How to Optimize Your Content for Google’s Rich Answer Box

For some people, the world of Google can be a compelling and somewhat exhausting plan to be involved in for marketing purposes. Whilst there is a goldmine of opportunity and development for any business willing to put in the work, many businesses struggle to get beyond some of the initial troubles that can halt your progress.

One such problem and obstacle for many businesses recently is how to optimize their content for Google’s Rich Answer Box.

According to Eric Enge, a writer for the popular Stone Temple Consulting group, the Rich Answer is “any attempt to answer the searcher’s query in search results in a way not requiring click trough to a website.”

When you type in your required query now you will typically find that a short box will appear with an opening line of information. It could be to a Wikipedia page, to an About.com page or it could even be pointing to your website.

The idea here is that with good optimized content you can be seen by Google as the most relevant answer to the question being asked. Naturally, this is a very powerful position to be in from a marketing perspective.

Making your content appear as the optimal choice for Google’s Rich Answer Box, though, takes a fair amount of planning to make sure it all comes across in the right manner.

For example, did you know that simply by looking for the kind of queries people are searching for, you can make yourself the ‘rich’ answer?

Go to the Google Keyword Planner an simply do a basic keyword search – look for questions including words like ‘how’ or ‘why’ and you should be able to pull some very good examples of what people are searching for.

By then building content around this idea and giving people a good idea of what you bring to the table, you make it so much easier for people to see you as the first answer. After all, you don’t have to be the #1 search result for this – you just need to make sure you give the “best” answer to the question.

Another good option to find terms to optimize your content around is just start typing into Google. Put some of your question in and you’ll find Google gives you plenty of inspiration – experiment, and you’ll profit long-term.

Image courtesy of Brafton.

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