How to Populate in the “People Also Ask” Section on Google

The Beauty of PAA’s 

There’s only ten organic search results on the first page of Google. By writing helpful content that’s answering common questions, you have a higher chance of ranking well on Google in the PAA’s.

If you were to conduct a Google search for SkinMedica, major players populate on the first page of Google, including DermStore, Wal-Mart and SkinStore. The PAA’s allow for smaller players to gain valuable organic traffic to their site. 

How to Populate in the People Also Ask Section 

Research combined with great content writing will help you populate in the people also ask section. You need to answer questions that people are posing on Google. This will ultimately help you rank well in the PAA section.

Jotting Down Customer Questions 

What’s unique about our agency is we’ve built a seven-figure in-house eCommerce brand in DermWarehouse [learn more]. The tactics we deploy for one brand we’re able to rollout for the other.

For both The Media Captain and DermWarehouse, we compile a list of questions that our customers and prospects ask. Based on these questions, we write content that answers the query.

If your customers have questions, there’s a strong likelihood other people searching on Google are asking the same thing.  This is why you want to start jotting down questions from customers and prospects and answering these questions on your site. 

Both our agency and eCom brands are set-up in Monday.com, a fantastic project management software. Our entire team is trained to write down questions from customers and prospects within a Monday.com board, which keeps this process organized.

The questions that come in from prospective customers will be different than questions from current customers, since they have different intent.  

Our team determines which questions will make for good blog posts on our websites. Well written, informative content has a strong likelihood of ranking well on Google.

Below is a visual from our Monday.com board for The Media Captain of blog topics we intend to write about, all based on customer feedback.

The beauty of writing down your own customer questions is threefold. The content you write can become a resource to send to current and prospective customers. If your customer has a question, there are other people wanting the same question answered. Additionally, your content will be more unique than copying what’s already written on other websites. 

Jotting down your customer questions is just one tactic we recommend to populate in the people also ask section. You can also be strategic in the content you search for online.

Conducting Research Online 

We find great content to write about by going to Google and conducting keyword research. It may be more challenging to outrank existing content that’s Google’s already prioritizing in the PAA’s.

If you have a stronger website authority or if you write better content compared to what’s populating in the PAA’s, your content can eventually appear in the PAA’s. 

To find strong topics for the people also ask section, we recommend looking at the related searches at the bottom of Google (see below). You can also use a tool like SEMRush’s keyword magic tool.

The issue with keyword research tools is oftentimes, the best queries for PAA’s are long-tailed keywords, which are niche with limited keyword volume. This is why we love jotting down customer questions, it’s more unique. 

Optimize Headings with People Also Ask References

Structing your content based on the People Also Ask results can give your content a better chance to appear in the PAA.

For example, if we were to blog about “How Long it takes to rank on the first page of Google,” the PAA’s provide an amazing outline for the different paragraphs that can be included within this blog. 

Google loves strong headings and will be more likely to pull information from your site into the “People Also Ask” section if you incorporate strong headings with stellar supporting content.