Making Use of Google’s People Also Ask Section for Search Engine Optimization — Cyber Media Creations

Using Google’s People Also Ask Section for SEO

When you have the objective of increasing the ranking of a website in the search engine results pages (SERPs) so that you can benefit from an increase in organic traffic, you will want to make use of a strategy that is comprehensive in nature.

The majority of webmasters restrict themselves to simple search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that can be implemented in a short amount of time. These strategies include utilizing keywords in your title, developing meta-descriptions, making use of a site map, and other similar practices.

When you’re trying to improve your website’s ranking in Google and other search engines, you may find that you need to employ a more strategic approach at times. At this very moment, these businesses are working hard to ensure that their customers have the very best experience possible.

On the pages that display the results of a search, the search engine not only provides the user with the answers to the questions that exactly match the query that they typed in, but it also provides suggestions for other questions or topics that people might be curious about.

This is done in a section of the website titled “People Also Ask.” In the following paragraphs, you will learn what it is and how you can use the information to improve your ranking not only for the search query that you typed in, but also for others that are related to it.

What Is People Also Ask?

People Also Ask is a feature that appears as an extension of ideas whenever someone types in a query on the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This feature can be found on Google.com. People are able to gain a more comprehensive understanding of a subject by using this list of questions that are related to it.

During the launch of a product, you’ll notice that people are trying to upsell you additional features and services. When you go to the grocery store, you’ll notice that there are shelves stocked with last-minute items that can be added to your shopping cart right next to the register.

When you go to a fast food restaurant, they will always try to upsell you on something, whether it be an apple pie or a drink. When you use a search engine, the company’s goal is to get you to stay on their website for as long as possible, use it frequently, and depend on it. This is how they generate advertising revenue, after all.

Therefore, the “add on” they offer is information. Additional questions. “Would it be helpful to you to know this as well?” It also helps users have a more positive experience, which is important to Google, and it’s actually become a top priority for them, as we’ll discuss in a bit more detail later on in this article.

You will need to go to Google and type in a search query in order to locate the section titled “People Also Ask,” and then use it to help improve your SEO efforts ultimately. Keep scrolling down the page until you reach the section labeled “People Also Ask.” This section is located below the advertisements and the featured snippets.

If you click on the question that is listed in the section labeled “People Also Ask,” you will be presented with an answer and a hyperlink that will take you to additional information regarding that answer. Additionally, the system will automatically start adding questions other people have asked below.

If it initially presents you with four questions and you click on one of them to expand the answer, then it will show you a few more questions below in the list, most of which will be related to the question that you clicked on to expand the answer. As you click on additional questions, it will continue narrowing down the options for you.

The following is an example of the People Also Ask section, along with the questions that are returned in response to the inquiry, “How does the keto diet work?”

As a content creator and a leader in your niche, you can see that what starts to happen with the results is that Google gives you a roadmap about the kinds of things your readers want to hear from you.

They have all of the statistical data that pertains to the search results, and they are providing you with the information that they have acquired without charging you. After that point, it is entirely up to you what you do with the information, and one of the most effective applications for it is search engine optimization (SEO).

Understanding Google’s Helpful Update

You need to be aware of Google’s goals in order to make the most of the People Who Also Ask section, and the recent Helpful Update that Google rolled out sheds light on all of these goals.

It makes sense that Google would look for content pages that offer users a positive experience to prioritize in their search results. Because if they link to or give preference to pages with thin content that offer no value, people will stop using Google as their search engine, which will result in a loss of revenue for the company.

The content of your blog needs to be comprehensive and informative, including recently published news and information, statistics, and an analysis of research. It ought to go beyond the most fundamental information and expand on ideas so that you’ve completely exhausted the idea, and the user should be able to walk away from it feeling satisfied.

They are interested in seeing something unique. Make sure that your content isn’t just a copy-and-paste of the People’s content; rather, include some of your own thoughts, perspectives, and arguments. In addition, ask questions to which there are no answers.

The guide for Google’s Helpful Update makes it clear that the search engine is looking for content that demonstrates the site owner’s personal expertise and enthusiasm for the subject matter, placing an emphasis on the reader’s ability to trust the information presented on the website.

They are looking for blog posts that can be bookmarked, as well as content that can be shared and has an effect on people. It needs to function as a valuable resource that other people will want to link to because of the benefits it provides.

They want to make sure that it hasn’t been “hurriedly produced” so that it can get good rankings. You can use the section labeled “People Also Ask” to construct a well-reasoned piece of content that you can then personalize and perfect in order to rank higher than all the other similar pieces.

Even though Google specifies that the content should have a “people-first” approach (also known as not being written for search rankings), if you do it correctly, you will be able to kill two birds with one stone and satisfy both people and search bots with your efforts.

The most important thing that People Also Ask does for you in terms of assisting you to meet the approval of Google based on their updates is that it provides you with the ability to understand what their readers want to know so that you can fulfill those requirements.

Using People Also Ask for Comprehensive Pillar Content

Content that serves as a pillar is a structural element that provides full support for a topic. It is not thin content that only tangentially discusses a topic and enables you to pad out a blog with a greater number of low-quality posts than high-quality ones.

When you want to achieve a higher ranking for a particular keyword phrase, you should focus on developing pillar content that is both comprehensive and timeless (or updated frequently if information changes).

They can be as long as a short report, which would be at least 3,000 words, in contrast to the short articles that are only 400 words long. They have the ability to solicit the opinions of other specialists through the curation of quotes and other materials. You can use the section labeled “People Also Ask” as a guide to help you decide what to include in these pillar pieces.

If you want to write a foundational blog post about how the keto diet functions, you should begin by using your common sense to generate a list of the things that people want to know, such as how many carbohydrates they are allowed to consume, how much weight they can lose, and other similar information.

After that, enter the phrase or question into Google, and then begin drilling down in the section labeled “People Also Ask” to branch out in as many pertinent ways as possible with additional ideas. Therefore, if one of the results is: How well does the keto diet work for weight loss, you can click on that to expand it and find additional content to discuss, such as:

• Does keto melt belly fat?
• Can you eat fruit on keto?

If you click on the question about belly fat, you might then see questions about how to begin a keto diet for beginners or how to expedite fat loss while on the keto diet. Put all of these questions into a single document, and then use that document to help you classify the subjects and decide on the subheadings for the blog post.

You need to ensure that you make use of H1 and H2 tags and that these questions are highlighted throughout the content. Instead of asking the same question in two different ways for the subheading, you should combine the two questions into a single one.

It might be helpful to have a mind map created for you to assist you in grouping the topics and forming a hierarchy of the information so that the reader experiences your content in a manner that is logically consistent with its importance.

Create Individual Page Links for People Also Ask Topics

When you start looking at the section titled “People Also Ask,” you’ll notice that these are, in essence, long-tail keyword phrases. You can use these as the titles for your blogs, as well as in the content and tags, in order to rank highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you do a good job of creating a pillar blog post for that question, the chances are higher that Google will select your post as one answer in the People Also Ask section, allowing you to get a primary spot in the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you don’t do a good job creating a pillar blog post for that question, the chances are lower.

This section is helpful to an audience in that it guides people toward the information that they might be interested in learning more about. This is one of the reasons why this section is so beneficial to an audience. When people are unfamiliar with a subject, it’s not uncommon for them to be at a loss for what questions to ask or how to phrase those questions.

You can create individual posts or pages for your blog by using the questions presented in this section. You could begin by addressing the most important question: “How does the keto diet work?” However, after that, you can take the next People Also Ask query, which is “What is the main rule of keto?” and provide a comprehensive response to that question for your audience on your blog.

Continue through all of the questions and generate a new pillar post for each one of them as you go. Google will soon recognize your website as a complete and comprehensive resource for the search engine users. In addition, each of your pillar posts that addresses the People Also Ask question in its entirety will be considered a candidate for inclusion in the aforementioned section as a resource and a hyperlinked answer.

When you create a page for this purpose, you should begin the content with a brief summary answer that can appear whenever a user clicks on the question. This will ensure that the content is always clear and concise. When a user selects a response, they will be presented with the following options:

The question is first, followed by a brief answer, and the hyperlinked title of the page. You can enjoy organic traffic simply by being part of this section because your content is a valuable resource for readers.

When you click on the question, it will sometimes open up a snippet post, which is essentially a numbered response. Therefore, you can choose to use either of those two options in order to get your content added to the section titled “People Also Ask.”

A FAQ schema is a markup of your code that alerts Googlebots about the questions and answers associated with a page’s content. Jump links, which take users to the answers they need, are another good option. Some industry experts recommend that you include a FAQ schema on your site. A FAQ schema is a markup of your code that alerts Googlebots about questions and answers associated with a page’s content.

Other Tools That Can Mimic Google’s People Also Ask Feature

Besides the People Also Ask section, you can use other tools and sites to tap into this strategy. For example, going on forums for your niche will allow you to see threads where people are asking questions they need answers to.

You can find questions by using tools based on keywords (both paid and free options). You can even start typing in a question to see what Google automatically fills in when you use its search engine. When you start typing “how does the keto,” you’ll see questions like these automatically filled in for you:

• How does the keto diet work
• How does the keto gummies work
• How does the keto diet help you lose weight
• How does the keto help with cholesterol
• How does the keto affect your body
• How does the keto help diabetes…and so on

You can use the auto-filled questions for your own research when creating pillar blog posts for SEO and to hopefully achieve a People Also Ask entry. The more you type, the more it changes the questions that are auto-filled for you.

AnswerThePublic.com is yet another resource available to you at no cost. You can enter a topic using one or two words, and the tool will deliver results of what people are asking about that topic. This is a very cool tool.

If you enter the phrase “keto diet,” for instance, it will return 77 questions and tell you whether those questions are highly searched, averagely searched, or not searched at all. Therefore, the question “are keto diet pills safe” might be a popular search term.

A typical search query might be something along the lines of “will following a ketogenic diet lower my A1C?” And a topic that receives a low number of searches could be, “Will keto make my triglycerides higher?” The tool has a wheel on its outermost layer that displays the query the questions are based on. Some of the queries that are displayed on the wheel are when, will, are, why, how, which, who, what, where, and can.

So your results might be:

• Where to eat on a keto diet
• Who is the keto diet good for
• Can the keto diet cause hair loss
• What does the keto diet do to your body
• Which keto diet plan is the best
• How does the keto diet burn fat
• When should you stop (or start) the keto diet
• Why does the keto diet work…etc.

You could look at the list of questions and organize them into categories like adverse effects (hair loss), positive effects (health benefits), and so on (weight loss, A1C improvements, etc.). Determine the most appropriate question to use for each subheading, and put in the effort to craft a comprehensive piece that is deserving of a ranking on the People Also Ask SERP.

It is important to keep in mind that although the People Also Ask section has the potential to be a strategic option for your SEO efforts, it is necessary to combine it with on-page basic SEO. People won’t be directed to a page that doesn’t load properly or isn’t mobile-friendly, for example, because Google won’t do that.

Conclusion

Google’s People Also Ask FAQs can be a powerful tool for SEO, and it’s important to take advantage of it. With the right strategies and tools, you can ensure that your website will be included in these SERPs. And with a well-crafted article, you have an even better chance at appearing as one of the first few results on the list.

But remember: The People Also Ask section is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to successful SEO campaigns. Be sure to combine this approach with other elements — such as link building and content optimization — for best results. Good luck with your SEO efforts!

Remember that while the People Also Ask section can be a strategic option for your SEO efforts, it has to be combined with basic, on-page SEO. Google isn’t going to send people to a page that fails to load or isn’t mobile friendly, for example.

Originally published at https://cybermediacreations.com on January 11, 2023.