How Can Your Site Get into Google Answer Boxes?

This article is part of an SEO series from WooRank. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

In an attempt to improve its user experience, Google is constantly developing its algorithm to display more relevant results in its search results pages (SERPs). So when someone uses a search term that looks like they are looking for an answer to a question, Google will often display a featured snippet, also known as the Answer Box. What are featured snippets? What do they mean for SEO? How do you get featured? Find out in our four-step guide to the Google Answer Box.

What Is the Google Answer Box?

The Quick Answer Box is a featured snippet that appears at the top of SERPs when Google is able to determine that searchers are looking for an answer to a question. It includes the text Google thinks answers the question, the title of the webpage that contains the content, its URL and a link.

Featured snippets have been around for a few years now, but are becoming more prominent and common as Google is better able to figure out search intent. They are particularly common for event schedules (sports games, movie times, concerts, etc.), recipes and bacon numbers.

Pope John Paul II’s bacon number is 2, by the way.

The Answer Box is a bit of a mixed bag, marketing wise. On the plus side, if you’re able to get your content into a featured snippet, you’ll leapfrog everyone in front of you and get your site right at the top of the SERP. On the other hand, there is some concern that answering a searcher’s question right in the search results will deter them from clicking through as they no longer have any need for visiting the page. However, pages that get picked for featured snippets have seen huge increases in both sessions and click through rate. We’ve found that positioning yourself as an authority on a subject actually encourages people, not only to click through to your page, but also to return to your site whenever they have other questions or are more likely to convert.

Step 1: Research Queries that Trigger an Answer Box

The first step to appearing in a featured snippet is to figure out what queries trigger a featured snippet. Officially, the Answer Box appears "when a user asks a question in Google Search." But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Not all searches in the form of questions trigger an Answer Box, and not all searches that display an Answer Box are in the form of a question. For example, the query “who eats the most pizza in the world” doesn’t display one:

While at the same time, searching just for "pizza popularity" triggers a featured snippet summarizing pizza’s popularity in the United States:

Going back to our first example, searching just for "link juice" will trigger the Answer Box summarizing WooRank’s SEO Guide to link juice.

There are two ways you can go about identifying opportunities to appear in featured snippets. The first is to figure out what questions people are asking that are relevant to your keywords, and then optimize your page for the answer (more on that later). There are tools you can use like Answer the Public to find questions asked about your topic. This tool appends question-related words — who, what, when, why and how — to the front of your keyword and uses Google Suggest to create a list of questions. You can then download the list of questions as either a CSV or as an image file.

Find questions your audience are asking outside of search engines with faqfox by WebpageFX. Faqfox crawls popular forums in a particular niche for questions asked about your keyword. If people are asking questions on reddit, they’ve probably already searched Google for them.

Do a bit of keyword research to make sure relevant questions get enough search volume to be worth the effort.

Your second option is to find your keywords that already display a featured snippet in the SERP and create content to take the current answer’s spot. This might be a little more difficult because Google’s already decided that piece of content is trusted and authoritative enough to use in an Answer Box, but it’s possible to find answers that maybe aren’t quite right for the question.

Step 2: Optimize and Structure Content to Answer Questions

Obviously, one of the most important factors in appearing in featured snippets is to write content that authoritatively answers the question. The language you use here is important — Google is looking for content that reads like the answer to a question, a how-to guide and a step-by-step process. So, if I want to get my site in the Answer Box for "what is search engine marketing," I would be sure to include a sentence that starts with “Search engine marketing is…” near the top of the page. If I wanted to be featured for “how to make the perfect pie crust," I would create a numbered list laying out each step of the process (mix flour, sugar and salt, add butter, etc.).

Once you’ve created detailed, authoritative content, optimize the rest of your page elements around the answer:

• Title tag and <h1> tag: Normally best practice is to use your keyword in your title tag. However, to optimize for featured snippets, use the entire search query in the page title. For our two earlier examples, you’d want your title tags to look like this:

  <title>What is Search Engine Marketing?</title
  <title>How to Make the Perfect Pie Crust</title>
  
  

  Just like with traditional SEO, Google relies on the title tag to determine if the page content will answer the question. Give it a nudge in the right direction by including that question in the tag.

• Subheads: Google doesn’t always use body text for featured snippets. Sometimes they pull subheads (<h2> through <h6>) and list them in the order they appear on the page. This is particularly common for searches looking to learn a process, how to complete a task or an answer that can be summed up in a list (like the steps to appearing in Google’s featured snippets, for example). If you’re targeting these searches, explicitly lay out each step as a separate subhead and elaborate in the body text.

• Body copy: If you are targeting a "what is" question, use your answer in a <p> tag right after the header tag that includes the question. The ideal length for your snippet content is between 50 and 60 words (not characters, for once).

Step 3: Use Schema Markup

Semantic markup isn’t going to directly get you into featured snippets — Gary Illyes said so last year after fellow Googler John Mueller stated that schema markup does help with featured snippets. So why should you bother with it? Two reasons:

Continue reading %How Can Your Site Get into Google Answer Boxes?%

by Maria Lopez via SitePoint