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

Initial Research: Finding What to Write About In People Also Ask Section

How exactly do you get your business to appear in the coveted People Also Ask section? It all starts with the proper keyword and question-based research. The PAA is all about answering questions! There’s no better place to get a list of questions than your customers and prospects.

Jotting Down Customer Questions 

• When you are speaking with current and prospective clients/customers, jot down questions. This is one of the best ways to create unique content for the PAA section.
• Queries that appear in the PAA section don’t have a lot of search volume, so uniqueness is a differentiator, hence why client questions are such a great way to find unique topics to write about.
• If you go to the PAA section and try to replicate something already written, this would not be unique, and you’ll be climbing an uphill battle.
• Your company should create a process to take note of daily questions so you can determine which ones would be best for your website.
• The beauty about jotting down questions and adding this information to your site is that you can appear in the PAA but also will serve as a sales resource when your customers/prospects have the same question.

Staying Organized With Customer Questions

• Our agency and eCom brands are set up on 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 differ from those from current customers since they have different intent. 
• Our team determines which questions will make for good website blog posts. We also look to see which questions can be added to existing service or product pages. 
• Well-written, informative content is likely to rank 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 and prospective client insight: 

Conducting Keyword Research 

• If you have a stronger website authority or write better content than what’s populating in the PAAs, your content can still appear in the People Also Ask section. 
• A Google search is a great way to find popular questions people seek.
• We recommend looking at the related searches at the bottom of Google along with questions beneath your search query for topic ideation. 
• You can also use third-party tools like SEMRush to find a list of questions.
• The issue with keyword research tools is that the best queries for PAAs are often long-tailed, niche keywords with limited keyword volume. This is why we love jotting down customer questions; it’s more unique. 

Related Searches on Google

• Below was a search for “Columbus Dermatologist.”
• Scrolling to the bottom of the first page, you will find “Related Searches.”
• There are valuable queries that provide you with insight into what people seek.
• If you had a female dermatologist at your practice or accepted Medicaid, this would be great content to add to your site, which could help you better popular organically and in the PAA.

Questions Beneath Search Queries

• When you conduct a Google Search, other popular questions and queries auto-fill underneath your search query.
• These questions are great resources for what keywords and topics to write about on your website, which can appear in the PAA.

Paid Tool: SEMRush

• SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool has a database of over 25 billion keywords.
• There is a “Questions” section where it will find relevant questions to a specific keyword.
• There is a metric called “KD,” which is keyword difficulty, an indicator of how hard it will be to rank for a specific query.
• Finding low-difficulty keywords is a great opportunity to rank within the People Also Ask section.

Optimizing Website for People Also Ask

• Most queries that rank in the People Also Ask Section are blog posts or FAQs.
• Informational type of content more commonly appears in the People Also Ask Section versus commercial.
• YouTube videos have been gaining more relevance and exposure within the PAAs
• When you have strong headlines on blogs, this also increases your chances of appearing in the PAA section. Google loves strong headlines and will pull a section from a blog into the FAQ.

FAQ Example

• Below is a Google search for Alphalash.
• Our in-house eCom brand, DermWarehouse, populates in the PAA for “What are the Ingredients of Alphalash?”
• We knew “Active Ingredients for Alphalash” was a popular question, so we included this on our brand page FAQ.
• This strategic effort helped us gain first-page positioning via the People Also Ask section, leading to more organic traffic for a profitable product page on our site.

Populating in the PAA

Ingredient Information Pulling From FAQ On Brand Page

• You will see that we have information listed as a FAQ on the Alphaeon brand page.
• Google loves FAQs and frequently pulls them into the PAA
• You can use FAQ schema to better inform Google where FAQ content lives on your site