Optimize for Featured Snippets: Next Big Thing For SEO Strategy

Featured snippets are the next big thing to include in your SEO Strategy. In this blog post, we discuss how to optimize for featured snippets on search engines. Before telling you how the featured snippet can help you on the internet, let me give you a brief introduction to what a featured snippet is. A featured Snippet is a small piece of information on a specific topic or a brief extract of a topic covering the most required information.

What is a Featured Snippet on Google SERP?

A featured snippet is a piece of information and content that comes as the top results on Google’s SERP. It provides a direct answer to the user’s search query from one of the top-ranking web pages. The featured snippet mostly appears in textual paragraphs but is not limited to textual context only. It can be in the form of a video, image, table, or audio. For example, the image attached below is an example of a featured snippet. Here’s what the featured snippet looks like for the search query “featured snippet” on Google.

Types of Featured Snippets:

There are four types of featured snippets; paragraphs, tables, lists, and videos,

Paragraph Snippets

This first featured snippet type is called Paragraphs which provides users with a brief, practical definition, or a brief bit of information on a topic.

Certain queries revolve around questions or seeking additional information. This is also called a definition box snippet as this is a text designed to give searchers a direct, concise definition or description. For example, when you search for “rich snippets”, there’s a definition box at the top of the results. Definition boxes are commonly used by Google to answer “what is” queries.

“YouTube Description” is another good example of this type.

Tables Snippets

The second type is called tables. This type of snippet helps users visualize data for different types of comparisons. A large percentage of Google’s featured snippets are tables.

Listicle Snippets

The third type is Listicle Featured Snippets. An average of 19% of featured snippets are of Listicle type, consisting of an average of 6 items and 44 words. You’ll find two kinds of listicle-type featured snippets: ordered and unordered lists

Video Snippet

The last featured snippet is Video. YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world, so it’s no wonder that video-based featured snippets are something else you’d want to try and rank for. 

If a video provides the best answer for a user’s query, it will include the video in a featured snippet. Video-based featured snippets can be useful for “how-to” queries. [1]

Why Optimize Featured Snippets on Your Website? 

There are 5 major reasons as to why you need to Optimize for Featured Snippets.

Optimize Featured Snippets to Get More Website Traffic

The first one is to Increase the traffic on the website. Probably the most obvious benefit of getting a featured snippet is more traffic to the website. Agencies and companies will often notice a spike in visits to their site when realizing they got a featured snippet

Optimize Featured Snippets to Increase Conversions  

The most fruitful benefit of getting a featured snippet is the increase in organic conversions or customers that took action after finding the website through a search engine. If a company can attract potential customers to its website by simply answering a question, the chances of increasing online conversions are significantly heightened.

Optimize Featured Snippets Appear More in Organic Search Results

The next benefit we can take from featured snippets is they help you to increase brand awareness. There are many benefits of appearing in organic search results. But if Google chooses to feature your website in their spotlight, via a featured snippet, companies can expect not only a hefty increase in traffic but also in overall brand awareness.

Optimize Featured Snippets To Boosts Website Authority

One of Google’s primary ranking factors includes the website’s authority, or how much Google trusts the site. Link building, average time spent on the website, and the total number of visits, among many others, are factors considered when Google determines the website’s authority. So, by attracting more users, increasing the average time spent on the website, and link building via the featured snippet, the overall authority of the website is improved.

Optimize Featured Snippets for better keyword rankings:

Featured snippets can also have a domino effect, whereas the improvement in one area is tied to another. So while not directly related, the increase in website authority from the featured snippet can trigger an improvement in keyword rankings and online visibility of the business. It’s common for agencies and companies to notice a significant improvement in keyword rankings reports after getting a featured snippet. As a result, customers are easily able to find the business online – provided that the site is well optimized – see what they need and convert.

How to Optimize for Featured Snippets?

Here is how to optimize for featured snippets:

Find SERPs With a Featured Snippet

Your first step is to look for a search results page that already has a Featured Snippet.

(In other words, Featured Snippet opportunities).

That way, you KNOW that Google wants to show a Featured Snippet for that term. In fact, they already do!

Also, you can see what type of Featured Snippet Google wants to show for that term (The Definition, Unordered List, etc.). Which makes optimizing your page for that specific type of Featured Snippet super simple.

For example, when you search for “best glass water bottles”, you can see that Google has an Unordered List Featured Snippet at the top.

Identify Competitors’ Featured Snippets

First, you have to find all the keyword groups that own featured snippets. Once you have all the keywords you want to organize them by high search value. 

Gather the Keywords for each FS-owned content

Now you want to identify the keywords that are present on the content that is currently owning a featured snippet

Understand Searcher Intent

Understanding the search intent behind each triggering question is one of the most crucial factors to consider when optimizing for highlighted snippets.

Three different groups of individuals look up your keywords:

• Prospective clients.
• Influencers who urge potential clients to make purchases from you
• And your rivals.

Content for the first two groups has to be managed by you. Each will search with a different purpose, but it will always be informational (and navigational when users want to click through them).

For a featured snippet, there was just one search intent, therefore I decided to further divide them into four groups based on what they wanted:

• a  precise response.
• A short response.
• An evaluation.
• A video.

Competitive Analysis

Once you are done with the above steps you now need to run a competitive analysis of all the keywords. This can be achieved with the help of multiple software.

Conclusion

Having good content on your page and a good offering may seem like the way to go. But what is the point of having all the good information when your content is not on top? Featured snippets catch the attention of people and make it more likely for users to choose your site. It may be difficult to steal an existing featured snippet but it is not entirely impossible. There are many websites out there that offer solutions like keyword analysis and comparison. 

References   

[1] What are the different types of featured snippets – Semrush