Answer the Public is a tool that anyone who is in dire need of a keyword tool needs to have bookmarked or saved in one of their browser’s folders. While it doesn’t technically answer the public as the name suggests, it merely gives you keywords so you can then use them to your benefit and answer the public yourself.
That’s right, folks, the name does lie, but it also does half the work for you so calm down.
AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword.
It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. The kind your customers really want.
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What is Answer the Public?
As mentioned at the start of this post, it’s a keyword research tool that if you haven’t tried at least once, and don’t have a specific one you devote your life to, you definitely should give it a go.
It’s one of the keyword tools that I personally use for my alternate gaming site, though not so much for Worthy of Me (more on this below).
After entering a keyword, the site gathers queries from search engines and compiles them into several categories, including:
- Questions
- Prepositions
- Comparisons
- Alphabeticals
- Related
It’s all very well laid out.
Is this a free keyword research tool?
Yes and no.
It’s not completely free, but you can definitely get a lot out of the free version if used properly. You basically just want to make sure you pick the best keywords that you’re really looking for at the time.
Here’s a quote from them on their website.
We continue to provide FREE searches (over 500k a month!) where you can trial run and swipe a few content ideas on us, but you’re limited based on our traffic
I believe you get three searches a day, so the free version doesn’t hinder you too much, but you’re not going to get the data comparison over time like you could in a pro version of the tool. You can still print the page, download the CSV, or save the images if you want to keep the ideas it gives you on hand.
Don’t think you need the pro version right off the bat.
Check out the free version, use it for a bit, and if you feel the need to expand a bit more, that’s when you can look into the upgrade options.
Also, once you hit your limit with free searches, the site will tell you.
Who is this keyword research tool for?
Anyone who needs help in finding specific keywords for their website that will help expand on answering a user’s question–hence the site name.
So basically, anyone from beginner bloggers who are just searching for the first questions to focus on for their first keywords or even expanding on the ones they already have, as well as those who have a larger site with a lot more keywords.
Maybe you want to narrow down on a specific keyword and make more posts on it.
That’s where Answer the Public could possibly help.
Who is it not for?
A site like Worthy of Me.
Don’t get me wrong, I can still get some benefit out of it, but because this is a product-based website and doesn’t focus on answering a user’s question, Answer the Public doesn’t give me the best keywords that I can use for my website’s purpose of product promotion.
For example, if I look for the keyword “water fountains,” some of the results are as follows:
- who invented water fountains
- who calls water fountains bubblers
- who sells water fountains near me
- how did ancient water fountains work
- how did old water fountains work
- who invented the first water fountain
Nothing like that is useful on Worthy of Me, because they aren’t product-based, they’re informational. But if you have a website where you focus on water fountains, then these are some topics you can touch base on.
How do you use Answer the Public?
Head on over to the homepage of Answer the Public and you’ll notice that below the animated person (which is cool and has changed several times over the months/years), there’s a search bar.
Choose a keyword you want to focus on.
Let’s say you’re a site that’s focused on the romantic side of things. So we’ll write Valentine’s Day in the field to see what it comes up with–keep in mind, this is the free version, so there will be less results than someone who’s on the pro version.
There are also drop-down menus for localization and language, so don’t ignore that depending on your location.
As you can see, we’ve got 384 results for our keyword, which isn’t bad at all for a free version. We can get a ton of ideas from everything it gave us, although no, we might not be using everything it gave us.
Now if you’re happy with the results it gave you, you can download CSV on the right side to download everything it gave you so you can have it on hand.
Let’s get into the categories it gives us.
Questions
You’ll start out in the visualization screen, but if you don’t like it–aka can’t really see everything on there–you can switch to the Data tab. This will split up every question into their sub-category and also allow you to see their own image as well as hide a keyword phrase if you don’t like it.
This goes for every other category you can look at as well, not just this one.
These questions fall into these sub-categories:
- Are
- Can
- How
- What
- When
- Where
- Which
- Who
- Why
- Will
A few examples of keyword questions that have fallen into the questions section are:
- Are Valentine’s Day trees a thing
If they are a thing–and I don’t know if they are or not, but I do know there are personalized Valentine’s Day carvings into resin bark–this is something you can talk about. And as I mentioned with the personalization product, that could be something you could also mention and link to as an affiliate link into the post itself.
This doesn’t seem like something a lot of people would know about.
I certainly didn’t until reading the question, and if someone sees something intriguing, they might read it for the heck of it.
- When Valentine’s Day started
Right off the bat I’ll tell you this is going to be a harder keyword phrase to rank for. I know this because if you look in the image tab, the green dots are brighter up top and more transparent toward the bottom.
The upper phrases have higher searches than the ones toward the bottom.
- Why Valentine’s Day sucks
This holiday isn’t the best for everyone, and this is your chance to give your view on why it sucks. It could be a funny post to lure people in deeper within your website with internal linking, or it could be a life story, or maybe even compiling other people’s thoughts and stories around the given holiday for context.
Prepositions
Prepositions involve the following sub-categories:
- Can
- For
- Is
- Near
- To
- With
- Without
A couple examples from this group include:
- Valentine’s Day with covid
Since this was a big thing as of this post (and even if the pandemic settles down and the virus isn’t such a huge hassle anymore), making a post regarding this holiday and how to get around the threat that looms in the air had the potential to get a ton of views.
This key phrase right here teaches you to use what’s happening in the world around you to create topics around the keywords beneficial to your site.
Because really, at the start of it all, how did you spend holidays with family members? What did you do for get-togethers, since they didn’t exist?
It’s something to think about for the future, if you’d never thought about it before.
- Valentine’s Day gifts toddlers can make
A lot of people go searching for V-Day gifts to give someone, but not many people actually want to create things, and those things typically hold more meaning than something you buy from another source.
What’s even more meaningful are gifts created by toddlers.
So write a post of the variety of things a toddler could make someone for Valentine’s Day, and think of all the categories of family members they can make gifts for, which will only serve to expand your post.
Comparisons
This is one of the best categories Answer the Public can show you, especially if you’re talking about a specific program, because typically if someone is searching for a comparison between two products, it means they’re trying to figure out which one they should buy.
The main sub-categories here are:
- And
- Like
- Or
- Versus
- Vs
Granted, Valentine’s Day isn’t the best keyword for this section, however there is one phrase that stands out that you might be able to touch base on, and that’s Valentine’s Day vs Sweetest Day, because even I don’t really see much of a difference between the two.
Alphabeticals
Answer the Public compiles everything together in this section right here.
So what you’ve read in the other categories are basically all listed here, and maybe some additional phrases? But if you don’t want to go through everything, just go through this alphabetical list for ease of access.
Personally, I prefer this section to the others, but if you’re looking at another one in specific, then you’ll be looking at it before this one, as these are jumbled up.
Related
This is just a related section, but I didn’t see much use in it for this keyword, as a lot of the phrases overlapped with ones you saw in the other categories.
Answer the Public pro version
You’ve seen that the free version gives you a decent list of keyword phrases, but the searches have a limit.
A very limited limit.
If you want to bypass the limit and give yourself a few extra perks–an ebook and video course included, then you’ll need to look into the pro version.
What’s in the Answer the Public Pro plan?
- Unlimited searches
- This right here is the main reason you’re going to want to get the pro version of Answer the Public. Some of the other perks are great and all, but this? This is #1.
- Unlimited users
- If you have a team to help out with your keyword research, then this would definitely be beneficial to you.
- 5 Search Listening Alerts
- Compare data over time
- So let’s say you want to do a search for dog training right now, but later on down the line, you want to see if anything has changed in the dog training searches. Run the search again, and it will compare the data between the two timeline of searches and come up with new results, if there are any.
- CSV export
- Hide branches & suggestions
- High res images
- The images in question come from the visualizations only. It’s a perk for when you like to save the images instead of downloading all the data. And this way you can see what the text says without having to squint your eyes.
- Priority customer support
- Customer support is always nice if you have a question. I can’t imagine they’d ignore you if you don’t have a pro account, but I can’t imagine you’d struggle too much with Answer the Public to really need this.
- Ebook
Consumer Insight in the Age of Google (worth $49) - Video course
How to Master AnswerThePublic (worth $199)
Monthly vs Annual
The monthly pro plan is $99/month.
There is no free trial to the monthly pro plan because you can already use this tool for free if you wanted. Therefore, by choosing the pro plan, you’re automatically saying this keyword research tool is working for you at a base level and you want to expand on it.
In the typical monthly payment fashion, you get the perks listed in the section above.
The annual pro plan is $79/month with an upfront payment of $948.
The annual is normally always going to be your best bet if you want things on the cheaper side–even if it doesn’t seem cheaper when you look at the price as a whole. In reality, it’s a 20% savings you’re getting by purchasing this particular plan.
However, that’s not the only incentive.
You do get one other perk if your purchase this plan, and it deals as part of the education package.
- Video course
Search Listening and the Customer Journey (worth $199)
Everything else remains the same as the monthly payment plan.
Is Answer the Public worthy of me?
As I mentioned before, I don’t necessarily use Answer the Public all the time for Worthy of Me, but I do use it for my gaming site, because it benefits me a lot more in that regard. I can find what people are asking when it comes to a specific game, or a guide to said game.
So if you have a website that provides information to your visitors, which, let’s face it, that’s the reason most people have a blog–to answer people’s questions about their specific desires–then yes, I wholeheartedly think that Answer the Public will be worthy of you.
Just know if you’re on the free version, searches are limited.
Make them count.
How did we find this product?
I decided to actually do a full-blown review of a product that I actually use and state its usefulness to those who are curious to know if they should use it or not.
