Answer box­es, some­times known as posi­tion zero, are a gold­en goose when it comes to SERP real estate. There are three main types of answer box­es: tables, lists and para­graphs. Many experts argue that being includ­ed in any of these results can help you with both CTR and gen­er­al expo­sure.

But how do you rank in an answer box?

There’s no set for­mu­la, but you can increase your chances by doing the fol­low­ing:

• Know your user’s inten­tion;
• Answer the ques­tion direct­ly with­in the first 100 words;
• Answer ques­tions they don’t ask;
• And house your answer in qual­i­ty, struc­tured con­tent.

Look­ing at the answers above, the cri­te­ria Google employs to select answer box results might appear quite ambigu­ous. And you’d be right.

With answer box results, there is no secret for­mu­la – only a set of prin­ci­ples to adapt to your web­site and to your users. Even once you’ve applied these changes, it’s unlike­ly the results will be instan­ta­neous – unfor­tu­nate­ly, Google doesn’t do mag­ic switch­es. All you can do is fol­low this advice and hope you’ve adopt­ed it suit­ably enough to catch Google’s eye. It’s all about under­stand­ing your user’s intent and act­ing on it. That way, both the con­tent provider and the end user ben­e­fit from it.

Understanding user intent

Because search results are arguably ranked by their abil­i­ty to answer a query and pro­vide the user with the best infor­ma­tion pos­si­ble, under­stand­ing user intent is para­mount.

Pro­vid­ing val­ue to the user should be at the top of your to-do list, regard­less of whether you want an answer box result or not. By doing this, you’re putting your­self in the best pos­si­ble posi­tion to gain a com­pet­i­tive rank­ing. This might seem like old news, but you’d be sur­prised the num­ber of peo­ple out there still writ­ing con­tent for search engines rather than users.

Algorithmic direction

Google has already told us RankBrain is one of its most vital rank­ing fac­tors. So user intent is a rank­ing fac­tor, essen­tial­ly. It’s not often Google straight up tells us things, so you need to make sure you’re tak­ing action when it does.

Think about what your prod­uct or ser­vice is. Try work­ing in reverse to under­stand what a user real­ly wants when they land on your web­site. Under­stand­ing the thought process that brings a user on to your page is a key part of any type of site opti­mi­sa­tion.

Help with user intent

You can use tools such as Answer the Pub­lic to get an idea of pos­si­ble search queries. Line these up with what you already know about your customer’s jour­ney. Why are they work­ing? Are there sim­i­lar ques­tions you’re not address­ing? And how can you accom­mo­date these addi­tion­al search queries?

There is a lot of uncov­ered ground out there, as well, and this presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to snap up some of this extra search traf­fic just through sim­ple user research.

Answer the question directly and quickly

Expec­ta­tions of how quick­ly con­sumers can get infor­ma­tion are con­stant­ly ris­ing. As tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions allow us to share more quick­ly, the patience of users is becom­ing short­er as they search for infor­ma­tion they need.

Online stream­ing ser­vices are a great exam­ple of this. Peo­ple were get­ting tired of hav­ing to trav­el all the way to the video store or hav­ing to wait days for their rental to be post­ed out. Step in ser­vices like Net­flix and Now TV, RIP Block­buster and Love­Film.

My point here is that the time peo­ple are will­ing to wait on some­thing is con­stant­ly decreas­ing and search engines are just the same.

Getting to the point

Answer the ques­tion right at the begin­ning of your con­tent – ide­al­ly with­in the first 100 words. If you go back to the start of this arti­cle, you’ll see the answer to ‘how do you rank in an answer box?’ is with­in the first 100 words of this arti­cle – in a list for­mat.

When crawl­ing a page, Google will recog­nise that the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion is like­ly to be with­in the first 100 words. It will be able to tell that the infor­ma­tion has been pro­vid­ed con­cise­ly and prompt­ly for all to see, putting the user’s needs first. The answer to the ques­tion posed in the title isn’t hid­den with­in screeds and screeds of text, hop­ing to raise time on page. Google recog­nis­es this, and rewards sites that use this for­mat with answer box results.

Back up your answers

Now, while Google appre­ci­ates you answer­ing queries effi­cient­ly, it also appre­ci­ates jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. By going into fur­ther detail about your answer lat­er on in the arti­cle, Google will recog­nise that you’ve pro­vid­ed even more infor­ma­tion to help the user out.

This way, you’re answer­ing the ques­tion quick­ly, and then pro­vid­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the user to dive even deep­er into your won­der­ful answer, but only if they want to. It’s the per­fect way of pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion.

Answer questions they’re not asking

This might seem like a bit of a point­less exer­cise, but from a holis­tic point of view, it makes sense. While you can research for a sol­id month, and leave no stone unturned, there’s always a chance new stones will wash ashore. The point here is that there’s always some­thing new out there, or anoth­er way of look­ing at some­thing.

But if you play you cards cor­rect­ly, you should be able to answer the ques­tion, and then some.

Answering multiple questions

Pre­vi­ous­ly we talked about back­ing up your answers – pro­vid­ing the long-form con­tent Google holds so high. While this is some­thing you should def­i­nite­ly do, these pro­ceed­ing sec­tions are also per­fect for cov­er­ing some more ground.

Let’s take this very sim­ple query as an exam­ple: “How do I build a table?”

The answer is: You attach four long pieces of wood (the legs) to a large, flat piece of wood (the table top).

We can all agree that while extreme­ly fun­da­men­tal, this is the answer to the ques­tion. But while it answers the ques­tion, it’s not pro­vid­ing any fur­ther val­ue. This is where your long-form pro­ceed­ing con­tent comes into play. To give the best val­ue to the user for the ques­tion, I’d then look to answer the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

What tools do I need?
What’s the best type of wood to use?
What’s the best kind of wood paint?

It’s very straight­for­ward but by think­ing of ques­tions relat­ed to your ques­tion, you now have the begin­nings of a very use­ful con­tent piece that answers how to build a table and then a lot more.

Take a bit of ini­tia­tive and go beyond the fun­da­men­tals.

Finding the further questions

As it says above, the best place to start is to just use your intu­ition – if you’re writ­ing nat­ur­al con­tent, then these fur­ther ques­tions should come to you nat­u­ral­ly. But, as with any­thing in dig­i­tal, there’s always some­thing out there to help you.

One place to start is Google itself and its “peo­ple also ask” and “relat­ed search­es” func­tions. Here are some exam­ples using “how do I eat an apple” as a query:

There are def­i­nite­ly some answers there that you could use to improve and fur­ther your own con­tent. But even if you don’t think that these would imme­di­ate­ly work for you, they’re cer­tain­ly good jump­ing-off points for you to do some fur­ther research.

Creating quality content

Now, none of the above would be use­ful if you end­ed up just shod­di­ly throw­ing some­thing togeth­er that kind of cross­es off all of the box­es. You need to make sure your end prod­uct is a qual­i­ty piece of con­tent and not just a means to an end.

The old SEO axiom states that con­tent is king. While you might think this is just anoth­er cliché, it still holds a lot of truth. When you real­ly think about it, the Inter­net itself is con­tent. Whether it be in the form of arti­cles, blogs, video, music – it’s all con­tent! And this is why yours needs to stand out.

Structure and length

It’s gen­er­al­ly regard­ed that qual­i­ty con­tent is at least 1,250 words long (assum­ing it’s an arti­cle.) If it’s less than that, you’re not real­ly going to have the nec­es­sary plat­form to pro­vide the need­ed infor­ma­tion.

The struc­ture is just as impor­tant. You can’t just have an absolute­ly mas­sive wall of text. No one is going to want to read that. You need to break it down into sec­tions, and if you can, break those down into fur­ther sub-sec­tions.

This is where H Tags are your friends. Get your H1 in place, which is also ask­ing the ques­tion, of course, have your H2 tags answer the ques­tions and your H3 tags break­ing down your H2 tags. It’s a very sim­ple but effec­tive tem­plate to fol­low.

Picking the right content

As I said before, con­tent exists in many dif­fer­ent forms. So it’s vital you pick the best type of con­tent for your audi­ence. Not the type of con­tent that you think is cool, or the type of con­tent that you saw some­one else pro­duces. The type of con­tent that your own audi­ence will get the most val­ue out of. If your audi­ence is con­sumers, then your con­tent should be a bit lighter and more digestible. If you’re B2B, then maybe some more tech­ni­cal- and results-dri­ven data. There’s plen­ty more advice on B2B con­tent on Inked if you need a refresh­er.

If you’re writ­ing a long-form arti­cle, there are dif­fer­ent ways you can answer your ques­tion. I’ve men­tioned them before: lists, tables and para­graphs. Decide which of these will suit your answer best. If your answer is a step-by-step guide to some­thing, maybe you should use a list. If you’re pre­sent­ing sta­tis­tics and num­bers, maybe a table. It all depends on what the best fit is for your answer, and, in turn, your audi­ence.

Summing it all up

Like I said before, there is no mag­ic switch that you can turn on for an answer box or posi­tion zero result, unfor­tu­nate­ly. If there was, every­one would be using it, and the rank­ings would end up a mess. There’s no guar­an­tee you will get an answer box result, but what you will def­i­nite­ly get is sol­id, use­ful and valu­able con­tent for your users.

Luck­i­ly, not every­one will fol­low the advice above. Peo­ple are still churn­ing out con­tent, stuffed with key­words and just assum­ing it will work.

It won’t.

Google is too smart for this now. Google puts user expe­ri­ence at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, and to give the best user expe­ri­ence, know­ing their needs is vital.

Under­stand your audi­ence, answer their ques­tions, give them the best infor­ma­tion pos­si­ble, and present it in a way they’ll under­stand. These are the rules to abide by when cre­at­ing con­tent for your site.

What do you think the chances are of this arti­cle gain­ing an answer box?