How to Research, Monitor, and Optimize for Questions (+ Free Worksheet)

Edited by Emilie Martin

Have you been optimizing your content for questions?

There are a few powerful reasons for you to start doing it now:

• Niche question research is the most powerful content inspiration source

• Questions are highly engaging: Asking a question triggers a natural answering reflex in human beings. Using questions on your landing pages and/or social media will improve engagement

• Questions are very useful for niche and audience research: What can't people figure out in your industry, and how can you best help them?

• Question optimization allows for increased organic search visibility through both featured snippets and Google's "People Also Ask" results.

• Answering related questions will increase your odds of being referenced by new Google’s AI snapshots:

• Basic questions (these usually relate to defining concepts). In most cases, you don't need to write lengthy explanations because people searching for those seek quick, easy-to-understand answers.

• How-to questions (these usually relate to step-by-step instructions). Adding videos to better explain the process is almost always a good idea here.

• Brand-driven questions (those usually include your or your competitor's brand name or a product name).

Questions about your brand

Obviously, your brand-driven questions should be your top priority.

Like any branded queries, these can be further categorized into

• ROPO questions ("research online, buy online / offline"). These are specific questions discussing your product, its pros and cons, reviews, etc.

• High-intent questions: for example, questions asking how to buy your product.

• Navigational questions: those addressing your site navigation, e.g., "How to login," "How to cancel," etc.

• Competitive research questions are those comparing your brand/product to your competitors.

• Reputational questions are those relating to your brand history, culture, etc.

All branded questions may also be labeled based on possible sentiment.

Most basic and how-to questions will have informational intent (simply due to the essence of the question format: most people asking questions seek to find an answer, i.e., information). But there's always a chance there's a transactional intent there that you may want to make note of, too.

For example, "What's the best CRM?" may be a query reflecting a solid commercial intent. The same goes for "How do you use a CRM?" Both can be asked by someone willing to give the software a try, and this needs to be reflected within your copy and on-page layout.

1. People Also Ask

"People Also Ask" is a separate Google search element containing related questions to a given query. There are two important things to keep in mind here:

• "People Also Ask" boxes present more SERP real estate, which we may want to dominate for maximum organic search visibility;

• These questions are likely to impact people’s buying journeys, offering them additional angles to research:

With that in mind, People Also Ask results are important for content marketers in two ways:

• They allow us lots of insight into what our target audience wants to know.

• They allow us additional organic search visibility

AlsoAsked is a freemium tool allowing you to research People Ask questions triggered by any search query:

2. Moz’s Keyword Research Tool

Moz’s keyword research tool offers a handy filter allowing you to filter all related search queries by questions:

You can also group your questions by their lexical similarity to organize them and plan your content strategy accordingly:

You can also filter queries by any brand name to easily find brand-driven questions:

3. Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE)

Google’s AI-generated snapshots include related questions encouraging searchers to further research any topic. This experimental feature of Google is very dynamic, so you will likely see different questions than your customers, but these give you a good idea of where searching journeys may take your target customers.

The “Ask a follow-up” section of Google’s AI snapshots is especially important for brand-driven searches because these may contain a negative sentiment.

4. Google/Bing SERPs

Search results give us many cues beyond People Also Ask boxes, provided you use smart tools to analyze them. TextOptimizer is a tool that extracts terms and concepts from SERPs and uses semantic analysis to come up with the list of questions you may want to include in your content.

I believe that is partly what Google is doing to generate those “People Also Ask” suggestions, but this tool will give you more ideas than the “People Also Ask” boxes alone.

It supports Google and Bing. You can also copy-paste your text into the tool, and it will suggest terms and questions to add to optimize your content better for either search engine.

5. Google Autocomplete

Google Autocomplete is another search-based tool for content marketers. As the name suggests, it auto-completes a user's query based on how other users tend to complete it. This way, we can safely assume that all Google Suggest results have a solid search volume/demand simply because they ended up in the Autocomplete index.

The problem with this one is that you need to know how to start typing the question to see it properly completed:

There's a workaround that forces Google to autocomplete the middle of the query:

• Type your core query and hit search

• Put your cursor back at the beginning of the query

• Type "how" and Google will suggest more popular queries:

This method will also help you discover some related questions.

6. Quora and discussion boards

Quora is undoubtedly one of the largest sources of questions out there. In fact, it forces users to post new discussions in a question format, so everything you see there is a list of questions.

Quora's search functionality is highly confusing, though. It has an intricate architecture based on topics (many of which overlap), and it won't show you the most popular questions over time. Its search ranking algorithm is a weird mix of personalization (based on your chosen interests and connections), recency, activity, and probably something else.

Because of this, I rarely use Quora itself. Instead, I use Buzzsumo's Question Analyzer. It aggregates results from all kinds of discussion boards, mainly Quora, and helps you organize them.

Furthermore, it analyzes your query and generates results for related keywords, allowing you to expand your search and see the bigger picture.

7. Reddit

Reddit has a wealth of knowledge. People use Reddit daily to ask questions and get answers from real people with first-hand experience. The key is to find those questions amidst thousands of discussions that happen there every day.

There are different ways to approach that, including:

• Find official subreddits your competitors have and track which questions their customers are asking

• Join niche subreddits and engage daily in conversations there

• Track Reddit for your main keyword and brand/product name (of yours and your competitors’)

Buzzsumo Alerts is a great way to monitor Reddit discussions for your (and your competitors’) brand and product name mentions. I am using the following filters to set up the alert:

1. Brand name I am monitoring: [brand name] OR [product name] — This will include both

2. Domain filter: reddit.com — This will force the tool to monitor Reddit only

Set up the same alert for your competitors as well:

You will receive daily digests with the most recent discussions mentioning your (or your competitor’s) name.

8. Ask AI Tools

We are closing the day when people will be asking an AI bot in many cases when they would have been using a traditional search. Knowing which questions AI associates your brand with is a great way to start thinking about those AI-powered journeys. Make sure to ask both Google Bard and Bing Chat to get a better idea of what people may see when searching your brand name.

But also have a long conversation with ChatGPT on which questions people may be asking when searching for your keyword or your (competitor’s) brand name.

Niche question research provides an almost unending source of content opportunities. To name a few, here are some ideas on how you can use questions:

• Create a separate FAQ section to address and explain basic questions

• Identify and optimize existing content to cover the identified questions

• Add Q&A to important landing pages (this may help get product pages featured in Google).

But it's not only about content.

Different actions + teams for different types of questions

Keeping our initial question categorization above in mind, here's how question research may (or instead, should) involve multiple departments within your company:

Basic (what-is) questions:

• Types of content to answer these questions: Glossary, FAQ, blog posts

• Specific SEO considerations:

  • Clickable table of contents to generate mini-sitelinks and rank for a wider variety of related questions (see example)

  • Cover all questions in the FAQ section but link to more detailed answers (blog posts) when it requires more in-depth answers

• Other teams to get involved: Customer support and sales team (including for training). You want those teams to use jargon your customers use

How-to questions:

• Types of content to answer these questions: FAQ (+ videos), standalone blog posts

• Specific SEO considerations:

  • Use video schema when embedding videos

  • Interlink well, so that all answers are surfaced adequately on the site (Related posts, etc.)

• Other teams to get involved: Include your CRO expert because these could be transactional

Branded ROPO questions:

• Types of content to answer these questions: Blog content (+ video tutorials)

• Specific SEO considerations: Optimize for as many related branded terms as possible

• Other teams to get involved:

  • Include your product management team for them to collect answers (feedback) and implement required product updates/improvements).

  • Add these to your editorial schedule as high-priority

Branded high-intent questions:

• Types of content to answer these questions: Try and get your commercial pages rank for these (so include Q&A on the actual product page, video reviews, etc.)

• SEO considerations: In many niches, on-site content should be combined with YouTube strategy to better control the SERPs

• Other teams to get involved:

  • Include your CRO expert and A/B testing expert for optimum on-page conversion optimization.

  • It is also a good idea to use these questions to set up your customer support automation solutions like chatbots and/or IVR to convert customers asking these questions.

Branded navigational questions:

• Types of content to answer these questions: Product-specific knowledge base (+ video tutorials)

• SEO considerations: Create videos to walk customers through the process

• Other teams to get involved: Include your design and usability teams to solve navigational issues

Branded competitive research questions:

• Types of content to answer these questions: Create standalone landing pages + videos (or lead-generating content) to explain your product benefits

• SEO considerations: Create comparison charts and visualization to better control the target SERPs

• Other teams to get involved:

  • Include your product management team for them to collect answers (feedback) and implement required product updates/improvements.

  • Include your sales team so that they know how to best explain your product benefits to clients

Branded reputational questions

• Types of content to answer these questions: Create standalone landing pages + videos

• SEO considerations:

  • Optimize for as many related branded terms as possible

  • Set up more third-party channels and mini sites (Linktree, Substack, Flipboard, Subreddit, etc) to control more of these SERPs

• Other teams to get involved: Include your reputation management + social media teams to address these questions properly when they have to.

[Download this as a worksheet here.]

• Questions are useful on many levels, from audience research to conversion optimization and product development

• As far as SEO is concerned, optimizing for questions helps you develop better-targeted copy and gain more organic search visibility (especially through appearing in featured and "People Also Ask" boxes)

• Researching questions is an ongoing process: You need to be constantly discovering new ones and monitoring social media for real-time ideas

• There are lots of tools to help you discover and organize niche questions (when it comes to organizing them, using your favorite tools or even simply spreadsheets is always a good idea)

• Question research is not just for SEO or content ideation. It can help improve social media engagement, help you develop a better product, train your internal teams to better explain product advantages to clients, etc.

Questions are a powerful yet often overlooked content opportunity. By researching and optimizing for your audience's common questions, you can boost organic visibility, improve engagement, gather product feedback, and align teams. The key is having an ongoing process to discover new questions through tools like People Also Ask, Google Autocomplete, Reddit, Quora, and generative AI tools.

Once collected, categorize questions based on intent to determine the most suitable formats, teams, and optimization strategies. Customer’s questions reveal buyer journeys, pain points, and interest signals.

When integrated into your marketing and product positioning strategies, questions can transform organic growth, product development, and more. Consistently optimizing for questions will lead to deeper audience insight and alignment across teams and channels.