Weare – of course – referring to the question boxes that have become increasinglyprominent on Google’s search engineresults pages (SERPs) in recent years.
Manyquestions have been asked by brands and experts alike, about the role andimportance these intriguing boxes could have for search engine optimisation(SEO). What, then, do you need to know about them when promoting your brandonline?
Introducing ‘People also ask’ boxes
Theidea of the ‘People also ask’ box – which we’ll call the PAA box for shortness– is ostensibly to help human searchers further explore a given topic they’vealready performed a search for, and to answer some of the specific relatedquestions they might have.
Atthe time of typing, for example, we can perform a Google search for “buyingproperty in London”, and among the organic search results, we see a PAA boxpresenting such further queries as “Is buying property in London a goodinvestment?” and “Can foreigners buy property in London?”
Thereis a dropdown arrow next to each of these questions, and when that arrow isclicked, a preview is provided of a page that seeks to answer the particularquery. This single click may also add even more questions to the list.
There’sa lot that even the most knowledgeable SEO marketing experts are still learning about PAA boxes. And with recent datasuggesting that these boxes are coming to be more frequently used, it seemsthat we’ll be continuing to find out more about them for a while to come.
The role that ‘People also ask’ has in optimising for searchengines
Evenif you don’t go as far as trying to target your brand’s website being featuredin a PAA box, these boxes can still be fascinating from an SEO perspective. After all, the mere questions that Google choosesto provide in such boxes gives you a clue about user intent.
Asfor if you do succeed in getting a page of your site to be previewedwithin a PAA box, this could help to present your brand as an authority on thesubject in question.
Inshort, PAA boxes could help your organisation a lot with its searchengine marketing efforts. And if you do choose to optimise for these boxes, youcould start by doing something as simple as picking out a PAA question thatseems relevant to your own brand, and answering it in your online content.
Thereis, however, a lot more to effective optimisation for PAA boxes than this. Yourbrand might use keyword analysis tools away from Google, for instance, togenerate questions that it could base future content around. Or you might evenjust look back at existing content your brand has produced in months and yearspast, and consider how it can be tweaked to better answer whatever questionsthe target reader is likely to have.
Muchof the work that you do to optimise for PAA boxes – even if you don’t manage to‘win’ a single query within such a box – could also help strengthen yourbrand’s all-round presence in the search rankings. By this, we mean thatoptimising your content around relevant keywords and topics will likely benefityour organisation’s online visibility far beyond just PAA boxes.
Wouldyou like to talk to the PENNInk Productionsteam in greater detail about the strategies and solutions that could help youget the best out of your brand’s web presence? If so, don’t wait any longer to enquire of our website design, branding, graphicsand SEO marketing experts.SEO marketing experts
