Featured Snippets: How to Get Them And Why You Need To Target Them
What is a Featured Snippet?
A featured snippet is a boxed section you’ll see on top of the Google search results. It can be table data, text with a featured image, or video at the top of the search results. It’s generated when you are searching for an informational-based query and Google presents you with a piece of short information within the SERP itself.
For example, if we search for ‘what is Internet Marketing PR’
As shown in the image above at the top of the Google search results we have a featured snippet here that explains it all.
There is a question someone is interested in that requires a short descriptive answer and featured snippets will do the job to satisfy that. The text in the box is scraped from the website and in some cases, there will be a featured image too.
How many types of Featured Snippets are there?
There are three different types of featured snippets that you’ll usually see.
Text-based
Text Snippets or definition boxes are commonly displayed by Google to answer “what is” queries. It helps searchers to get a direct & short description related to the search query.
Table
Google pulls data from a website and uses it as a table in the top result. For example, If you search for something like ‘federal funds rate history’
The Ordered / Unordered List
Google uses a list of items presented in a specific order. Google tends to use listed results for search queries that need a set of steps to show.
Video Featured Snippets
If you search for something like ‘how to tie a tie’ Google will display a youtube video on how to do it. Google also fetches the video from websites if you have something relevant to the user’s search query.
Why You Should Care About Featured Snippets
Rather than clicking on a particular search result. The featured snippets help users get relevant information about their query within the Search engine result page.
The reason they are good is that aside from Google Ad at the top of the listing. The featured snippet covers the entire above-the-fold section of a SERP result. You’ll get descriptive text with featured images and links to the site.
Better than Google Ads at the top right?
Also, websites ranked on featured snippets results have a higher click-through rate than any other search result display.
You will completely dominate for a keyword term and that’s why you should want them.
Should We Be Worried About Featured Snippets?
There are a lot of myths behind whether Featured snippets lower the Click-through rate to the site. Some says Google is trying to push out the publisher & just wants to show all the information within the search result.
Well if your business model is purely based on having the answer in a very small amount of text, then yes it would affect user CTR. But, for most of us who sell a product or a service or want to generate leads to your website, featured snippets are a fantastic opportunity to get more traffic to your website.
How to Get Featured Snippets
Step 1: Research the Trigger Questions
Research the question that people are asking in general. For example, if you wanted to broaden the range of featured snippet options for one particular keyword. Search for what particular question people are asking on Google.
You could try using some tools like Answer The Public to find out the queries that display snippet results.
Step 2: Plan & Create Your Content
- If you noticed the featured snippet that you want to take over is text. Find out if you can provide a short descriptive answer that bests the current snippet result.
- If your featured snippet is a table then you want to create a table content on site.
- If it’s a video try to include video on site.
- Provide information in a step-based guide format to get listed in Step by featured snippets
So now you know what sort of content format you need to use to compete.
The next thing to do is how to improve your content that best the competitor content in SERP now. You have the best chance of taking over the competitor featured snippet position if the information in that snippet isn’t relevant or isn’t very good quality.
Step 3: Format your content correctly
Make it easy for Google to find out the content for featured snippet results.
- Try to bring the content you want in the snippet in the intro section
- Add Subheadings (H2’s) in your content
- Bold or Quote the answers you want to show in the snippet result.
Step 4: Use Images
Images in the featured snippet make it more eye-catching. Gives you more of a chance to increase the click-through rate to your site.
- Embed keyword text in the image
- Add image alt text
Step 5: Structured Data implementation
Although schema implementation is not a direct way of getting listed in the featured snippet. It helps Google better understand your content and return more informative search results for users.
Final Thoughts
The benefits of having listed in featured snippets include getting good quality organic traffic. You’ll get a chance to convert this informational traffic into relevant leads or sales.
SEO experts always look for a way to get their websites on featured snippets and the probability of achieving this goal shoots up dramatically with an organized and well-planned strategy.
If you already have high converting blogs or knowledge pages you shouldn’t be worried about featured snippets, except for making them stay where they are now.
So let us know in the comments if you got ranked on featured snippet results for your preferred keyword.