The People Also Ask (PAA) feature is an important part of an SEO content strategy. This is evidenced by the latest SEMrush research which has examined 1,000,000 keywords in the United States. For more details, here are the results of SEMrush's research on People Also Ask in 2020
PAA boxes are present in nearly half of all available searches in our 1,000,000 keyword dataset and the numbers are growing.
Google uses PAA in part at least for query refinement, giving websites the opportunity to perform first page visibility on search terms that were previously too broad to target.
PAA SEO strategies can be applied to almost any sector (industry-specific groupings can give you guidance on how much of your overall effort should go into PAA optimization).
There are opportunities and risks for big brands to control the answers when PAA questions are shown on branded search terms.
Unlike featured snippets, they can appear in the PAA box and maintain a standard organic ranking on page 1 of Google.
75% of the time PAA results show up, these are in the top 3 results on Google, providing a good opportunity for high visibility.
The average question term will result in a PAA 86% of the time.
Google takes the majority of web text content for PAA results, with 48% of all PAA boxes coming exclusively from in-paragraph text.
There are still untapped opportunities for video content in PAA boxes, where Google can't find any suitable results.
Like other types of results, conciseness is key with paragraphs that average only 41 words
