6 Tips To Help Your Content Appear on A Google Answer Box
What is a Google Answer Box? Why it’s only the tippity top– the cream of the crop. That might come as a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s really how Google sees your particular content or website, enough to put it not only on the front page but also on the Google Answer Box section which appears before all the search results.
You see, the Google Answer Box exists to save the users time and index finger muscle work. It contains the concise and exact answer to a question, usually specific but sometimes otherwise. It’s an indication of how useful or essential your content is for a particular niche or query from a group of users on the internet wanting to know the same thing.
Getting there, however, is a tough and uphill battle depending on the keywords you want to aim for. Usually, for the most common questions and searches, only the most competitive and already established websites battle it out for control with smaller sites having little to no chance. However, there also lots of searches and questions on the internet that are not too common or obvious.
Learning how to optimize your content for these ought to put your work in the Google Answer Box. Now, we have actually prepared some tips and tricks to help you along the way in your quest to launch your content at the top. Even if you don’t make it, these tips will at least increase your chances and they’re good to apply anyway regardless of your goals or the results.
1. Do your keyword research
Well, this one is pretty obvious as you’re probably doing this for most of your content, especially the written ones. Not doing keyword research for your content even if it’s organic is a good way to waste space on your website. Unless your website or blog is but a journal for your daily thoughts or is not being monetized, using the plethora of keyword tracking tools is a necessity these days.
Most of them are free anyway and you can even find some of the best of them in this particular article. Sometimes you might even want to take a look at long-tail keywords or even complete questions as keywords or keyphrases. Addressing those can be a good way to get your content to appear in the Google Answer Box especially if your keyword is popular enough yet uncommon at the same time.
It’s not just the keywords you want to use you should be researching, but also your competitors’ keywords too. Which keywords they are using or what questions they are answering could give you a good picture and example. You might also want to check which ones they haven’t answered or done yet.
2. Organize your content structure
Google simply loves structured content in any form (as long as it abides by community standards). You can see plenty of list articles from top sites getting the cut into the Answer Box along with being first or second place in the results. The usual word combinations that yield that sort of list answer are questions or searches that include “best” or “worst” or “to,” basically anything superlative.
Then, there are other Answer Boxes that paraphrase paragraphs including the keywords, sometimes even specific pictures. The bottom line is, they all have a structure that Google can easily index or recognize. List articles, for example, all have headings and subheadings to help search engines categorize and pull them up faster. Apart from lists and good paragraphs, tables and graphs also provide answers that Google likes.
3. Answer specific questions
Speaking of answers, answering specific questions and even writing your content around such queries is one good way to get into a Google Search Box. The “who, what, when, where, and why, or even how” of things are extremely helpful for people. It can be anything from fixing household stuff to cooking or who’s who when it comes to Hollywood and other spotlights.
Of course, we can’t stress enough how to accurate and credible you have to be in order to get featured. You can’t just start answering or adding opinions to your answers without the proper authority or study-based knowledge to back them up. This might work for some lists, but questions regarding medicine or food hazards, for example, can mean the difference between harm and help for plenty of people.
4. Use the correct HTML markups
In addition to organizing your content structure, you also might want to check your HTML markups. Thankfully, WordPress usually does this for you already in the visual or default editor interface. Still, it does pay to check the HTML text tab from time to time.
Sometimes, HTML can tangle itself and cause some wrong markups or codes especially if you have editor plugins installed. For this, you might want to check the accuracy of your HTML using a resource like this one.
5. Use Answer the Public and other resources
As for which other resources you might want to use to check out the questions everyone is asking, Answer the Public is a good one. It’s a free service that lets you know what people are asking Google or what they want to search. This way, you can check what questions already have their own Answer Boxes.
You can then surgically target niche queries or searches especially those related to your content. Even certain questions like “how to lose body fat without going to the gym” can easily be targeted with different answers in articles such as bodyweight exercises and the like. You just have to put yourself in the users’ shoes.
6. Be concise
Last but not least, being concise and straight to the point is what both Google and internet users prefer. You have to understand that most people who ask questions in Google want a quick answer and will not linger too long. If they want more details they will click your content and visit your page but you have to do them the service first of answering their initial search.
This way, you can gain their trust and show just how responsible you are as a blogger and content creator. Make sure to practice all these tips and you’ll be inching closer to the top eventually with each content.