Google recent­ly revealed its most pop­u­lar “how to” search­es, under­scor­ing one impor­tant way con­sumers use the search engine to find what they need – and where brands have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to not only find them, but pro­vide val­ue.

And these oppor­tu­ni­ties are only expand­ing. Case in point: Jon­ny Demp­ster, direc­tor at dig­i­tal con­sul­tan­cy Rushh Dig­i­tal, point­ed to Google data, which shows 15% of the tril­lions of queries it process­es have nev­er been searched for before, which indi­cates users are typ­ing ques­tions as they think – and the search uni­verse is expand­ing.
What’s more, Sam War­ren, man­ag­er of mar­ket­ing and part­ner­ships at SEO ser­vice Rank­Pay, said these search­es not only get brands in front of new audi­ences, but, with good con­tent, the answers can gen­er­ate imme­di­ate trust.

But oth­er than cre­at­ing con­tent that answers ques­tions rel­e­vant to your brand, how can mar­keters cap­i­tal­ize on all of these search­es?

Here are sev­en ways:

1. Research

Bradley Shaw of SEO Expert Brad Inc. said to start with key­word research on which “how to” search­es cus­tomers are using to find your brand already.

“First, check Google Search Con­sole and select queries [and] then search ‘how to,’” Shaw said. “This will pro­vide a start­ing point. Next, brain­storm ‘how to’ search­es you think cus­tomers would search for to find your web­site. We also use a few key­word research tools, then throw all of this infor­ma­tion into a spread­sheet, along with search vol­ume data and key­word dif­fi­cul­ty.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Demp­ster sug­gest­ed look­ing at sug­gest­ed search­es for the key cat­e­gories of your web­site.

“For exam­ple, if your busi­ness sells wine online, search for ‘how to buy wine’ and see [first] what Google sug­gests,” he said. “Once bro­ken out by cat­e­go­ry, you can start to cre­ate con­tent themes. Run this through Key­word Plan­ner to get an overview on how many users a month are search­ing for this.”

Or, Shaw said, search “How to…” your­self and see what’s in the top list­ings.

“Why are they rank­ing, how are they for­mat­ted? Are they using bul­let points? Is the con­tent 600 words?” Shaw asked. “If so, improve the con­tent.”

In addi­tion, Caleb Ulku, prin­ci­pal at SEO firm Ulku Logis­tics, said to esti­mate com­pet­i­tive­ness of the search by look­ing to see if a wik­i­How page has already ranked for your “how to” search.

“Typ­i­cal­ly, if a wik­i­How page is ranked well, it’s a sign that the search has rel­a­tive­ly low com­pet­i­tive­ness and we can set about get­ting the fea­tured snip­pet,” Ulku added.

2. Get in the Knowledge Graph

Accord­ing to Max Robin­son, SEO exec­u­tive at A Hume Coun­try Cloth­ing, Google attempts to answer most “how to” queries by extract­ing answers from web­sites and dis­play­ing this with­in the Knowl­edge Graph.

Bau­man not­ed this is par­tic­u­lar­ly true for instruc­tion-ori­ent­ed queries.

And Anna Lebe­de­va, head of media rela­tions at SEO tool SEM­rush, said this so-called posi­tion zero can bring quite a lot of traf­fic to a web­site. That’s because users not only don’t have to click on a result, but the con­tent can leapfrog all of the oth­er results.

“Since the pur­pose of fea­tured snip­pets is to answer ques­tions, explic­it ques­tions like ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘how,’ ‘where’ and ‘why’ search queries will obvi­ous­ly often have fea­tured snip­pets,” Lebe­de­va said. “Also, for one thing, get­ting a fea­tured snip­pet may be less about the link met­rics and more about the actu­al con­tent on your page. So if you are out­gunned in terms of back­links, then fea­tured snip­pets could be just the thing for the busi­ness.”

3. Make lists, summaries and combinations

One way to increase the odds of land­ing a fea­tured snip­pet is to include a con­cise sum­ma­ry, War­ren said.

In addi­tion, Demp­ster sug­gest­ed com­bin­ing five to ten “how to” ques­tions in one large piece of con­tent – this is the rich con­tent that search engines love and will pull through fea­tured snip­pets and give greater vis­i­bil­i­ty.

Anoth­er way is to dis­play your “how to” con­tent in a list, Robin­son said.

Zack Rebo­let­ti, SEO con­sul­tant at SEO firm Web-Focused, agreed, rec­om­mend­ing you use an ordered list HTML markup.

War­ren agreed bul­lets are key to land­ing the fea­ture.

Rebo­let­ti, how­ev­er, not­ed con­tent is only eli­gi­ble for a fea­tured snip­pet if your web­page already ranks on page one of the organ­ic results for the search query.

4. Answer the question on multiple platforms

And, like with your own assets, you want to diver­si­fy – at least in terms of the plat­forms where your con­tent appears.

James Arm­strong, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er for KVH Media Group, said this so-called plat­form plu­ral­i­ty helps cap­ture search traf­fic for broad­er “how to” search­es, as well as with­in nich­es with high-rank­ing com­peti­tors.

“For exam­ple, imag­ine you’re a small ecom­merce paper retail­er, Pete’s Paper Sup­plies, aim­ing to cap­ture traf­fic from ‘how to make a paper plane?’-type search­es. But you’re com­pet­ing with Paper Corp PLC – a mas­sive multi­na­tion­al paper con­glom­er­ate who’re out­rank­ing your blog post about how to make papers planes, because their web­site is much old­er, much big­ger and has a link-pro­file you can’t hope to match,” Arm­strong said. “All the tra­di­tion­al SEO and con­tent mar­ket­ing the­o­ry still applies; make your post as rel­e­vant, and as high-qual­i­ty and as tech­ni­cal­ly per­fect as it can be… and then cheat by using oth­er plat­forms to spread your con­tent.”

That includes Q&A plat­forms like Quo­ra and Red­dit, as well as YouTube, rel­e­vant social media com­mu­ni­ties and even influ­encers, he added.

“Cre­ate par­al­lel con­tent for them all, pro­mot­ing and ref­er­enc­ing your con­tent. Paper Corp’s web­site might still out­rank your blog post… but you now have con­tent all across the SERP for ‘how to make a paper plane’ – and your brand’s con­tent will be claim­ing a greater per­cent­age of that traf­fic (even if it is on third par­ty websites/platforms), which is exact­ly the type of brand aware­ness boost that you want for top-of-the-fun­nel traf­fic com­ing from ‘how to’ search­es,” Arm­strong said.

Stan Tan, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at event brand­ing firm Selby’s, agreed cre­at­ing one piece of con­tent won’t cut it in part because there are mil­lions of pieces of con­tent com­pet­ing for search terms. The query “how to tie a tie,” for exam­ple, has 26.9 mil­lion results.

Per Tan, the way to stand out is by cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple pieces of con­tent relat­ed to a giv­en query, such as:
1. How to tie a sim­ple tie
2. How to tie a tie dou­ble knot
3. How to tie a school tie
4. How to tie a busi­ness tie
5. How to tie a Wind­sor tie

“All this helps with your website’s author­i­ty and helps you rank bet­ter not only for the key­word ‘how to tie a tie’ but the oth­er relat­ed key­words as well,” Tan added.

5. Pay special attention to YouTube

David Erick­son, vice pres­i­dent of online mar­ket­ing at PR firm Kar­wos­ki & Courage, point­ed out “how to” search­es are a huge cat­e­go­ry for YouTube because con­sumers pre­fer demon­stra­tion videos to writ­ten instruc­tions when they want to learn how to do some­thing.

“I’ve come across stud­ies that indi­cate peo­ple are more like­ly to retain knowl­edge after watch­ing some­one do some­thing than sim­ply read­ing about how to do some­thing,” Erick­son said. “I’m a gui­tarist. Back in the day, if I want­ed to learn a song, I had to lis­ten to it over and over and over again to try and fig­ure out how to play it. Now, I just go to YouTube and search ‘How To Play One by U2’ and there are a hand­ful of demon­stra­tion videos show­ing me how to play it. It’s awe­some.”

Jason Bau­man, senior SEO asso­ciate at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Trin­i­ty Insight, agreed the intent behind a “how to” ques­tion is gen­er­al­ly do-it-your­self.

6. Use content to highlight your expertise

For his part, Ryan Scol­lon, team leader at a UK dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency, point­ed out an oppor­tu­ni­ty in this atti­tude to win new cus­tomers as many “how to” search­es are made by peo­ple who are not will­ing to fork out the mon­ey for a pro­fes­sion­al to do some­thing.

“I know of a few busi­ness­es who are scared to do ‘how to’ posts on a ser­vice that they offer because they are scared that peo­ple will just do it them­selves instead of hir­ing them to do it,” Scol­lon said. “The real ben­e­fit of a ‘how to’ post is you get the chance to show the read­ers how com­pli­cat­ed a job can be and [it] real­ly makes them real­ize the val­ue of your ser­vice. They could find your post and think, ‘For­get doing all of that, I’m not skilled enough to be doing this,’ and will final­ly decide to hire a pro­fes­sion­al. And where bet­ter else to look for the pro­fes­sion­al when they are already on your web­site.”

Scol­lon said this holds true in the SEO indus­try.

“Many peo­ple try to do SEO them­selves, but once they start read­ing these ‘how to’ guides, they soon real­ize how much expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge is required to get the job done prop­er­ly,” he said. “They are usu­al­ly impressed with the amount of detail our ‘how to’ guides go in to, mak­ing us their first point of call when they decid­ed to choose a pro­fes­sion­al to get the job done.

7. Tap into paid search

In addi­tion to cre­at­ing con­tent that answers “how to” ques­tions uncov­ered by key­word research, Natasha Kvit­ka, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gist at gift deliv­ery ser­vice Gift Bas­kets Over­seas, said to use the same insights in paid search by cre­at­ing ad groups with mes­sag­ing that address­es these ques­tions and sends a poten­tial cus­tomer to a land­ing page that will answer the ques­tion in more detail.

“For exam­ple, we used the sim­i­lar strat­e­gy for ‘how to send [prod­uct] to [coun­try]’ search­es,” she said. “But the bet­ter results were achieved with send­ing a client not to the blog post or ‘how to’ page of the web­site, but to [an] inter­me­di­ate page.”

That page includ­ed three options: to pur­chase, to learn more and to chat.

“With those options, we tried to move the ‘how to’ searcher to the pur­chase with less trac­tion and actu­al­ly received trans­ac­tions from ‘how to’ key­words that usu­al­ly are from cus­tomers in [the] ear­ly con­sid­er­a­tion stage of their pur­chase jour­ney,” she added.