I’ve been blogging and doing SEO for over a decade, and in that time, I’ve used many tools to help me come up with topic ideas and enhance my content.
One of those tools is Answer The Public—and it’s helped me to refresh old content and recover lost Google rankings.
What is Answer The Public?
Answer The Public is a free keyword research tool that shows you questions people ask on Google about a particular topic and related keyword ideas.
It also gives you keyword data such as cost per click (CPC) and search volume. You can see this data visually (shown below) or as a data chart.
How I Used Answer The Public to Refresh My Content & Recover Lost Google Rankings
Google released a product reviews update in 2023, and one of my blogs lost a ton of traffic.
The page that took the biggest hit was my rooftop tent comparison page:
The update rewarded pages for displaying EEAT, including:
- Expressing expert knowledge about the topic
- Showing what the product looks like beyond photos by the manufacturer
- Providing quantitative measurement about how the product compares to others
- Giving evidence of personal experiences with the product, such as photos and videos
- Including links to multiple sellers to give the reader options on where to buy it
When I updated the pages, I addressed these concerns by adding my own photos of the products and providing more in-depth research about them.
But I wanted to go deeper than that. And that’s where Answer The Public comes in.
Figuring Out What People Are Asking About
I could provide plenty of personal experience and expertise around rooftop tents. But what I didn’t know was what people wanted to know about them.
So I plugged “rooftop tents” into Answer The Public to see precisely what people wanted to know, based on real data:
I found questions people were asking, like:
- How do rooftop tents work?
- Are rooftop tents worth it?
- Why are rooftop tents so expensive?
- Etc.
Updating my old content
I downloaded the lists of questions and chose the ones with the highest search volume and relevancy to add to my rooftop tent comparison article.
I also made sure to add FAQ schema. Doing so can give you a chance at your questions displaying underneath your result on the SERPs, like my competitor here:
The results: Rankings started to recover within a month
I updated the article in early March, and by the end of the month, traffic slowly started trickling back:
It’s not recovered completely, but it often takes several months to see significant results. I can only assume the edits I made are working based on the slow-bu-steady recovery I’m seeing.
I will come back to this post and update it in a few months once I know for sure what the results are.
Other ways you can use Answer The Public
Besides updating old content with FAQs, there are some other great use cases for Answer The Public:
Keyword research
Answer The Public has a section that shows you related keywords. If you plug in a seed keyword, you can use this data to find related topics to write about:
Local SEO
Answer The Public also has an alphabetical keyword section, which often shows data on local keywords:
Final thoughts
Answer The Public is an awesome tool with great free functionality. The paid version is even better, giving you unlimited searches and full access to their data.
While I won’t know how much of an effect this content refresh had for several more months, it’s already showing signs of recovery. I will update this post in six months with further data.
Next, check out my guide on how to start and monetize a blog to learn how you can make a full-time income from the comfort of your own home.
