Unlocking SEO Insights: Leveraging 'People Also Ask' for Smarter Content Strategies

Creating content that resonates with your target audience requires more than just keyword research and competitor analysis. Gaining insight into your audience’s questions, concerns, and information-seeking behaviors can provide a deeper understanding of their needs. This knowledge helps in crafting content that directly addresses their interests and challenges.

The "People Also Ask" (PAA) boxes have become a prominent feature in Google's search engine results pages (SERPs), which are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a user's query. These dynamic elements offer valuable insights into user intent and reveal emerging content opportunities that can enhance any content strategy.

Understanding People Also Ask

The People Also Ask feature represents Google's effort to provide users with additional, relevant questions related to their search queries. These expandable boxes appear within search results and contain a series of questions that users frequently ask about related topics. When a user clicks on a question, the box expands to reveal a brief answer, typically extracted from a high-ranking webpage.

What makes PAA boxes particularly valuable is their dynamic nature. For example, if a user searches for "content strategy" and clicks on a PAA question like "What are the steps to creating a content strategy?", new related questions will appear, such as "How do you measure the success of a content strategy?" or "What tools help with content strategy development?" This continuous expansion of queries provides deeper insights into user search intent. This behavior reflects real user interests and search patterns, providing authentic insights into an audience's thought processes and information needs.

While PAA data is often associated with straightforward Q&A content, it also uncovers:

• The various angles and perspectives from which users research a topic.
• Common misconceptions or concerns that need addressing.
• Related topics that users frequently explore together.
• The level of expertise in their target audience's questions.

Analyzing PAA data enables content strategists to craft detailed plans that target key search terms, cover topics comprehensively, and guide user journeys. This approach aligns with Google's quality guidelines, which prioritize comprehensive topic coverage and demonstrable subject expertise. In doing so, it paves the way for improved search visibility and engagement.

Transforming PAA Insights into Content

Converting PAA data into actionable content strategies requires a systematic approach. When analyzing PAA questions, start by identifying patterns in user inquiries. For instance, if you're creating content about digital marketing, you'll often notice a progression—from basic definitional queries to more complex implementation questions. This progression can help structure your content, guiding readers from foundational concepts to advanced applications.

Consider a real-world example: a software company launching a new project management tool. By analyzing PAA data related to "project management software," they might discover that users frequently ask questions about integration capabilities, pricing models, and team collaboration features. This intelligence helps prioritize which aspects of the product to highlight in their content marketing efforts. By leveraging PAA data, content teams can take several concrete steps:

• Build detailed FAQ sections that proactively address common audience queries.
• Structure blog posts and articles to naturally answer related questions.
• Create content that covers topics exhaustively.
• Spot content gaps to uncover overlooked topics and opportunities for expansion.

These strategies help ensure your content directly addresses user needs and fills critical gaps in your existing offerings.

The Role of PAA in SEO Strategy

Incorporating PAA insights into an SEO strategy can improve search visibility and audience engagement. By targeting PAA questions, content creators can:

• Increase their chances of ranking for featured snippets.
• Improve content relevance and user engagement.
• Enhance topic authority and site credibility.
• Drive organic traffic by addressing real search queries.

Optimizing content for PAA involves structuring answers concisely, using schema markup, and ensuring that content provides direct, valuable responses to user queries. Additionally, updating content based on newly emerging PAA questions can help maintain relevance and rankings over time.

Implementing PAA Insights with SerpApi

SerpApi is a powerful tool designed to scrape and extract structured data from live search engine results pages, including the "People Also Ask" feature. Using SerpApi, businesses and SEO professionals can automate the collection of PAA data, ensuring continuous insights into evolving user queries.

With real-time search results and an easy-to-use API, SerpApi eliminates the need for manual research or time-intensive in-house solutions. This allows content teams to focus on strategy and execution rather than data collection.

Google Search API

SerpApi’s Google Search API enables users to extract various search result elements, including organic listings, ads, featured snippets, and the People Also Ask section. By integrating this API, businesses can track PAA questions dynamically, monitor changes, and identify emerging trends in user queries. This allows content creators to refine their SEO and content strategies with up-to-date information.

The remainder of this post will focus specifically on the Google Related Questions API, I highly recommend checking out the following blog post to get similar with SerpApi and the Google Search API:

Additionally, it's worth performing test queries in our playground environment to get a better idea of the results returned as well as the structure of data returned from both the Google Search and Related Questions APIs:

Google Related Questions API

The Google Related Questions API specifically focuses on retrieving PAA data. This API provides structured data on related questions that users frequently ask, along with their respective answers. By leveraging this API, content strategists can:

• Identify trending PAA questions for their niche.
• Monitor how PAA questions evolve over time.
• Optimize content to align with high-impact queries.

Using SerpApi’s capabilities, businesses can efficiently gather, analyze, and implement PAA insights into their SEO and content marketing efforts.

Example Node.js CLI App

To get you started, I've created a sample CLI app that allows you to enter a query and specify the depth at which you would like to retrieve PAA questions.

For example, if you select a depth of 2 (default), your initial search would count as a depth of 1. Then the Google Related Questions API will be queried for each question returned in the initial query, resulting in a depth of 2.

Fetching PAA Questions Using SerpApi

In this section, we will walk through using Node.js to fetch PAA questions using SerpApi's Google Search API and Google Related Questions API. I will use JavaScript, but the examples can be easily translated into other programming languages. You can find a complete list of SerpApi integrations here:

Step 1: Install SerpApi’s JavaScript Package

While you can use any of your favorite packages to make API calls, we will use the SerpApi Node.js package (documentation) to keep things clean and consistent.

npm install serpapi

Step 2: Fetch Data Using Google Search API

PAA questions appear organically in Google Search results, so to start with, we can query the Google Search API to return a typical SERP.

Below, we perform a search using the google engine, and our query is "content strategy." We then store the related questions returned in an array that we can add to later.

import { getJson } from "serpapi";

const response = await getJson({
  engine: "google",
  api_key: "YOUR_API_KEY",
  q: "content strategy"
});

// Store PAA questions
const relatedQuestionsArray = response["related_questions"]); 

Example Response:

{
  ...
  "related_questions": [
    {
      "question": "What are the 7 steps in creating a content strategy?",
      "snippet": ""
      "title": "7-step content development process: step-by-step guide",
      "date": "Jun 17, 2024",
      "link": "https://contentsnare.com/content-development-process/",
      "list": [
        "Step 1: Do your research. ... ",
        "Step 2: Analyze the information. ... ",
        "Step 3: Plan your strategy. ... ",
        "Step 4: Write. ... ",
        "Step 5: Editing, SEO and publishing. ... ",
        "Step 6: Take to social media. ... ",
        "Step 7: Analyze and begin again."
      ],
      "displayed_link": "https://contentsnare.com › content-development-process",
      "source_logo": "https://serpapi.com/searches/67bf85dac71a675e242edf6b/images/b63f19fbb9fff39987251b02abdc8c2d341978702805ce28c8d754c35cf0eb70.png",
      "next_page_token": "eyJvbnMiOiIxMDA0MSIsImZjIjoiRXFFQkNtSkJRUzFMVkdoa1...",
      "serpapi_link": "https://serpapi.com/search.json?device=desktop&engine=google_related_questions&google_domain=google.com&next_page_token=eyJvbnMiOiIxMDA0MSIsImZ..."
    }
    ...
  ]
  ...
}

Step 3: Fetch PAA Questions Using Google Related Questions API

Typically, 3-4 PAA questions are returned on any given Google SERP. However, as mentioned previously, expanding these questions returns additional related questions.

Each question returned in Step 2 will include a next_page_token, which we can use to retrieve additional questions related to the question using the Google Related Questions API.

const relatedResponse = await getJson({
  engine: "google_related_questions",
  api_key: "YOUR_API_KEY",
  next_page_token: "NEXT_PAGE_TOKEN"
});

// Save additional question data
const additionalQuestions = relatedResponse["related_questions"]);

The response to this query will be similar to the one seen in Step 2, returning next_page_tokens for each additional question.

By automating the extraction of PAA insights, businesses can refine their SEO approach, ensuring content aligns with what users are actively searching for.

Measuring Success

After implementing PAA insights into your content and SEO strategy, measuring success is crucial. Key performance indicators (KPIs) to track include:

• Organic traffic growth: Increased visits from search engines.
• SERP rankings: Improved positions for targeted queries.
• Click-through rates (CTR): Higher engagement on PAA-optimized content.
• User engagement metrics: Time on page, bounce rate, and session duration.
• Conversions: Lead generation and customer inquiries driven by content.

Regularly updating content based on fresh PAA insights ensures that your strategy remains effective and aligned with user search behavior.

Conclusion

The "People Also Ask" feature is a powerful tool for understanding user intent and enhancing content strategies. By leveraging SerpApi’s capabilities, marketers and SEO professionals can efficiently extract and analyze PAA data to create highly relevant, user-focused content.

By systematically integrating PAA insights, businesses can improve their search visibility, attract more organic traffic, and establish authority in their niche. Leveraging these insights allows content creators to address user queries effectively, optimize for featured snippets, and provide comprehensive information that enhances engagement. Regularly refining content based on PAA data ensures continued relevance and strengthens a brand’s presence in search results. Whether you're developing blog posts, FAQs, or in-depth guides, PAA-driven content strategies can set your brand apart in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.