If you have recently put in a search term in Google, you may have noticed the results containing an expandable grid box. In this box are a series of questions involving the search term you looked for.
Each of these questions can be expanded using a drop down menu to see the answer. The answers offer a link for continued reading in the page they have been drawn from as well as invite you to search for that specific question:
What’s really interesting about “People Also Ask” boxes is that they give you some insight into Google’s understanding of any topic. For example, if in the above screenshot you clicked a question related to “lab-created diamonds”, the further questions which will immediately show up below will all revolve around “lab-created diamonds”:
On the other hand, if you were to click a different questions, Google will show a different set of follow-up questions:
As you can imagine, this offers some great information to users that want additional questions answered without hunting for them.
The boxes never come on the very top of of search results: Instead, they come further down the page inspiring the user to dig deeper.
Finding The Right Queries
The related question boxes don’t show up for every search term.
More often than not, Google only creates question boxes for the most general, often searched terms. The more narrowed the search term or phrase, the less likely it will be to have question boxes.
To generate the list of “People Also Ask” questions, run your domain in our “Featured Snippet+ Tool“:
You can also see related questions on a page-level:
Relying On Authority and Quality
Your authority is important here. Looking at the related questions sources, they tend to be drawn from the most popular results from a search. For example, if you search for [chocolate diamonds], the “related questions” box contains answers from a museum, a recognized diamond expert, and a very old diamond company.
Interestingly, these are not the ordered results of the search, but they are within the first page. So at least some of the priority seems to come from the strength of the content.
Obviously the quality of your content is going to matter a lot here, and probably more than whatever algorithm beyond quality Google uses. The more clear, well-structured and informative your content, the more sense it will make for Google to choose to use the info over other websites.
You also want to be careful of where the content is, and how it is presented. You need to have clear questions and answers in the text itself.
Notably, most pages (but not all) featured in the “related questions” box also rank in quick-answer boxes in the corresponding query.
Here is the question – answer in Google’s “People Also Ask” (Related Questions) Box:
And here’s the same page featured in the quick-answer box for that linked query:
So the two features are somehow connected.
Notice also: In the above example that company has a mini-site jump link within the search snippet taking you to the answer of the question within the page.
This one originates from on-page table of contents that works as an anchor link:
So in this case, here’s what the optimization strategy and the results looks like:
Write indepth content covering a number of related questions;
On top of the page, create a table of context, each jump-link taking you to the part of the page answering each question;
Enjoy additional exposure in search results:
Get featured in quick-answer boxes
Get featured in the “People also ask” box
Get an additional mini-site link in the search snippet
Should Schema Be Included?
Structured markup may or may not be needed here. I was never able find any correlation between having Schema markup and being featured in the related question boxes.
But it doesn’t hurt, and you want to do anything possible to improve your chances of being understood by a search engine better.
Using Google’s related questions have a two-pronged set of benefits. On one hand, you are going to drive organic traffic by offering up a link to more information on a topic the searcher is already looking for. On the other, you are building your site authority by being one of a few to be chosen to provide answers to those common questions.
Trying to navigate the murky waters of how this algorithm works is going to be a hit and miss process. But that is something that is going to help you with your overall marketing strategy, so you are accomplishing a few important goals here (including creating a one-stop resource, attracting links, enjoying additional exposure in SERPs).
Google announced that it has been rolling out a new update called Bert.
I know what you are thinking… does this update really matter? Should I even spend time learning about it?
Well, Bert will affect 1 in 10 search queries.
To give you an idea of how big of an update this is, it’s the biggest update since Google released RankBrain.
In other words, there is a really good chance that this impacts your site. And if it doesn’t, as your traffic grows, it will eventually affect your site.
But before we go into how this update affects SEOs and what you need to adjust (I will go into that later in this post), let’s first get into what this update is all about.
So, what is Bert?
Bert stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
You are probably wondering, what the heck does that mean, right?
Google, in essence, has adjusted its algorithm to better understand natural language processing.
Just think of it this way: you could put a flight number into Google and they typically show you the flight status. Or a calculator may come up when you type in a math equation. Or if you put a stock symbol in, you’ll get a stock chart.
Or even a simpler example is: you can start typing into Google and its autocomplete feature can figure out what you are searching for before you even finishing typing it in.
But Google has already had all of that figured out before Bert. So let’s look at some examples of Bert in action.
Let’s say you search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need visa”.
Before Bert, the top result would be how US citizens can travel to Brazil without a visa. But look at the search query carefully… it’s slight, but it is a big difference.
The search wasn’t about US people going to Brazil, it was about people from Brazil traveling to the US.
The result after the Bert update is much more relevant.
Google is now taking into account prepositions like “for” or “to” that can have a lot of meanings to the search query.
Here’s another example… “do estheticians stand a lot at work”…
Google used to previously match terms. For example, their system used to think “stand” is the same as “stand-alone”.
Now they understand that the word “stand” has the context of physical demand. In other words, is the job exhausting… do you have to be on your feet a lot?
And one more, “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy” …
As you can see from the before and after picture, it’s clear that the new result is more relevant.
Same with this one on “math practice books for adults” …
Is that the only change?
It isn’t. Google also made changes to featured snippets.
For example, if you searched for “parking on a hill with no curb”, Google used to place too much emphasis on the word “curb” and not enough emphasis on the word “no”.
That’s a big difference… and you can see that in the results.
The new changes this algorithm update brings makes it much more relevant for searchers and it creates a better experience for you and me and everyone else who uses Google.
But how does it affect SEOs?
You need to change your SEO strategy
There are three types of queries people usually make when performing a search:
Informational
Navigational
Transactional
An informational query is like someone looking to lose weight. They aren’t sure how so they may search for “how to lose weight”.
And once they perform the search, they may find a solution such as different diets. From there they may search for a solution, using a navigational query such as “Atkins diet”.
Once someone figures out the exact solution, they then may perform a transactional search query, such as “the Atkins diet cookbook”.
From what we are seeing on our end is that Bert is mainly impacting top-of-the-funnel keywords, which are informational related keywords.
Now if you want to not only maintain your rankings but gobble up some of the rankings of your competition, a simple solution is to get very specific with your content.
Typically, when you create content, which is the easiest way to rank for informational related keywords, SEOs tell you to create super long content.
Yes, you may see that a lot of longer-form content ranks well on Google, but their algorithm doesn’t focus on word count, it focuses on quality.
The context of the tweet from Danny Sullivan, who is Google’s search liaison, is that he wants SEOs to focus on creating content that is fundamentally great, unique, useful, and compelling.
So when you use tools like Ubersuggest to find new topics to go after, you need to make sure your content is super-specific.
For example, if you have a business about fitness and you blog about “how to lose weight without taking pills”, your content shouldn’t focus on diet shakes or supplements or anything too similar to diet pills. Instead, it should discuss all of the alternative methods.
I know what you are thinking, shakes and supplements may not be diet pills and they aren’t the same keyword but expect Bert to get more sophisticated in the next year in which it will better understand what people are really looking for.
Additionally, you should stop focusing on keyword density.
Yes, a lot of SEOs have moved away from this, but I still get a handful of emails each day asking me about keyword density.
Keyword density will even be less important in the future as Google better understands the context of the content you are writing.
So, where’s the opportunity?
As I mentioned, it’s related to creating highly specific content around a topic.
It’s not necessarily about creating a really long page that talks about 50 different things that’s 10,000 words long. It’s more about answering a searcher’s question as quick as possible and providing as much value compared to the competition.
Just like when you search for “what is it like to be in the Olympics”, you’ll see a list of results that look something like this:
Although the first result has the title of “What it’s like to go to the Olympics”, the article doesn’t break down what it is like to go as an attendee, it breaks down what it is like to go as an athlete. Just like a searcher would expect based on the query.
Bert was clearly able to figure this out even though the title could have gone either way. And the article itself isn’t that long. The article itself only has 311 words.
If you want to do well when it comes to ranking for informational keywords, go very specific and answer the question better than your competitors. From videos and images to audio, do whatever needs to be done to create a better experience.
Now to be clear, this doesn’t mean that long-form content doesn’t work. It’s just that every SEO already focuses on long-form content. They are going after generic head terms that can be interpreted in 100 different ways and that’s why the content may be long and thorough.
In other words, focus more on long-tail terms.
You may think that is obvious but let’s look at the data.
It all starts with Ubersuggest. If you haven’t used it yet, you can type in a keyword like “marketing” and it will show you the search volume as well as give you thousands (if not millions) of keyword variations.
In the last 30 days, 4,721,534 keyword queries were performed on Ubersuggest by 694,284 marketers. Those 4,721,534 searches returned 1,674,841,398 keyword recommendations.
And sure, SEOs could be typing in head terms to find more long-tail phrases, but when we look at what keywords people are selecting within Ubersuggest and exporting, 84% of marketers are focusing on 1 or 2-word search terms.
Only 1.7% of marketers are focusing on search terms that are 5 or words longer.
Following the strategy of creating content around very specific long-tail phrases is so effective that sites like Quora are generating 60,428,999 visitors a month just from Google alone in the United States.
And a lot of their content isn’t super detailed with 10,000-word responses. They just focus on answering very specific questions that people have.
Conclusion
Even if your search traffic drops a bit from the latest update, it’s a good thing.
I know that sounds crazy, but think of it this way… if someone searched for “how to lose weight without diet pills” and they landed on your article about how diet pills are amazing, they are just going to hit the back button and go back to Google.
In other words, it is unlikely that the traffic converted into a conversion.
Sure, you may lose some traffic from this update, but the traffic was ruining your user metrics and increasing your bounce rate.
Plus, this is your opportunity to create content that is super-specific. If you lose traffic, look at the pages that dropped, the search queries that you aren’t ranking for anymore, and go and adjust your content or create new content that answers the questions people are looking for.
If you don’t know how to do this, just log into Search Console, click on “search results”, and click on the date button.
Then click on compare and select the dates where your traffic dropped and compare it to the previous periods. Then select “Queries” and sort by the biggest difference.
You’ll have to dig for the longer-term search queries as those are the easiest to fix. And if you are unsure about what to fix, just search for the terms on Google that dropped and look at the top-ranking competitors. Compare their page with yours as it will provide some insights.
Today, I thought I would do something a bit different, as 66.9% of my website traffic is brand new.
For those of you who don’t know, my name is Neil Patel and I’m the co-founder of a digital marketing agency called, NPDigital, where we help companies of all sizes get more traffic and sales.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for roughly 18 years now and most of the companies I co-founded have been in the software arena, specifically the web analytics sector.
And now, I’m back at it with Ubersuggest, my latest software company.
In addition to that, I’ve angel invested in dozens of companies. Some have done well, and others haven’t.
Overall, I’ve been blessed with a few successes that have made up for my failures plus more.
So today is your day to ask me any questions you have, and I will do my best to answer it. You can ask me about entrepreneurship, marketing, or anything else. I’ve dealt with class-action lawsuits, an FTC investigation (which I passed), and I’ve lost out on acquisitions from Fortune 1000 companies because of stupidity on my part.
All I ask of you is. Please keep your question as short as possible. One to two sentences max as I will get hundreds of comments (potentially even 1,000 or more).
The other day I was recording a podcast episode with my co-host Eric Siu and he wanted to discuss something in particular.
He wanted to talk about how I got to 62,000 Instagram followers in a very short period of time and without spending any money on ads or marketing.
Eric is a great marketer as well, and when it comes to social media, he spends much more time than me on it and he even has people at his ad agency dedicated to helping him grow his personal brand online.
It’s not just with Instagram either, I beat him on all platforms.
Heck, he even does something that I don’t do, which is smart… he continually pays for advice. For example, he had his team jump on an hour call with Gary Vaynerchuk’s social media team so they could learn from them and grow his brand faster.
So, what’s the secret to my success?
Well, before I get into it, let me first start off by saying I love Eric to death and the point of this post isn’t to pick on him or talk crap… more so, I have a point to make and you’ll see it in a bit below.
I could even tell you that you need to respond to every comment and build up a relationship with your followers, which will help you grow your following and brand.
And although all of this is true, I dare you to try the fundamentals or the strategies that every marketing guru talks about doing. If you do, I bet this will happen…
It will be a lot of work and, if you are lucky, in the next 30 days you may get 10% more followers.
Sure, some of you will get much more growth, but you’ll find that you can’t always replicate it and it won’t be consistent.
So, what is it then?
Is it luck?
Luck is part of some people’s success, but not most. The problem with luck is it doesn’t teach you much and it isn’t easy to replicate.
The reality is, some people will just get lucky and have tons of traction.
In other words, luck isn’t the secret. But if you do want to get “luckier”, then you can always become an early adopter which helps a bit.
How early is early?
When you jump onto a social network when it’s new, it’s easier to grow and become popular.
For example, I got to over 30,000 Twitter followers extremely fast when Twitter first came out.
At that time, I wasn’t as well known… it happened because of a few reasons:
Social algorithms are favorable early on – algorithms are typically favorable and most people will see your content. There aren’t many restrictions, hence it’s easier to grow. After a social network becomes popular, algorithms tighten up.
Algorithms are easier to game early on – when you are early, you can use a lot of hacks to grow faster. For example, on Twitter, I would just follow tons of people a day and unfollow anyone who didn’t follow me back.
First movers’ advantage – social networks want more users, that’s what they need to succeed. In the early stages of any platform, they want to help you gain more of a following so you will keep using their platform.
But here is the thing: even though being an early adopter helps, it’s not the secret to my success.
Just look at Instagram, I am really late to the game. But I started growing fast just this year as that is when we really started.
If you can get in early, you should do so, assuming you have the time to invest. For example, this is the time to get in on Tiktok.
When you get in early, there is always the chance that the social network may end up flopping. But if it does take off, you’ll be ahead of your competition.
So what did I do?
Here was the secret to my growth… and it still works today. Eric Siu is even doing it with me right now.
It’s piggybacking on brands that are already popular.
When I first started, no one knew who I was. And I’m not saying everyone knows who I am today… by no means do I have a large brand like Tony Robbins.
What I did early on in my career was piggyback off of other popular brands.
For example, I hit up Pete Cashmore from Mashable, Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, Adrianna Huffington from Huffington Post, and so many other popular sites like ReadWriteWeb, Business Insider, Gawker Media, and GigaOm to name just a few.
I know some of them don’t exist anymore, but back then they were extremely popular. Anyone who was in tech, and even some who weren’t, knew about each of those sites.
So, when I got started as a marketer, I hit up all of those sites and offered all of them free marketing in exchange for promoting my brand and adding “Marketing done by Neil Patel” or “Marketing done by Pronet”, which was my ad agency back then.
Just look at the image above. TechCrunch used to link to my site on every page of their site… forget rich anchor text, it really is all about branding.
The hardest part is, I had to email and message these influencers dozens of times just to convince them to let me help them for free. And a lot of them ignored me or didn’t accept my offer.
But of a few said yes.
Pete from Mashable was one of the first to say yes. Once his traffic and rankings skyrocketed, his competition hit me up. Especially TechCrunch.
What was funny, though, is that I was constantly emailing TechCrunch and didn’t hear back. 6 months from my first email, they eventually accepted my offer.
I made a deal with Michael Arrington at the time in which once I boosted his traffic, he would add a logo that I did marketing for him, which you saw above.
In addition to that, he would tell all of his venture capital friends what I did for him and share the results (so hopefully they would share it with their portfolio companies, which would help me make money) and write a blog post about me.
He didn’t end up writing the blog post, which is fine, but he did the other two.
When he sent out emails to VCs showing a Google Analytics graph of his traffic growing at a rapid pace, I quickly got inundated with inquiries about my marketing services.
In addition to that, I was building up my brand… and my social media following. I was gaining “social clout” because I was doing good work for influencers.
One could argue that boosting traffic for someone like TechCrunch by 30% is worth millions and I should have charged for my services. Although I spent countless time doing free work, I wouldn’t trade it for any single dollar as it is what made me and helped build up my reputation.
And I didn’t stop there. Even today, I try to associate myself with other popular brands. Just like how I was lucky enough to work with Robert Herjavec, who has a popular TV show in the US along with Mark Cuban…
Here’s how many visitors I was getting for my name “Neil Patel” on a monthly basis before I started working with Robert.
And this is how many visitors I get for my name on a monthly basis a few months after I worked with Robert.
That’s a 37.84% increase in a matter of months!
By piggybacking off of popular brands, it doesn’t just help my website traffic but also helps to grow my social media following as well.
Just like as you can see below with my Instagram growth…
Now it isn’t just me who can do this, anyone can.
How can you piggyback off of other brands?
Just like how I piggybacked off of brands like TechCrunch, Eric is doing something similar to me at the moment.
We have a podcast that generates over 1 million downloads a month.
Eric’s had a podcast for years, but the one he has with me has more than 10x the listeners. This has helped him grow his brand a lot over the last year.
Let’s just look at the data. According to Eric, due to the podcast, he has signed up 6 clients, which has generated 540,000 dollars in annual revenue.
Now when he goes to tech conferences, 3 to 4 people tend to come up to him and mention how they love Marketing School and his work. In addition to that, it has been easier for Eric to set up meetings (people respond back to him more now), and he is also getting advisory shares in companies due to his growing brand. And the best part is, he is getting more paid speaking gigs for up to $10,000 a pop because of the podcast.
The data shows it was a good move by Eric for partnering up with me. He pushed me to do a podcast years ago and I told him no because I was too lazy. He didn’t give up though. Eventually, he got me to say yes and flew to my house in Las Vegas to record our first episode.
He did all of the work and it has been a great mutual relationship as doing this podcast has also helped grow my brand at the same time.
Now you are probably thinking, why isn’t his follower count growing fast enough?
Well, he needs to do what he is doing with me with a few more influencers to really put fuel to the fire. Just like how I didn’t only piggyback off of TechCrunch… at one point the Gawker Media network was linking to me on every page of their sites, which was seen by over 100 million unique people per month.
That really gets your brand out there!
Another example is Brian Dean from Backlinko as he did something similar with me back in the day. Years ago I approached him to write a detailed guide on link building with him and he also created videos that were on my old marketing blog Quick Sprout, which helped him grow his brand.
I can’t take credit for “making” Eric or Brian successful. They would have done well without me… and in the grand scheme of things, I really didn’t do much for either of them.
It’s like saying TechCrunch made the Neil Patel brand. Of course, it helped, and helped a lot… but one partnership won’t make or break you.
And if I didn’t continually blog, create videos, speak at events, or do any of the other stuff that I did, the TechCrunch partnership wouldn’t have been as effective.
Eric and Brian would have grown their brand in other ways because their work stands for itself, hence they would have been successful on their own. I just helped provide a little boost, just like how TechCrunch provided me with a boost.
And once more people get to know you, you’ll naturally do better on the social web.
For example, when Will Smith created his Instagram account, he didn’t have to buy ads or anything. Everyone just knows him already and that’s why his Instagram account blew up really quickly.
And you can do what Will Smith did on a smaller scale. Similar to what I did.
But don’t expect it overnight. Will Smith has been on television for over 20 years. It’s multiple shows, movies, and connections with other famous people that have really helped grow Will’s brand.
Of course, we won’t get on TV as Will has, but you can piggyback on other popular brands multiple times to create a similar (smaller) effect.
All you have to do is help these influencers out for free.
If you are a web designer, offer design services. If you are a marketer, offer marketing services. If you are selling a product or service, keep giving it away for free and maybe someone will talk about your company.
If you don’t have anything you can offer that has value, just look at whatever influencer you want to associate with, see where they may need help, learn that skill, and offer it for free.
It’s the easiest way to become popular on the social web.
Conclusion
That’s my secret to being popular on the social web.
It’s also how I built a decent size company… purely by leveraging other popular brands in the early days.
You can do the same, but you have to be patient. Don’t expect it to happen overnight.
For example, Eric’s brand has been growing but we have been doing a podcast together for over 2 years now.
Plus, he continually pushes on his own and doesn’t just rely on leveraging other influencers.
Remember, nothing worthwhile happens overnight.
You have to be persistent with your emails, your direct messages, your text messages, and whatever else you can do to get a hold of these influencers. Most will ignore you but it is a numbers game and, eventually, you’ll be able to associate your brand with someone popular, which will grow your brand.
And last but not least: Don’t expect an influencer to make you successful. Sure, multiple influencers are better than one, but that’s not what I meant.
If Brian Dean from Backlinko wasn’t good at link building, creating content, SEO, and educating, he wouldn’t do well… no matter who he associated himself with. The same goes for Eric.
Your skills, your abilities, your product… whatever you are trying to brand needs to stand on its own.
So, what do you think about my secret? Are you going to copy it?
