do you charge for estimates, are you insured, how soon can you start - belong on your site in plain words. Usually that works best as a short question-and-answer section on your homepage and service pages, not a separate page buried in the menu that almost nobody clicks.

FAQ pages have a bad reputation among owners who have seen them done badly: twenty questions nobody asked, written by a marketer, answering "Why choose us?" with a paragraph of slogans. That version is a waste of a page. The useful version is short, specific, and copied almost word for word from your own phone calls. Here is how to tell the difference, which questions to include, and where to put them.

Why answering questions on your site matters more than it used to

Two things happened that changed the math on this.

First, the search trick went away. For years, the main reason SEO people told owners to add an FAQ page was a special search listing: with the right markup, Google would show your questions as drop-downs right under your result, taking up more of the screen. Google limited that to government and health sites in August 2023, and as of May 7, 2026 it stopped showing FAQ drop-downs in search for everyone. If someone is still selling you an FAQ page as a way to "take over more of the Google results page," that pitch is out of date.

Second, the reader changed. More customers now ask a question before they ever see your site. They type "does this painter do cabinets?" into Google Maps, or ask ChatGPT for a plumber who does same-day service in their town, and an AI tool answers by reading whatever it can find about you. We covered how this works on Google's side in what happened to the Q&A section on Google Business Profiles. A clear question with a direct answer underneath is about the easiest thing on a website for those tools to use. If your site never says whether you serve the next town over, the AI has nothing to repeat, and the customer moves on to someone whose site does say it.

So the reason to answer questions on your site is no longer a search-results gimmick. It is the customer, and the software reading on the customer's behalf. Both want the same thing: a straight answer, fast.

Which questions actually belong

The best source is not a template. It is your own call log. For one week, every time a customer asks you something before they hire you, write it down in their words. Most owners end up with the same short list, give or take a few trade-specific ones:

1. "Do you come to my area?" Name the towns, or the county and a radius. "We serve the greater metro area" answers nothing.
2. "Do you charge for estimates?" Say yes or no, and if yes, whether the fee comes off the job. (We wrote a whole post on whether to charge for estimates.)
3. "Are you licensed and insured?" Yes, with the license number where your state expects it. See how to prove you're licensed and insured.
4. "How soon can you start?" You do not need a calendar. "We are usually booking two to three weeks out; emergencies same day" is a real answer, and you can change it when the season changes.
5. "How do I pay, and do you need a deposit?" Cards, checks, financing, the deposit amount or percentage. People ask because they have been burned before.
6. "Do you guarantee the work?" State the warranty in a sentence: what it covers and for how long.
7. "Do I need to be home / move furniture / clear the driveway?" The prep questions. Answering these ahead of time saves you awkward mornings on the job.

Then add the two or three that are specific to your trade. A house cleaner gets "do you bring your own supplies?" and "do I need to be there?" A landscaper gets "do you haul away the debris?" A roofer gets "will you work with my insurance company?" An electrician gets "do you pull the permit?" A painter gets "do you do the prep work, or do I?" These are the questions that tell a customer you have done this job a few hundred times.

Questions to leave off

• "Why should I choose you?" Nobody asks this out loud. It reads as an ad, and readers skip it. Put your reasons in the rest of the page, backed by reviews and photos.
• Questions you would rather not answer in writing. If you genuinely price every job differently, do not invent a number to fill an FAQ slot. "Every job is priced after a walk-through; most kitchens fall in this range" is fine if it is true. A made-up price is worse than none. (More on that in should I put prices on my website.)
• Anything you are not sure is still true. An FAQ answer that says you offer financing after you dropped the financing company is worse than no answer, because the customer finds out on the job site.
• Twenty questions. Six to ten good ones beat a wall. If the list is getting long, that is a sign some answers belong on a service page instead.

How to write the answers

The rule is the same one we give for everything else on your website: write like you talk on the phone, then cut the throat-clearing.

Instead of this	Write this
"We proudly serve a wide range of communities throughout the region."	"We work in Towson, Parkville, Perry Hall, and anywhere within about 20 miles of Towson."
"Contact us to discuss your estimate needs."	"Estimates are free. We come out, measure, and email you a written price within two days."
"Customer satisfaction is our top priority."	"If something we installed fails within two years, we come back and fix it at no charge."
"Flexible payment options available."	"We take cards and checks. Jobs over a set size need a 25% deposit to book the date."

(The towns and numbers in that table are examples. Use your own.)

Three habits make the difference:

• Put the answer in the first few words. "Yes." "No." "Usually two weeks." Then explain. A customer skimming on a phone, or an AI tool pulling one line, should get the answer even if they stop reading.
• Use the customer's words in the question. They say "Do you do decks?" not "What exterior carpentry services do you provide?" Matching their words is also how search engines and AI tools connect their question to your answer.
• Name real things. Real towns, real timeframes, real payment methods. Specifics are what make an answer trustworthy, and they are exactly what an AI assistant needs to repeat you accurately.

Where to put it: a page, a section, or both

For most one-truck and small-crew businesses, a dedicated FAQ page is the weakest option on its own. Visitors rarely go looking for it, and the answers end up a click away from the moment they matter.

What tends to work better:

• A short FAQ section near the bottom of the homepage with the five or six questions everyone asks: area, estimates, insurance, timing, payment. The customer who scrolls that far is deciding whether to call, and this is what they are deciding on.
• Two or three service-specific questions on each service page. Your "Cabinet painting" page answers "how long do the cabinets have to stay empty?" Your "Drain cleaning" page answers "do you use a camera?" If you have a page for each service, this is where those questions live.
• A full FAQ page only if you have a lot of genuine questions, for example a business with financing, permits, insurance claims, and seasonal contracts. Even then, the most common answers should also appear on the homepage.

Whatever you choose, put the questions on the page as real text. Answers hidden inside images, PDFs, or a chatbot pop-up are hard for customers to skim and harder for search engines and AI tools to read.

The part owners forget: keeping it true

An FAQ is the one part of a website that goes stale fastest, because it is full of facts about how you run things right now. Lead times change with the season. You add a town, drop a service, raise the deposit, start taking a new card. Every one of those turns a helpful answer into a wrong one.

A wrong answer costs more than a missing one. A customer who reads "we serve Parkville," calls, and hears "sorry, not anymore" feels misled. An AI tool that read the old page will keep repeating it until the page changes. So when you write your answers, also decide who changes them and how. If every edit means emailing a designer and waiting a week, the honest prediction is that the FAQ will drift out of date. Pick a setup where updating "two weeks out" to "four weeks out" takes a minute.

A quick way to start this week

1. Write down every question a customer asks you before hiring, for one week.
2. Circle the six that come up most. Those go on your homepage.
3. Answer each in two or three sentences, answer first, with real towns, times, and terms.
4. Put the trade-specific ones on the matching service pages.
5. Ask Google Maps or ChatGPT one of those questions about your business and see whether the answer matches what you wrote. If it does not, the answer probably is not on your site clearly enough yet.

Where RunCabin fits

We build RunCabin's done-for-you websites with AI, finished by a web developer, from a planner that asks you the same questions your customers ask: which towns you cover, whether estimates are free, your license and insurance, how far out you are booking, how you take payment, and what your warranty covers. Those answers land on real pages on your own domain, written in plain language customers can skim and AI tools can read. It starts at $499 to build, then $39.99 a month for hosting, with no long contract, and every inquiry goes straight to your inbox with no lead fees. When your lead time or service area changes, you tell us and the answer changes, so the page stays true.

You do not need a page called FAQ. You need the answers you give on the phone, written down where customers can find them before they call.

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Related reading: what should be on a small-business website? · will ChatGPT or Google's AI recommend my business? · what happened to Google Business Profile Q&A?