With the increasing conveniences, we all have been really impatient. We really want to get answers to all our questions, instantly. So, as Google keep advancing. For businesses, it is essential to understand what their customer is searching for and must strategize it accordingly.
New content marketing trends keep coming, so content marketing is not a single-day thing. One such trend proving to be a great solution for users to get their answers and for companies to reach their intended audience is answer-based content.
Answer-based content is a great way to excel on the internet with featured snippets, people also asked, and other sections. So, let’s understand the importance of answer-based content and what it is. Moreover, we will also explore how you can create answer-based content for your business.
What is Answer-based Content?
Answer-based content refers to the content that is created with the intent to provide a precise answer to a user’s query. So, unlike traditional content, where a broad topic is covered, answer-based content focuses on specific topics and doesn’t go up and down to the topic.
The need for answer-based content arose as the user’s intent when asking questions to the search engine changed. In simple terms, there was a time when there was no trend of expecting direct answers to the questions. So, ultimately, the user expects that he/she will have to go through one to multiple websites to find the answer to their question.
However, as the technology advanced, Google started experimenting with new things, one of which was featured snippets. That is where the importance of answer-based content lies. The featured snippets include crawling and understanding content on websites live on the internet.
Moreover, based on its understanding, Google gives users precise answers to their queries. Users don’t expect to scroll through multiple websites as they become famous. Thus, those putting content online, including an individual or an enterprise, must curate their content to serve as answer-based content.
Basically, answer-based content is not a new type of content, but it’s a practice to implement to get featured in featured snippets, people also asked, and other sections of the Google search engine. Also, since these sections are always prices on the first search engine page, you get to rank higher on SERP by getting featured in these sections.
So, now, let’s understand how answer-based content is created.
How do you create answer-based content?
Answer-based content can be created by keeping a few things in mind. These few things are engaging content, keyword research, search intent, and schema markup. Let’s understand them in some detail.
- Create Engaging Content
The first thing is to create engaging content; it’s an omnipresent factor whenever it’s about Marketing content. Marketing content should be engaging. Otherwise, the user will not interact with your content, ultimately leading to the degradation of your content’s reach. So, create engaging content as it is a must.
- Do Keyword Research
To rank your content, you should focus on deep keyword research. Keywords are important to rank your content, whether a blog, article, report, etc. Moreover, in addition to research, you should also implement keywords in your content in the best way possible, that is, to keep the density adequate and use them at various places in the content.
- Know the search intent
Knowing the user’s intent is very important to know what content can be asked in a question format. There are four different content types based on intent which are:
- Navigational
Navigational content is when the user intends to navigate to some website, such as Instagram login or WhatsApp sign-up. Here, you can create navigational content by answering the questions step-by-step.
- Informational
Among these different content types, informational content has the most potential for creating answer-based content. Here, the content focuses on explaining something like what a search engine is.
- Transactional
Transactional content is focused on the users who need to buy something. Here, the content is mostly in the form of website content.
- Commercial
Commercial content reaches the users in the researching stage, and they are only a few steps away from purchasing. “Best Laptops under ₹50,000” is an example of commercial content. You can create content featured in the snippets as a list.
- Schema Markup
Schema Markup plays an important role in creating answer-based content. Schema markup is structured data that is used in the html code of a Website. Answer-based content is the most important thing. So here is what schema markup is in detail.
What is Schema Markup?
Schema Markup is data a search engine like Google uses to make any website crawlable. You can understand it as a dictionary of words where these words are used to let Google understand that you have the answers to many questions that a user can ask. There are multiple types of schemas, such as articles, blogs, books, products, etc.
Let’s better understand schema markup with an example. Let’s say you have a blog where you have explained everything about “What is Content Marketing Strategies“. So, with the help of keywords related to this title, you can add multiple individual informational paragraphs like “What is SEO” as it is related to the topic.
So, with Schema Markup, you can map what is SEO? to be shown in the featured snippets. Similarly, you can add schema markup to listicle content, recipes and many more.
Schema markup can be added manually, but you can use many plugins for intelligent schema markup implementation if you use WordPress as your CMS. However, you should always tie up with a content writing company to source and publish your answer-based content. If you know the reason, here’s why.
Why tie up with a content writing company for answer-based content?
An SEO and intent writing company can help you do the best implementation of your answers-based content. Moreover, since there are many factors to consider while writing answer-based content, the professional will undoubtedly do better when you hire or find them at a content writing company.
Final Words
In conclusion, having a grip on the internet is important, and answer-based content is one of the many ways to help you do that. Knowing the importance of answer-based content is a must, and involving it in your search engine marketing is crucial as well. However, having the help of professionals involved in getting answer-based content will give you a better reach.
