I’ve been blogging and doing SEO for over a decade, and during that time I’ve used many tools to help me come up with topic ideas and improve my content.
One such tool is Answer The Public, and it helped me refresh old content and recover lost Google rankings.
Also read: Best business card design tools: The ultimate guide for beginners and pros
What is Answer The Public?
Reply to the public is a free keyword research tool that shows you questions people are asking on Google about a particular topic and related keyword ideas.
It also provides you with keyword data such as cost per click (CPC) and search volume. You can see this data visually (shown below) or as a data graph.
How I Used Answer The Public to Refresh My Content and Recover Lost Google Rankings
Google published a updated product reviews in 2023, and one of my blogs lost a ton of traffic.
The page that was viewed the most was my roof tent comparison page:
The update rewarded pages for display EATincluding:
- Express expert knowledge on the topic
- Show what the product looks like beyond the manufacturer’s photos
- Provide a quantitative measure of how the product compares to others
- Provide evidence of personal experiences with the product, such as photos and videos
- Including links to multiple sellers to give the reader options on where to purchase it
When I updated the pages, I addressed these concerns by adding my own photos of the products and providing more in-depth research about them.
But I wanted to go further than that. And that’s where Answer The Public comes in.
Understand what people are asking
I could bring a lot of personal experience and expertise around rooftop tents. But what I didn’t know was what people wanted to know about them.
So I plugged “rooftop tents” into Answer The Public to see precisely what people wanted to know, based on real data:
I found questions people were asking, like:
- How Do Rooftop Tents Work?
- Are rooftop tents worth it?
- Why are rooftop tents so expensive?
- Etc.
Update my old content
I downloaded the question lists and chose the ones with the highest search volume and relevance to add to my rooftop tent comparison article.
I also took care to add FAQ Schema. This can give you a chance to display your questions below your result on the SERPs, like my competitor here:
The results: rankings started to recover within a month
I updated the article in early March and by the end of the month traffic slowly started to come back:
Healing is not complete, but it often takes several months to see significant results. I can only assume that the changes I’ve made are working based on the slow but steady recovery I’m seeing.
I will come back to this article and update it in a few months once I am sure of the results.
Other ways to use Answer The Public
Besides updating old content with FAQs, there are other interesting use cases for Answer The Public:
Keyword research
Answer The Public has a section that shows you related keywords. If you plug in a seed keyword, you can use that data to find related topics to write about:
Local SEO
Answer The Public also has an alphabetical keywords section, which often shows data on local keywords:
Final Thoughts
Answer The Public is an awesome tool with great free features. The paid version is even better, giving you unlimited searches and full access to their data.
Although I won’t know what effect this content refresh has had for several months, it is already showing signs of recovery. I will update this article in six months with additional data.
Then check out my guide on how to start and monetize a blog to find out how you can earn a full-time income from the comfort of your home.
