Heighten Visibility with Google Quick Answers

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From the course by University of California, Davis

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies

256 ratings

University of California, Davis

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies

256 ratings

Course 5 of 6 in the Specialization Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This course focuses on technical, mobile and social strategies for increasing site traffic. Learn how to build SEO for international audiences through content localization, global team alignment and optimizing for local search engines. Discover techniques to optimize mobile-friendly websites, get mobile apps discovered, and leverage social media to drive organic SEO traffic. You will also learn how to identify key SEO metrics and collect, interpret, validate, and report success to your clients and stakeholders.

From the lesson

Introduction

Welcome to this first module where you will discover how technical search engine optimization (SEO) can improve your website. You will discuss and use web metrics as you compare performance analysis tools and plug-ins. You will be able to find and fix problems, heighten visibility, improve site architecture, and accelerate page load speed for your own website. You will be able to take the steps necessary to conduct a website audit and finally, you’ll discover strategies to achieve positive change by working well with teams and stakeholders.

Welcome to Technical Search Engine Optimization2:41

Discover What Technical SEO Can Do for Your Website4:07

Compare Website Performance and Analysis Tools6:55

Compare Plug-in Tools for Technical SEO5:14

Find and Fix Technical Issues on Your Website6:22

Heighten Visibility with Google Quick Answers4:48

Boost Website Accessibility5:39

Take Action with Analysis Tools to Improve Site Architecture6:10

Analyze and Accelerate Page Load Speed6:05

Conduct and Document a Website Audit6:28

Achieve Positive Change Working with Stakeholders8:05

Meet the Instructors

Dave Lloyd
Senior Manager, Global Search Marketing
Adobe Systems

Welcome back.

This is the module on implementing Quick Answers.

Google Quick Answers, also known as Direct Answers,

is an incredibly powerful new feature that Google rolled out in 2014.

The visibility of this area of content in the search results knowledge graph

gives you more relevant content that you can introduce to your audience.

These snippets of content from your high authority pages show up and

improve your visibility.

In this lesson we'll learn three things.

One, what helps content rank in the Quick Answers box?

Number two, the criteria you need to have in place in order for

your rankings in Quick Answers to show up.

And three, how to perform well for technical SEO so

that your chances of Quick Answers visibility increase.

Google Quick Answers is a method of presenting content relevant to how to,

exploratory, or informational queries.

It was introduced in 2014 and is based on the knowledge graph concept.

This is a visual snippet of text, typically with bullet points and

constructive information that allows you to get answers directly

from the search results.

Often for instructional content, the quick answers will be shown as well.

There's a way to rank for this, to get your site and content visible here.

Content that is more likely to appear in Quick Answers includes

queries that have significant search demand.

High authority domains or pages, and quality, engaging,

and user-focused content.

Let's look at each item that helps content appear in quick answers.

First, queries with significant search demand.

This could be how-to queries that have high demand related head terms or

primary terms.

You'll want to use the Keyword Planner from Google or

another keyword research tool to understand what content is likely to rank.

Perhaps you have a lot of how-to or helpful content.

You want to determine where you're most likely to win and

where you should put your energies.

I would first take a look at how-to pages and how-to queries for

your domain, then determine which have the most volume or demand.

Next, high authority pages.

Use one of the many tools we've shared already to determine pages that are well

established with good page authority that have relevant inbound links, and

are well regarded from a search standpoint.

If you can identify pages that have deep user engagement,

things like bounce rate or time on the page, that would be useful.

A quick way to evaluate high authority pages is using the Open Site Explorer tool

from MOZ.

It's most important to have quality, engaging, and user focused content.

Such content may have links to relevant pages or PDFs, perhaps a call-to-action.

If you can, it's best to put things in a bulleted list,

answering a specific query or matching the query with a how-to list.

Chronology matters.

One, two, three, four, five.

Delineate sequential answers to anticipated questions or queries.

Quality, engaging and user-focused content includes relevant content,

the user friendly layout, video where it's relevant, links to relevant pages and

PDFs, a call to action or a specific step you want the user to take.

And they answer this specific question matching the query using

that how-to list of notes.

Technical SEO boosts the likelihood page will be visible in Quick Answer

results because it improves its value to the engines.

If that page is indexed, if it's global and has geo-targeting set up,

if the template is good, the load speed is fast enough, and it's mobile friendly.

For best results, set up the page HTML, the source code, so that it clearly

describes an answer to common questions or queries people may type in.

All of these technical SEO tasks boost results on Quick Answers.

Finally, having geo-information is important when trying to rank

a page from another location in Quick Answers.

This is covered in another lesson, but briefly,

this includes having the HREF alternate language tags appropriately set up.

Having geo-targeting done correctly,

including in your Google search console, and exposing the pages for

the particular language or country through appropriate global elements.

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