The search query of “What is featured snippet?” itself involves a featured snippet, and nothing more than that can justify the meaning of the same. What is more exciting to know is that ranking on Page 1 is not a necessary requirement for being in the featured snippet. This misconception occurred because the featured snippet is often referred to as “position zero.” However, it is given this annotation because the result covers a major part of the search page.
Just as the mantra for popularity goes, “you need to be in the good books,” the same applies to brands for gaining popularity, but with the twist in the saying, “you need to be in the Google’s featured snippet.” Reason? The chances of gaining maximum click-through rates and web traffic increases. As reported by Ben Goodsell, they observed a rise in CTR from 2% to 8%, and the revenue increased by 677% from the web traffic.
If you are thinking that less people will click on the website’s page since the basic and considerable information related to the search query has already been displayed on the featured snippet, then allow us to clear this air. 8.6% of the total click on SERPs go to the featured snippets.
Additionally, if you are already at No. 1 position, you get nearly 28.2 % of all the clicks made on SERPs through featured snippets. If not on the featured snippet, but on position 1, then you get 19.6% of organic clicks on the website. Can you seriously afford to lose this nearly 31% traffic in the cut-throat competition today?
If you aren’t familiar with the opportunities, we know it becomes a little crazy for you to understand featured snippet, however, remember one thing, that you need to provide some beneficial and important information to keep the reader’s eye on it.
Just a brief overview of what types of featured snippets are there?
The answer boxes, often referred to as “rich answers” can be in the following form,
- Paragraph rich answers;
- Number list rich answer;
- Bulleted list rich answer;
- Table list rich answer;
- YouTube rich answer
Not to forget, images, videos, search queries related to shopping and locals would not appear in the featured snippets. Also, they should not be mistaken as “people also ask widget” because unlike widget, featured snippet displays a link to the source.
So are you ready to give your pipedream a path and grab that “Zero” position with featured snippet?
l Find your current position:
You can not dive into competition without knowing where you are currently located. That means you should find out whether your featured snippet appears on the search results or not. A simple and efficient way to do this is, install SEMRush and enter your site’s URL into it. In the tool, analyze your Search engine position and the organic traffic over the site.
l Know about your competitors:
As mentioned above, your game is incomplete without the competitors. Hence, take a look at them and find out how can you beat them up. This may require you to study their strategy and plan a similar one to get your market share. With tools like SEMRuch, Moz, and Ahrefs, you can keep an eye on competitors by generating a report from the tool.
This further extends to knowing if the featured snippet traffic is received over a blog, landing page, homepage, service page, etc. If required, steal(apply) some of their success mantras to get the top spot. This may require you to study if they have included tarings, images, testimonials, etc. and apply the same strategy if possible.
l Perform target analysis:
Now that you know which strategy to apply, you need to target the same on your website. For this implementation, you may need to simplify and clean your website pages in order to provide a quick answer to the search queries made.
Reinvent or redesign summaries related to the target keyword. Curate, particular, and unique information which will satisfy the searcher’s intent. If required, go the extra mile to provide something extraordinary.
l Getting started:
Once you are ready with the site establishment and report on the online tools, make a list of the current keywords appearing on your featured snippet. This is necessary because it lets you know which keywords have your authority on Google and can help your featured snippet to rank well. Study them and know their stats and differentiate the “low-hanging” and “high-hanging” words from the list. Uncovering the opportunities by targeting the keywords is the best way to start the journey.
Plug this list of keywords into Google and structure your content around the same. If required, go back to your competitor study and find out how beautifully and strategically, they have structured the content and framed a relevant answer. Steal a little, tweak a little, and create an opportunity for Google to recrawl.
l Structure the opportunities:
You need to make your users feel that you deserve the “position zero” in the Google spot. Hence, restructure the content for position zero. Stick to your strategy and design a format for your featured snippet. You can create an answer revolving around the keyword, describe or list the steps related to the keyword, include questions in the subheadings, and strive to rank your website on Page one of search engine results.
Further, you may need to tweak your keyword list and form a query like a keyword on the list. This is because people make a question on the search engine to find an answer. Hence there arises a need for you to follow the jeopardy principle.
One of the ways to implement this is, visit the tool and find the option of answer the public. In that feature, write down your target keyword and search for the questions framed around that. Take inspiration and form your own question.
Further, once this strategy is implemented, carry out a study to know which featured snippet strategy of yours really worked.
Which question is performing well, which type(what, how, why, can, etc.) is winning the game, which prepositions gained the top spot, is comparison chart drawing attention on the featured snippet, and more should be studied.
l Know the featured snippet length:
Just remember that you need to make extra efforts to identify your featured snippet opportunity. Some of the head points to remember for designing your snippet feature are:
A paragraphed featured snippet go-to length is nearly 300 characters or 30-40 words. A concise and to-the-point answer is acceptable for the top spot.
For the list featured snippet, try to include an average of 6-8 listing points on the list. Because Google will add “more items,” and the customer will be tempted to visit the site for finding the answer.
If you are planning to include tables in the featured snippets, you should know that Google will only display a max of three columns and nine rows on the snippet. However, if you include more, as mentioned above, the user will want to click on the site for more information.
We hope this blog solves all your questions related to the Featured snippets. Additionally, you can target featured snippets over the Bing search engine, also apart from Google. If needed, take some help from professional SEO services and design the best strategy for featured snippets.
About Author: Harshal Shah has countless experience in the field of Information Technology. Also, he is the CEO of Elsner Technologies Pvt Ltd: SEO Service company in USA that offers various SEO Services to the clients across the globe. Mr. Harshal is a huge tech enthusiastic person who has written major & genuine articles as well as blogs on topics that are relevant to various CMS platforms.
