{"id":11113,"date":"2019-07-30T12:26:08","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T10:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/?p=11113"},"modified":"2021-11-03T15:12:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T14:12:12","slug":"find-editorial-opportunities-from-google-paa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/find-editorial-opportunities-from-google-paa\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find editorial opportunities starting from Google\u2019s PAA"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you think about any potential topic you can write about, as an editor (or a content marketer) you know that you have to find the right angle<\/strong> to catch your reader\u2019s attention. It’s not easy to guess what your readers are looking for, but the fact is that Google knows it better than you – and any content writer in the world.<\/p>\n

In this article, I want to share with you a method to find new editorial opportunities<\/strong> on a given topic and to understand which angle and subtopics have a chance to be showcased by Google into its PAA snippet.<\/p>\n

Finding editorial opportunities and approaching them from the right angle is one of the most difficult – and crucial – parts of the editorial work for publishers and content marketers. Google\u2019s related questions that appear in the rich snippet People Also Ask can be a useful tool to understand what matters to your target audience.<\/p>\n

What are users really looking for when they search for something on Google? What are the subtopics that matter most to Google around a specific topic? Follow me and you will understand how to figure it out for every single topic you are working on.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the basics.<\/p>\n

What is the PAA snippet?<\/h2>\n

PAA, the acronym for People Also Ask and also known as Related Questions, is an accordion-like rich snippet that contains a selection of questions, which help Google\u2019s users to go in-depth a topic without even leaving the SERP<\/a>. Each answer in the PAA snippet comes from a different source that Google considers authoritative about a specific subtopic.<\/p>\n

At first, you only see 4 different questions. As you start interacting with this snippet and click on the arrow to read one of the answers, you will notice that Google populates the snippet with an apparently never-ending list of new questions.<\/p>\n

\"'Family
This is the PAA that you can see on the SERP for family business, one of the main keywords for Tharawat Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Actually, these questions may be a lot, but they are not infinite and, if you pay attention, you will notice that at a certain point questions become quite repetitive. In fact, there is a logic under these questions and they have a hierarchical organization.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first four questions are used to better understand the search intent and the choices of the searcher are used to deliver a secondary group of questions, which descend from the one that the user clicked.<\/p>\n

Why the PAA snippet matters to you?<\/h2>\n

In a context where the 10 blue links are losing a lot of their visibility and traction<\/a>, because they are leaving more and more space on the SERP to rich snippets, publishers and site owners need to find any spot to maximize the visibility of their content<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The PAA snippet has a pervasive impact on Google\u2019s SERPs. Nowadays, Related Questions appear in 84.4% of the SERPS<\/strong> in the USA market (source: MozCast<\/a>), this makes it the first rich snippet in terms of occurrences. It is far more common than the rich snippet (19,1% of the SERPs), and it grew more quickly in the last three years.<\/p>\n

\"The
Britney Muller<\/a>, Featured Snippets: Essentials to Know & How to Target<\/a> on Evernote<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What makes the PAA even more interesting from a publisher\u2019s standpoint is that a single PAA can show up in 21 unique SERPs (source: GetStat<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In other words, if you get a spot on a PAA, you have your chance to be featured in different SERPs<\/strong> within the same semantic domain.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get back to the family business example<\/a>. Google shows the same PAA when users are searching for the main keyword (\u2018family business\u2019) and also when they search for other related topics such as \u2018family business succession\u2019, \u2018family owned business success stories\u2019, and much more of them.<\/p>\n

This means that when your content is elected as a good answer by Google for its related questions, you will have great exposure and a serious boost in traffic.<\/p>\n

So, there are serious opportunities for your website ahead! ?<\/p>\n

Why Google is suggesting (all these) related questions?<\/h2>\n

Search engines are eager for content to give users the best answers for different intents and needs. There was a time when Google\u2019s aim was to give the users a set of results in the form of blue links and bring them to other websites seamlessly.<\/p>\n

Then rich snippets entered the SERP and everything changed.<\/p>\n

Nowadays Google plays all its cards to keep the users on its SERP<\/strong> as much as possible. The accordion-like rich snippet known as People Also Ask is just another way to keep the user on the SERP and investigate on the intent of the search.<\/p>\n

So, basically, Google is trying to profile users by providing more context and guessing what they are more interested in around a specific topic. According to PageRanger<\/a>, the initial 4 questions in a PAA target on average 2.8 different intents.<\/p>\n

How to extract and analyze the PAA snippet from a SERP<\/h2>\n

As a content writer, looking at the questions from the People Also Ask, you can guess how Google is connecting entities<\/a>. This quick peek into Google\u2019s knowledge graph<\/a> can give you a hint on:<\/p>\n