Question keywords are often a quick win when optimising articles. By creating content that answers these questions that you are already ranking for, you can provide valuable information to your audience and increase the chances of your content being ranked higher in search results.
Also, when users search for a question, Google often displays a featured snippet or People Also Asked that provides a direct answer to their query. If you can optimise your content to appear in the rich result, you can increase the visibility of your content and attract more traffic to your website.
Google Search Console provides insights into the actual search queries that drive organic traffic to your website. This data reveals the keywords that users are using to find your site, giving you a glimpse into their search intent and help you refine your existing keyword.
How to use Google Search Console to find question keywords:
1. Go to Google Search Console Performance Report
2. Select the date range
3. Click “+ New” and select “Query
4. Enter the Regex in the Custom (regex) Filter
5. Export data from Google Search Console
1. Go to Google Search Console Performance Report
Login to your Google Search Console and select the domain. Head over to the Performance Report in the left-hand panel.
2. Select the date range
I would recommend using last 12 months data if possible so that you could also avoid seasonality and get a more accurate result. If you are trying to optimise a specific URL, click the “+ New” and select “Page” to filter it.
3. Click “+ New” and select “Query”
Click the “+ New” and select “Query” from the drop-down menu. Then select Custom (regex) in the first filter, and make sure you are using “Matches regex” in the second field.
4. Enter the Regex in the Custom (regex) Filter
Enter your regex to find out what question words your website is currently ranking for. The expression can be modified to suit your need – for example, if you want to create some how-to guides, you can start with filtering out all the queries that contain “how”.
This is my usual Regex for filtering question keywords:
^(what|where|when|why|who|how|do|does|is|are|was|did|if|will|can)To help you understand what’s going on in the Regex, let’s see the syntax of the regex:
- ^ : This limits matches to the start of the target string, so you will only see the query that start with the target question word
- () : This capture the group of question keyword
- | : This is the OR operator, so it will match the question word before or after the operator.
- Inside the () is the list of question keywords separated by the OR operator
Regex can also be useful to filter keywords for specific topics or URL, so learn Regex to ensure you are fully utilising the data from Search Console.
5. Export data from Google Search Console
Next, export your data to your desired format – Google Sheet or download as .csv or Excel file. Open your file and start playing around with it.
Here are some tips to identify some quick wins:
- Group your keywords by topic
- Sort by impression
- Filter ranking between 10-20 position
These will inform your next step – you create new articles to target a group of keywords, or you can optimise your content with keywords you are ranking for.
