How Google Queries Reddit and Quora in Response to Open-Ended Questions

Intro

When it comes to finding quick answers to any question, Google is the place to go. Whether you’re wondering how long it takes to bake muffins or how to use the quadratic formula, people trust Google as a source of all the answers they need.

As a marketer, it’s wise to tap into that demand for information. Fortunately, this is made easy by combining the power of user-generated content (UGC) platforms like Quora and Reddit and owned digital real estate like your website.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how Google queries user-generated content from Reddit and Quora in response to open-ended questions in search. We’ll discuss how this works and how marketers can leverage it for their SEO strategies.

UGC Platforms to Google: Querying Open-Ended Questions

Google generates its search results from all different sources. One of these sources is UGC platforms, such as Quora and Reddit.

If you’re unfamiliar, these are both forums where users can post thoughts and experiences on just about any topic. Quora is specifically for asking and answering questions, whereas Reddit has a more flexible form. On Reddit, people can share different types of media and ideas.

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This is important for brands looking to get creative with their SEO strategies since Google pulls answers to questions on these platforms and displays them in search engine result pages (SERPs) for related search terms.

Google delivers SERPs in different formats, depending on the query. The answers to open-ended questions on these UGC platforms are often displayed in the “People Also Ask” section. However, the results can be displayed under “Discussions and forums” or within the general results.

How to Use Open-Ended Questions on UGC Platforms for SEO

Tapping into the rankings and traffic generated by forum questions is a great way to add relevancy to your brand and drive traffic to your website. This technique is similar to traffic hacking techniques that brands use to become relevant to conversations on social media.

What you’ll want to do is find relevant questions and provide answers that are both valuable and enable you to plug your brand in an organic way. Look for opportunities to answer questions related to your industry, such as general questions on how things work or questions specific to your type of product.

Leveraging Quora for SEO

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Quora is great for targeting open-ended questions since the platform is built to ask and answer questions. All you have to do is find relevant questions and provide answers that showcase your expertise.

Another idea is to scroll to the related questions section on a Quora page to find additional topics to weigh in on. This will help you find different types of questions on similar topics.

Leveraging Reddit for SEO

The process for using Reddit is very similar to that of Quora. However, when leveraging Reddit for SEO initiatives, be mindful of community guidelines in the Subreddits you’re posting in. Some have strict rules about self-promotion, so you may be unable to link to your website.

On that note, it’s essential to be mindful of the culture on Reddit. Even if a certain Subreddit doesn’t ban self-promotion, many users don’t appreciate blatant self-promotion and will downvote your comments and posts.

You should be mindful of Reddit’s feedback tools, comprised of upvotes and downvotes. Downvotes indicate negative feedback, and upvotes are positive feedback. These things affect your “Karma” on the platform, determining your ability to participate in some Subreddits.

Additional Ways to Target Open-Ended Question Keywords

While Quora and Reddit provide great ways to tap into domains that have authority and are gaining traffic, they’re simply the tip of the iceberg regarding opportunities for targeting long-tail keywords with open-ended questions.

Another option is to create content on your website that addresses these questions.

A great way to target these keywords is by including an FAQ section on the landing page or blog post that you’re writing. Incorporating FAQs gives you a natural way to cover a variety of questions without it seeming like keyword stuffing.

If you want to take it a step further, you can add schema markup to your articles so Google can easily scan them. This will let Google know that you’re answering questions right off the bat.

Tips for Answering Open-Ended Questions

If you’re targeting open-ended questions on Quora and Reddit as part of your SEO strategy, there are a few essential tips to remember. Here’s what we’ve got.

1. Choose Questions Strategically

A major key to successfully leveraging open-ended questions for SEO is to choose the right questions to answer.

It’s important to find the type of question that’s most relevant to your brand. For example, a baked goods company has no reason to answer questions about a vehicle’s mechanics.

With that, you should choose questions that are truly open-ended. Opt for questions that require a detailed response rather than close-end questions that only warrant a one-word answer.

You can use tools like Ranktracker’s keyword finder to identify long-tail keywords to target with your efforts.

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2. Provide Detailed Answers

Another important aspect of successfully answering open-ended questions for SEO is to provide detailed answers.

Avoid using single-word answers, and make sure to provide meaningful answers instead. In SEO, providing valuable information is key to appearing in Google’s organic results.

On a similar note, make sure to keep it concise. Find the balance of providing a well-rounded answer without being excessively wordy. You can be detailed and thorough without rambling.

3. Pose the Questions

If you see search volume for a specific question but have only seen it posed differently in forums, this could be an excellent opportunity to publish the question on your own. It may seem strange to fabricate these interactions, but as long as you’re doing so in a way that provides value, there’s no problem at all.

Of course, you shouldn’t ask and answer a question from the same profile. You can use a backup account to ask the question and your main account to answer it.

4. Interact with Other Replies

With the nature of a forum, organic interaction is essential. If you only ever publish posts or content in a self-serving manner, it’ll come across as inorganic. That’s why it’s crucial to interact with others in the comments and replies to a post.

At the very least, you should be interacting with anybody who replies to your comments on a forum. This will give you more chances to connect and create additional opportunities to plug your brand organically.

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With that, make sure your interactions are constructive and respectful. Even if you’re answering questions that feel like they should have black-and-white answers, there are always tones of gray to consider.

5. Include Data and Statistics

Data and statistics are great for supporting claims you’re making on forums since they give readers concrete information in response to their questions. It adds legitimacy to your answers and helps build trust among people reading them.

You can share data from your business’s customer surveys or pull results from other online surveys. Sharing data from surveys you’ve conducted and linking to the results published on your website is a very organic way to traffic hack.

6. Use Forums to Inform Your Content Strategy

In addition to tapping into the traffic that UGC sites and forums generate, browsing questions on these sites provides valuable insight into the needs of potential customers.

These posts give you direct access to people’s thoughts and curiosities, making it easy to identify gaps in knowledge, pain points, etc. With these potential customer insights, you can curate your content marketing strategy to address these topics.

For example, suppose you’re in the life insurance industry, and you see a lot of questions about the difference between term and whole life insurance. In that case, you can create dedicated guides on your blog to cover these topics that go beyond what you’ll be able to share in the responses on the forum.

Beyond your content strategy, this insight is valuable for other business areas, like product development. It helps you solve people’s needs to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.

7. Use People Also Ask for Inspiration

We talked about how one of the ways Google displays results from open-ended questions on forums is in the People Also Ask section. Reviewing the questions that People Also Ask chooses for a search term will help you determine which specific questions to answer.

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The logic here is that if Google already sees a question as valuable enough to warrant a People Also Ask feature, then you have a chance of claiming that real estate by providing a valuable and detailed answer.

Another great thing about this technique is that it allows you to find viable “synonyms” for your long-tail keywords. They might not have a high search volume, but since Google considers them relevant and valuable, they’ll get traffic from higher volume terms.

Final Thoughts

Open-ended questions on Reddit and Quora provide great opportunities to tap into traffic on domains that rank well, getting exposure to your brand and driving traffic to your own site.

You can also unlock a treasure trove of follow-up questions to spur more content creativity for your next blog posts.

Sign up for Ranktracker today to identify which open-ended question keywords you should answer on Reddit and Quora.