Google Answer Box Optimization?

[TakeshiYoung]

Anyone have any luck in optimizing your site to show up in the Google Answer Boxes that popup for informational queries? (for example: "what is seo?")

I've read many of the articles that have been written on the subject, and have been able to show up for many queries by a) ranking high organically, b) placing the question at the top of the page, and then answering it succinctly.

However, for one term a competitor continues to show up in the answer box instead of us, despite their site ranking lower organically in the search results.

Anyone have any experience/advice for replacing a competitor in the Answer Box? Thanks!

[MoosaHemani]

I am not sure what video I was listening to but it was a SMX for sure and there was the same topic. As far as Google representative answer is concern, they try to get this information from the website, they think is more trusted.

I don’t think there is much you can do about it but if you can get more authority links to that page and your content is pretty much design in such a way that it’s a perfect fit for Google Answer Box, I am sure Google will pick you up instead of your competitors.

Personally, I think there is no defined process for it, I mean after all the work, Google might not change the result so all you can do is to try and see if it works or not for you!

Hope this helps!

[Malika1]

Hi Takeshi,

I was able to get answer boxes for a client of mine in dental industry. From my observations and experience, you can get answer box only if your content has conversational lines in there. For example - how to, why, etc.

As I dont have a clear picture of your example I cant give you a lot of information but feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss it further.

Some of the things to keep in mind to appear in answer boxes -

1. Keep the titles very close to the search terms (ex. search query - What is the cost of _________. This should be included in your title and be good to make it appear in header tag too.

2. If the information you are trying to put in answer box can be put in a table on your content page, that would be great! The particular case where my client was able to get an answer box had some content displayed from the table. So in answer box, the whole table was showing.

3. Check your domain authority with your competitors. Is your competitor the one with higher domain authority? A lot has got to do with the sites that are linking to your competitor and the domain authority they have got.

4. Update your content frequently. This is another big factor as Google prefers to display content from sites that serves fresher content.

5. Backlinks - gain strong authority backlinks. I ran a campaign for this client where I worked on gaining strong links.

Hope this helps. Feel free to PM me. I would be happy to help.

• Malika

[TakeshiYoung]

Thanks! Do you have any examples where you were able to show up in the box just by building more backlinks?

[TakeshiYoung]

Thanks Malika! Our site does have high domain authority, and in general we tend to outrank our competitor and show up in the answer box, but for one specific query our competitor's site stubbornly continues to show up in the answer box above us.

I've updated the content quite a bit, but so far haven't seen any results. You mentioned backlinks-- do you have any instances where a page wasn't showing up in the answer box, and you were able to get it to show up solely through backlinking?

[Malika1]

I wouldnt say only backlinks were the reason as backlinks is only one part. I gained links from Wiki - as you know Google loves Wikipedia and pulls a lot of information from Wiki to knowledge graph. I build backlinks from Wiki and some other sources to our main page. After about 5-6 months, the answer box was showing.

I also remember one thing that I forgot to mention earlier. It can sometimes take a lot of time to kick competitor out of answer box and get yourself up there.

Food for thought - If you can build a click through relationship between searches and the webpage in question, I am sure Google can start giving you more favor if you increase click through rate for that particular keyword of yours. If you are already ranking higher then chances are that you are getting more clicks already but maybe from a different geographic location your competitor is getting more clicks and has a better click through rate.