Learn why question & answer search is important and how to use a structured process to identify content opportunities and create content to help you improve SERPs visibility and win the battle for the featured snippet.

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Oxford College of Marketing
Tutor Conference 2019
Winning Google’sAnswer Box.
How to identify & exploit content gaps your
competitors aren’t thinking about.
© Digital Juggler, June 2019.

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Hands up if you know what ‘featured
snippets’ are?
And do you know what Google’s ‘answer
box’ is?

3. 3Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Discussion points
1. What is Q&A search and why is it important?
2. What’s driving it?
3. How can you take advantage?
4. Aligning Q&A with your content strategy
5. Optimising Q&A content for SERPs.
6. Q&A on Q&A!

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01
What is Q&A
search, why is it
important?
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
FEATURED
SNIPPET
ANSWER
BOX
ADSDefining Q&A search
I need specific information
The query I type is question
based, not keyword driven.
• E – Expertise.
• A – Authority
• T – Trust.

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Why is it important?
$
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
• For some products, the path to purchase is
multi-step.
• Consideration drives brand/product
refinement.
• Expertise helps influence consumer
decisions.
• Help shoppers; be part of the conversation.
For most product research Q&A searches,
ecommerce sites have poor/no SEO visibility.
SERPs are dominated by news sites, contents
sites & independent reviews sites like Which.
The answer box is featured above all other
results, CTR typically MUCH higher than
elsewhere on page 1.
One company identified answer boxes they
should target with their price pages and saw
a 700% increase in traffic to those pages in
just 90 days.

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02
What is driving
Q&A search?
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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There are three primary drivers:
$
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
3. Search engine
semantic capabilities
2. Rise of voice
enabled devices and
search.
1. Ever expanding long
tail for search.
Driven by structured data,
entity mapping is
important.
55% households expect to
own smart speaker devices by
2022.
15% of all searches have
never been searched before
on Google.

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Voice search is still really small but will
grow
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Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Source: PwC.

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51% who shop via voice use it for product research
$
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Source: Narvar.

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03
How do you
take advantage?
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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Follow a structured
process to identify
content opportunities
and evaluate the
potential commercial
impact.
Topic modelling.1
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Search universe audit.2
Competitor audit.3
Opportunity prioritisation.4
Content solution.5
Set-up monitoring & reporting.6
GOAL = dominate SERPs for shopper research & tackle
potential barriers to purchase.

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Topic
modelling
Select a content topic that is important to your brand & products
e.g. Samsung – appliance safety and durability.
• Collect feedback from existing sources like Customer Services, social
media, returns notes etc.
• Use customer insight research to identify opportunities.
• OR, use search query analysis tools to help you find topics.
Segment by product category; split topic into stories:
Prioritise product categories based on business value:
• Product range & average selling price.
• Product margin.
• Conversion rate.
• Returns rate.
1
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Topic Product categories Stories
Appliance safety & reliability. • Washing Machines
• Dishwashers
• TVs
• Safety.
• Maintenance.
• Noise.

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Search
universe
audit.
2
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Use a tool like Answerthepublic.com > find Q&A searches
related to your content topic.

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Search
universe
audit.
2
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Plug these into a volume-based tool like Google Keyword
Planner or SEMRush (use two to cross-reference).

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Search
universe
audit.
2
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Export and use Excel to filter based on
content topics:
• E.g. put all queries relating to safety together.
• Filter within topic by trigger word (this
influences content style and format).

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Competitor
audit
3
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Use a tool like SEMRush to check organic search positions for
competitors.
Add volume data to show average monthly searches.

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Competitor
audit
3
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Export into Excel – use lookups to plot their position against your
Q&A targets.
Add volume data to show average monthly searches.

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Opportunity
prioritisation
4
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Opportunity =
• Q&A search
queries with good
volume and low
competition i.e.
your competitors
rank poorly.
• Searches where
nobody has yet
won the answer
box/featured
snippet.
• Searches where
there is little/no
paid advertising.
FEATURED
SNIPPET
ANSWER
BOX
ADS

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Define
content
solution
(simplified
view)
5
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
What content best answers the query?
Do you have an
existing webpage you
can re-purpose?
Does the page
perform well as a
landing page?
What type/format of
content best answers
the query?
Brief content team
Update page
with new copy

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Set-up
monitoring
& reporting
6
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Define how you will measure success.
SEO metrics Performance metrics
Rank by query. # Product views.
Rank vs. competitors. Add to basket rate.
Featured snippet Y/N? Conversion rate.
Impressions. AOV (average order value).
CTR. Margin per sale.
Clicks. # Returning customers.

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04
Aligning Q&A
search with your
content strategy
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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Make Q&A a dimension of everything
$
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
We are writing new content
Are there any questions
people are already asking?
Do we answer them
adequately?
Do we need to create
additional content to cover
Q&A search?
We are uploading/updating products
What questions do
Customer Services
frequently get?
What questions are people
searching for?
Have we answered these
questions adequately in the
product content?

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And test….
$
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Format > Length > Style & Tone > Interaction

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05
Optimising
content for
SERPs
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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Follow best practice for featured snippets
$
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
1. FAQ 3. How to….2. Q&A page

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Simple tactics to help win the answer box
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
Use bullet point or numbered lists.
Create tables.
Apply the correct Schema.org
markup.
Optimise page titles & descriptions
for Q&A keywords.
Build links to your answer box
content.
Content writing tasks: SEO tasks:
Target queries that already have an
answer box.
Optimise H1 and H2 tags.
Answer each question clearly and in
under 100 words.

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Monitor regularly…
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.
That’s
not me!

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tl;dr – your key take aways:
1. People are asking questions directly via search engines; content teams often don’t
answer them.
2. It’s getting harder to get good SEO visibility as paid ads take over.
3. The answer box has a higher CTR than results further down the page.
4. There are proven techniques to help you optimise content for the answer box.
5. Not all questions have volume; learn to prioritise.
6. Ensure Q&A search becomes as integral part of your content strategy.
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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Q&A
Q&A Search for Ecommerce – Digital Juggler – June 2019.

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Thank you for staying awake!
For further questions feel free to contact
me:
@jamesgurd
james@digitaljuggler.com
© Digital Juggler, June 2019.