This post explains what you need to do to get a People Also Ask box (PAA box) for your snippet in search engine results. You want to do that because you can get in position 0 even if you don’t rank near top 3. That’s a great additional opportunity to stand out of the crowd in Google search results.
As a rule of thumb, you want to do the same things you do for featured snippets if you also want to appear in People Also Ask (PAA). Here’s what I mean in more details:
1. Questions and answers
You want to do research on the questions that people ask about the topic (search for) you want to write about. Basically, you need to create a list of questions and give high-quality correct answers to those questions (fully answer each question). You want to answer those questions concisely and factually (+ free from plagiarism).
You can use PAA for brainstorming on what questions you actually need to answer in your post or page that you’d like to prep for your own PPA:
2. Use Jump Links
You want to use jump links that bring the person that clicks the link right to the section of the post that answers the question. The blog at Ahrefs.com https://ahrefs.com/blog/ is using jump links.
For example, this post https://ahrefs.com/blog/eat-seo/ has a contents section at the very top of the page:
If you click, say, “Is E‑A-T a ranking factor?”
It’ll bring you to the section of the post that answers exactly that question. This method allows you to get a jump link within the search snippet taking you to the answer of the question within the page (on your site).
3. Use Plain Language
You want to use plain language while answering questions because it’s going to increase the odds of getting into PAA (People Also Ask). Your answers need to be correct and easy-to-understand.
4. Avoid Sales Language
If you create a piece of content with too much sales language, you can rest assured that you won’t get to PAA because it makes no sense to Google to advertise your ad copy for free. So you most definitely need to avoid excessive promotional language if you want to gear up your page or post for PAA.
5. Add semantic-rich search terms
In a nutshell, you want to mention your keyword in the question and use the same keyword (or its SEO synonym) right below the question in your answer. In other words, you want to Include the complete questions and answers in a tightly themed web page.
6.Use Q&A Schema
Though it’s not a guarantee but using the Q&A schema (https://schema.org/FAQPage) won’t hurt and can also increase the chances of getting into PAA.
Useful links
- Google’s “People Also Ask” (Related Questions): What They Are, and Why You Should Care (Updated)
- Infinite “People Also Ask” Boxes: Research and SEO Opportunities
- How to Use Google’s New “People Also Ask” Feature 101
- Targeting featured snippet and ‘People also ask’ SERP features
- The explosion of PAA: Answering questions is the new way to dominate search
- How to Target, Optimize and Track Rankings for ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA)
- People Also Ask Boxes and Related Questions
- Scraping ‘People Also Ask’ boxes
- How To Appear In The People Also Ask Box
