Featured snippets are brief excerpts from a webpage that appear at the top of Google’s search results in an area known as “Position Zero.” In order to respond to a user’s query as quickly as possible, the search engine takes this action. Automatic content extraction from pages that Google has indexed results in featured snippets. Definitions, lists, steps, and tables make up the majority of featured snippet formats.

Please continue reading for more information.

What is a Featured Snippet?

Google updates and tests new features for its search engine results pages (SERPs) frequently. With the layered look Google now gives users, a user from the search engine’s early days would probably not recognize the website. It has all started with the humble featured snippets, but search features like curated recipe links, top stories, and knowledge panels are now fairly common.

The introduction of featured snippets in 2014 caused quite a stir in the search engine optimization (SEO) community. Instead of visiting your top-ranked page, users were suddenly going to stay on the search engine, right? Clicks from websites were being stolen by Google! That’s bad for business!

Not quite.

Types of Featured Snippet

Featured snippets usually occur in the 4 most common forms:

• Paragraphs
• Bulleted/numbered lists
• Tables
• Videos

Google can automatically select any piece of content from the top-ranking web pages and display it as a featured snippet in one of these forms depending on the search query.

Paragraph Snippet

The most typical featured snippet that can be found in the SERP is a paragraph.

It consists of a short piece of text that provides a brief answer to question queries like “How“, “Who“, “Why“, “When“, and “What“.

The average length of the paragraphs featured in snippets is 40–60 words.

Bulleted/numbered Snippet

Answers that are listed in numbered or bulleted lists are called listicle featured snippets.

They are typically displayed for “How” or “What” question queries that need to be answered in the form of step-by-step instructions or as a list of items.

Listicle featured snippets can be displayed either as:

• Ordered lists – they usually show the list of ranked items or a set of steps (e.g. for queries like “top 10 movies 2021” or “how to set up a new android phone“)
• Unordered lists – a list of items that don’t need to be ranked in any particular order (e.g. for queries like “which are the friendliest dogs“)

Table Snippet

Table featured snippets offer data that are taken from a specific page and displayed as an answer in the form of a table (e.g. for queries like “what are trouser sizes“).

It typically consists of rows and columns that show values such as costs, rates, years, or other numerical data.

Video Snippet

In some cases, Google may also show a video featured snippet with a ready-to-play time stamp that will begin at a particular point in the video. This video featured snippet is typically from Youtube.

According to the Hubspot study, video snippets usually occur for “How-to” search queries where the title of the video matches the typed search query.

Note: It’s important to keep in mind that Google is continually developing and testing new featured snippet types and combinations for different search queries that could improve the user experience in Google Search.

These types of featured snippets usually pull out information from several pages that are displayed in various forms combined together (e.g. featured snippets with images, paragraphs and even with “People Also Ask” boxes).

Why Are Featured Snippets Important in SEO?

Boosted Rankings

A featured snippet can assist you in outranking your rivals and propel you to the top of the SERP as the top search result.

This is especially important for pages that are ranking at the top 10 search results for a particular keyword – just not high enough to get decent traffic from Google Search.

Given that you don’t have to directly compete with your rivals, being featured in a snippet is a much faster way to outrank them in the SERP.

Increased CTR (sometimes)

Pages that are displayed as featured snippets may get a higher number of clicks than regular search results – except it is not always the case.

In the past, pages that were used in featured snippets were also shown as a regular search result, typically among the top 10 ranking pages in the SERP.

Because of that, any page that was elevated into the prominent spot as the featured snippet (also called “position 0“) got a huge traffic boost since it was displayed twice in the first SERP.

Unfortunately, this changed when Google released a “SERP deduplication” update.

Improved Brand Awareness

Featured snippet is a great opportunity for promoting your brand – since the website in the featured snippet is the first thing that users will actually see in the SERP.

For mobile device searches, this is especially crucial. Just look how much space the featured snippet can take:

By optimizing for featured snippets, users can be much more familiar with your brand and consider you as an authority in your niche.

Optimized for Voice Search

For voice-activated personal assistants like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, or Google Assistant, featured snippets are used.

According to the Backlinko analysis, Google featured snippets account for more than 40% of voice search results.

By optimizing your pages for them, Google can use your answers for tons of search queries – resulting in higher brand visibility as well as higher authority in your niche.

Ways to Get a Featured Snippet

Anyone who has been in a meeting with me has heard me say, “Think about the users, not Google, too much.” And there’s a good reason behind it.

Google wants to provide its users with the best response so they will keep using its search engine. To win visitors’ business, business owners should want to provide the best response they can. They Ask, You Answer and search engine optimization bring these two concepts together.

You are giving Google exactly what it wants to deliver to users by responding to user questions in straightforward language with enough detail to let them make an informed decision.

Keep track of the search terms that return featured snippets when conducting keyword research on your website. Consider how your competitors are meeting their needs and how you can outdo them. What distinctive viewpoints on your sector can you offer? What is the best way to attract new clients? What format should you use for your response to make it the most helpful to the customer?

When creating content for your website, keep these inquiries in the forefront of your mind. They give you a better than average chance of landing that featured snippet and directing quality traffic your way when used in conjunction with our blogging advice.

Ways to Optimise Search Snippets

The methods used to optimize search snippets change depending on the kind of snippet you’re trying to improve.

Optimise Standard Search Snippets

Standard search snippet optimization is a fairly straightforward process. Make your title tag unique and around 55 characters. Ensure your meta description accurately represents your site, optimised with keywords, without keyword stuffing and a maximum of 160 characters.

Create a URL that is both readable and hyphenated, with no capital letters, and include your target keyword.

Optimise Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are extracted from the HTML of a page’s structured markup. Websites must select from a variety of rich snippet types.

Some of the accepted data types include:

• Products
• Reviews
• Event details
• Recipes
• Prices

Optimise Content to Appear as a Featured Snippet

It’s difficult to get your content to show up as a featured snippet. In essence, you must be the best of the best, but there are steps you can take to improve your chances.

Excellent keyword research will be helpful here, as well as social media research to find out what questions are regularly asked.

Also keep in mind that giving a thorough yet succinct and understandable response is essential for appearing as a featured snippet.

Remain factual and use images to give your argument more impact.

Tools to Help You With Search Snippets

Some tools that can help with the creation of your search snippets are:

• SEOMofo
• Yotpo
• Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
• WordPress’s Schema App Structured Data
• Portent

Please leave a comment if you have any queries.

Many thanks for reading.

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