Customer Insight with AnswerThePublic Keyword Research

Marketing, at its very core, is about getting people to take action. One of the mistakes many marketers make is assuming they know what keywords and content their audience wants and is searching for. Online keyword research tools like AnswerThePublic provides the customer insight you need to create content that attracts and retains new customers.  

Read the Mind of Your Audience with AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic is a free online visual keyword tool that shows you exactly what questions people are asking search engines about a particular subject. It’s also the fastest and easiest way to get the customer insight that tells you exactly what your customers want.

You simply enter your search term or subject, and AnswerThePublic generates a massive list of questions, prepositions, and comparisons. Results are shown in keyword visualization wheels, which helps for people who process information better visually. But if lists are your thing, you can switch to a data view of your results in columns. What’s great is you can also download a CVS file to save the results in a spreadsheet.

Now, this isn’t an advanced keyword research tool. AnswerThePublic doesn’t give you stats like search volume or keyword difficulty. What it IS especially useful for is showing you the actual terms your customers are using when searching for things related to your topic online. 

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How to Use AnswerThePublic for Consumer Insight

AnswerThePublic uses Google Search data to provide marketers with powerful and actionable customer insight in real-time. In search marketing, the majority of consumer behavior involves researching and making purchases, gaining knowledge, seeking advice, or looking for validation. 

These behaviors are indicators of interest and intent you can use to make more informed decisions about your marketing and content. When you know what your customers are searching for and the keywords they are using, you can build your content plan and better target marketing while enhancing your products and services to more closely match consumer needs.

Enter a search term and AnswerThePublic scrapes Google and Bing search engine suggestions  to generate buckets of related searches, categorized by:

• Questions – will, can, where, which, who, what, when, why, how, are
• Prepositions – without, with, to, near, for, can, is
• Comparisons – like, and, or, versus, vs
• +Alphabet – search term plus each letter of the alphabet

When looking at your AnswerThePublic results, you’ll see “branches” that are different streams of information about your search term. This infographic from SearchListening.com will show you better than I can tell you about the customer insight you can get from the different branches of your results. It also has tips on how to get the most out of using AnswerThePublic.

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It’s question words like who, what, why, where, when, how, will, and are that tell you someone is looking for knowledge. Answering questions is why the internet was invented (I think – Google that), and that’s why AnswerThePublic has an entire wheel dedicated solely to questions. Specifically, the “how” searches are content gold for marketers looking to position their brand as an authoritative, expert, and trustworthy voice. No matter the question, you can position your content to provide answers.

Get MORE from AnswerThePublic with These Tips

If you are marketing to Americans, then make sure you switch the country from the United Kingdom to the United States before you click on the “Search” button. It really is a lot more significant than spell check telling you that “visualise” isn’t spelled right. You want to make sure your results are scraped from the same search engine settings your customers are using.

AnswerThePublic isn’t a search engine – it’s a tool that visualizes search data, so long-tail keyword searches result in less robust reports. For example, “roof repair” will get you hundreds of results showing you what people are really searching for when they include roof+repair in their search query. In contrast, “roof repair service providers in Provo” will mostly generate variations of those exact words.

Get out of your head (you’re too knowledgeable about the subject) and get into the mind of someone who is turning to the internet to find answers to their questions. Different people will phrase the same thing in different ways. You should think like your a customer and run separate reports for the different ways they may think about your product. Using the roof repair example again, a potential customer might search “roof repair”, or “roofer”, or “new roof” with the same intent to research and purchase some form of roofing services.

Local search insight is more prevalent for specific industries that provide local goods or services. AnswerThePublic can help you to identify the locations where people are actively seeking services or products like yours. It also identifies the local intent terms that customers use as an anchor such as “near” or “open now”. The pro version of AnswerThePublic enables you to see results tailored to your language and location.

Want your content to show up in featured snippets or voice search results? Then you need to be very specific in how you optimize your keywords, so Google knows your content (and thus your website) is the best answer for frequently asked questions. With this tool, you instantly generate lists upon lists of long-tail keywords (questions/queries) customers are using right now on Google. When you know what customers want, you’re able to show them you’re the place to get what they need. 

You Should Consider Going Pro (with AnswerThePublic Pro)

It’s pretty awesome that we get to use AnswerThePublic for free, but there are limits to what you can do. The free version limits your searches to three a day, but the Pro version has unlimited searches and several features you’ll want to use.

Here’s what you get when you go AnswerThePublic Pro:

• Run unlimited search
• Add unlimited team members to your pro account
• Save reports your team creates automatically (to compare data over time)
• Customize the location of the search
• Download high-resolution images to use in reports or presentations
• Hide individual “arms” or questions (to take out non-relevant data)

With AnswerThePublic, you can cut out the guesswork and uncover precisely what your customers are searching for. With direct customer insight, you’ll know what people need. Then you just get intentional and creative with creating content that drives more traffic, gets more eyes on your product, and grows your business online.

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