Today’s users can easily look up answers to questions anytime, anywhere—from inquiries about the best skincare brand to how much the cheapest international flight would cost at this stage of the pandemic.

In particular, among its 222+ million active users, Baidu is rapidly seeing more search queries submitted as questions. This shift calls for brands to match search intent with the right keywords—and understand the question behind the query.

Let’s examine how to rank higher on SERPs for question-related terms and target them on Baidu, China’s #1 search engine, using Dragon Metrics—an all-in-one global SEO platform.

Why Are Question Keywords Significant?

Given their high specificity, question keywords drive quality traffic and are more pertinent than ever on search engines.

Upon entering a general term in Baidu’s search box, at least one-third of the recommended searches show up as question terms. This is frequent, in particular, for searches related to cosmetics, gaming, and travel.

Baidu Search: Recommended question searches for “Skincare product”

Baidu Search: Recommended question searches for “Game console”

Baidu Search: Recommended question searches for “International flight tickets”

Much like on Google, most of Baidu’s organic SERPs for question keywords have a featured snippet, which displays a short answer to the question and links to the webpage source.

Likewise, both search engines analyze semantic search to predict which results would be most useful to users based on their query.

Thus, it’s critical to optimize your content to appear in question-related featured snippets: By matching true search intent, maximizing SERP real estate, and linking to your website, featured snippets boost quality traffic to your content.

Baidu Search: Featured snippet for “What’s the best skincare product to use?”

Google Search: Featured snippet for “What’s the best skincare brand to use?”

Overall, the advantages of optimizing your webpages for question keywords include:

Increasing organic CTR

Websites that have results appear as featured snippets will rank first on the SERP, likely improving CTR.

Greater brand and product exposure

You get greater brand awareness by optimizing webpages for question keywords that are brand or product-related.

Attracting high quality traffic

By answering critical FAQs in your content to aid potential customers in their purchase decision, your website visitors will increase, possibly leading to higher sales or conversions.

Increasing customer retention

Any Q&As or landing pages that you optimize for question keywords, especially brand-related, serve as a gateway to your main brand website, which will increase customer stickiness over time.

Targeting The Right Question Keywords

Leveraging real-time data of website traffic, with SEO tools like Dragon Metrics, is an easy and accurate way to research and identify keywords.

In particular, Dragon Metrics’ keyword research tool supports Baidu, Google, and Naver, three of the most used search engines in the world, allowing you to tailor your keyword research to your target market.

Dragon Metrics supports Google, Baidu, and Naver

For this article, we selected Baidu to demonstrate how to target question keywords.

Dragon Metrics: Keyword Research Overview

After selecting a search engine and entering a keyword, Dragon Metrics automatically provides a variety of ideas relating to your keyword, categorized as:

• Containing this phrase
  • Similar keywords that contain the exact match of your keyword, word-for-word
• Related topics
  • Keywords that are semantically related to your query, but don’t contain the original phrase
• Questions
  • Question keywords that reveal how people are thinking about and searching for the keyword

Dragon Metrics: Keyword Ideas

In addition to the question keywords themselves, which can be exported as an excel file, you can click “View all” under the “Questions” category for useful metrics about the keyword, including:

• Monthly search volume (MSV) for desktop, mobile, and all devices
• Monthly search volume trend (all devices)
• Cost-per-click (CPC)
• Paid competition

Dragon Metrics: Questions Keywords List

To narrow down your target question keyword list, the filters at the top let you scour through long keyword lists and include or exclude certain phrases. Additionally, filters are available for MSV, CPC, paid competition, and word count.

To the left of the table, there is also a separate list of the most common terms to aid your research.

Pro Tip: When searching for long-tail keywords, we suggest using the word count filter.

Dragon Metrics: Keyword search filters

How To Optimize Content For Question Keywords?

One of the simplest ways to optimize your on-page content for question keywords is by creating a frequently asked questions (FAQ) or question-and-answer (Q&A) section on your website.

Here are some on-page optimization tips and tricks to help you rank higher on the SERP for question keywords:

• Answer the question immediately in the first paragraph—or better yet, the subheading—of your content piece.
• State the question when answering it to improve your webpage’s likelihood of getting tagged by Baidu as the best answer. For this reason, you may want to consider formatting your content with a Q&A.
• Improve your website authority with high quality content and a credible answer to the question. Provide well-researched information and avoid SEO malpractices.
• Optimize page readability to entice users to stay longer on your page, like including images to break up blocks of text. Similarly, write in lists or bullet points wherever possible and ensure that language is consistent and easy to digest.

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Question-related searches make up a large portion of overall searches on Baidu. Question keyword optimization, in turn, can help boost your SEO and ROI—by driving organic traffic, earning links, and converting traffic into sales.

Pro-Tip: As The Egg’s sister company, Dragon Metrics is a proprietary tool developed as the first truly global SEO platform that provides rank tracking, onsite optimization reports, link management, keyword research tools, and more for search engines around the world. In this article, we look specifically at Dragon Metrics’ prowess on Baidu, but Dragon Metrics works for all of the world’s major search engines.