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How to find the questions your customers ask
The questions your customers ask are already written down in four places: Google Search Console, the People Also Ask box under your main searches, your own email and phone log, and the AI assistants when you ask them what people want to know. An hour with those four gives you a list of thirty questions, and each one is a page or a section your site should answer.
Search Console
Open Performance, filter queries to ones containing "how", "what", "can", "do", "does", "is", or "cost". Those are questions your site already appears for. Sort by impressions. The ones with high impressions and a position past 5 are the ones you nearly hold and should answer better.
People Also Ask
Search your main service with your town. Note every question in the box. Click three of them; more load. Do the same for each service. You now have the questions Google itself associates with your business.
Your own records
Read the last fifty emails and form submissions. Ask whoever answers the phone for the five questions they answer every day. These are the questions people ask when they are about to buy, and they are rarely on the website.
The assistants
Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity: "What questions do people ask before choosing a [your trade] in [your town]?" The answer is a list drawn from what people actually type. Cross it against the other three.
What to do with the list
- Group the questions by the service they belong to.
- Give each one a heading on that service page, worded the way people ask it.
- Answer it in the first sentence under the heading.
- Add the pairs as FAQ structured data.
- Check Search Console in a month for the ones you now hold.
Questions people ask
How many questions should one page answer?
As many as belong to that service, usually four to eight. Past that, the page is covering two services and should split.
Should I use a keyword tool?
They help for volume, but for a local business the four sources above give you the real wording, which matters more than the volume estimate.
What if my customers do not search, they just call?
They searched first. Search Console will show it.
Related
Want this done for you?
This is the work we do for every client: search, answer engines, and AI assistants, on one plan with one monthly report. Tell us about your business and we will tell you what we would do first.
