Dental care is one of Google’s most in-demand search areas. Information about teeth and gum problems as well as dental services is highly sought after on the internet’s biggest search engine, but it’s also highly competitive. Despite the crowded playing field, a great way to get better positioning for your dental website is by getting featured in one of Google’s answer boxes.
Back in 2015, Google started displaying answer boxes in response to questions that a lot of people were searching for. Answer boxes give you short and sweet snippets of information that Google’s algorithms have deemed most relevant to your inquiry. They started as a trial feature and quickly caught on.
Today, nearly 15% of Google searches display an answer box at the top of the page. People seem to like answer boxes so much that Google started displaying them above the top site on the search engine results page (SERP).
In this article, we’re going to talk about a few tips and tricks for how you can get content from your dental services website featured in one of Google’s answer boxes.
Kinds of Answer Boxes
Answer boxes come in three styles:
- Paragraph boxes
- List boxes
- Table boxes
Paragraph Boxes
Paragraph-style answer boxes are the most common kind. They give a short paragraph of information that Google thinks provides the best answer to the question asked. These paragraph are usually skimmed from one of the sites on the first SERP.
Some paragraph answer boxes feature an image beside the snippet of text. The image can but doesn’t always come from the same site as the text. If your site has a great dental-related image that you want featured in an answer box, make sure you optimize the picture as much as possible by giving it a relevant image alt attribute and an accurate, concise file name.
List Boxes
The next most common kind of answer box is the list box. List boxes usually come with either bullet points or numbers. Answers that have a number of directions or consecutive steps usually get list boxes.
Table Boxes
The final kind of answer box is the table. Table boxes usually show up when the question asked involves some kind of comparison. They generally resemble a chart with rows and columns so you can see how different variables match up across different products, methods or services.
How to Win a Dental Answer Box
Answer boxes are prized search traffic hot spots. If you want to give yourself the best chance of winning one, it’s important to be familiar with all the ins and outs.
To start with, you need to find a dental question to respond to that covers a broad topic but doesn’t take too much space to answer.
Keyword Research
You can find good questions to answer by doing a bit of research. Create a list of ideas by brainstorming a few topics that are popular and fall inside your area of expertise.
Run your list through a keyword app like Ubersuggest or Keyword Tracker to find out how often people ask those questions on Google. If you already work with Google AdWords, you can use your account to access the Google Keyword Planner and get Google’s suggestions about popular dental questions.
Win Existing Answer Boxes
Google continually creates new answer boxes for new questions. If you’re just starting out, it may be easier to try to win an existing answer box.
Targeting a dental keyword that already has its own answer box can give you a good template to work around with a tangible prize that you can focus on. Use a bulk search tool like SearchOpener.com to whittle your question keyword list down to only ones that already produce answer boxes.
What Google Wants
More than anything else, Google wants accuracy. You can win an answer box if you can write an answer that’s more accurate and higher quality than the current winner. A good strategy is to start by looking for inaccurate or out-of-date answers. These are the easiest to improve.
If you’re trying to answer a subjective dental question, make sure most of Google’s top trusted sites on the topic agree with you. “Are crowns painful?” is a popular question with a subjective answer. Check out what the top Google results have to say. If WebMD, Healthline and the American Dental Association all agree that getting a crown is generally painless during the procedure but may hurt for about two weeks afterward, then the Google algorithm probably thinks the same.
Besides looking for accuracy and consensus, Google also loves clear and concise answers. Instead of keyword stuffing, write an answer that is specific, enjoyable to read and near the top of a paragraph.
How Google Wants It
You can get a pretty good idea of the kind of formatting Google is looking for by clicking through to the website of the current answer box. Once you have a general idea of how Google wants it, you can work on formatting it even better.
One way to improve your formatting is to put the question’s exact keywords in your page’s H1 or H2 tags and your answer in the text directly below. Don’t change the keywords or your chances of winning the answer box will go down.
If you’re targeting a paragraph box, write a heading involving the exact keyword format and try to repeat those keywords in your answer in the paragraph immediately following. If you’re targeting a list box, use the keywords in the list’s heading. If you’re trying to win a table box, use the keywords in your table’s title.
First or Bust?
Sometimes in life, if you’re not the best, you’re nothing. Google answer boxes have a different philosophy. The algorithm scans for the best information from any of the sites on its top results page.
This means that even if you’re the last site on the first page of the search results for “do root canals hurt,” you can still cut the line and become the top result if you win the answer box. Once you get the answer box, your site will be listed twice on the first page, and your chances of getting customer click-throughs will double.
Exceed the Maximum Length
Speaking of click-throughs, winning one of Google’s dental answer boxes won’t do you much good unless you can use it to get more traffic to your site. One counterintuitive hack you can use is to write an answer that exceeds Google’s maximum answer box length.
If your full answer is shorter than the maximum answer box length, people won’t need to go to your site to find out more. An interesting and accurate answer box with a cliffhanger at the end will incentivize casual searchers to visit your site.
Don’t let Google exploit your precious information and hard work. An answer that is too short may give you bragging rights to the answer box, but you’ll lose an opportunity to increase your visitors and customers. If you’re writing a list or table box, make sure your answer includes more than five bullets or rows.
Conclusion
Answer boxes are complicated. It’s impossible to guarantee that you’ll win one, but you can maximize your chances with clear, concise and accurate answers that reflect consensus information.
Strategic Practice Solutions, LLC