People Also Ask is the accordion of questions that appears in many Google results. Search “do dental implants hurt” and you might see:
- How painful is getting a dental implant?
- How long does pain last after a dental implant?
- Are you put to sleep for dental implants?
- What is the most painful part of a dental implant?
Click one and it expands to show a short answer, often a paragraph or list quoted from a web page, with a link. Expanding a question usually loads a few more related questions at the bottom of the box.
Why it matters
A window into real questions. PAA shows what searchers ask around a topic, in their own words. For Brightside Dental, that’s an instant list of patient worries to address on the implants page or in a blog post. It’s one of the most useful free sources for a content brief.
Another way to appear. Your page can be the source quoted in a PAA answer even if it isn’t the top organic result. That’s extra visibility on a busy results page.
Signals intent. If the PAA questions are about cost and pain, those are the concerns your page must address to satisfy the searcher.
How to appear in People Also Ask
The approach is close to winning a featured snippet:
- Use the exact question, or something very close, as a heading.
- Answer it clearly in the first one or two sentences beneath.
- Expand with detail afterwards.
- Cover several related questions on one page where they share an intent, rather than creating a thin page for each.
Don’t rely on FAQ schema to get there. Since 2023, FAQ rich results only show for well-known, authoritative government and health sites, and PAA answers are chosen from page content, not markup.
Common mistakes
- One page per question. PAA questions are often long-tail variations of the same need. Group them.
- Copying answers from other sites, which adds nothing and rarely gets chosen.
- Writing for PAA instead of for customers. Some questions aren’t worth answering for your business.
- Treating PAA as fixed. The questions change by location, device and over time. Check again when you update content.
How to find PAA questions
Search your main topics in Google, expand a few questions, and note the new ones that load. Do this in an incognito window to reduce personalization. RankThat’s Keyword Research also surfaces question keywords around a topic, with search volumes, so you can see which questions are asked most often.