Featured snippets are stealing a lot of clicks from the number 1 spot. But what is a featured snippet and how can you optimise for this all-important Position 0? Let’s find out.Â
What is a Featured Snippet?
Landing the number 1 spot in Google SERPs is great news, of course. But there’s a new kid in town that’s hogging the limelight. Featured snippets. These appear at the top of Google’s search results in what has become known as Position 0 and often drive traffic away from even the best ranking content below. Just under 7% of all search results have a featured snippet which is essentially a snippet of an answer to a user’s question that Google has deemed to be the best one. The main goal of featured snippets is to deliver answers to queries quickly, with such content popping up directly under the query.
Are There Different Kinds of Featured Snippets?
Yes! There are many different kinds of featured snippets. This is actually good news for content creators as it’ll allow you to optimise your content for featured snippets in the best way for your business. If you run a makeup brand, for instance, you might want to think about list snippets. These are ideal for providing instructions and help to answer questions such as ‘how to apply lipstick’ as seen below.
Video snippets are also popular and can be used for a wide range of business including DIY services. Type ‘How to Paint a Room’ into Google and you’ll see a how-to from Wickes pop up as the featured snippet.
Paragraph snippets deliver a couple of sentences directly answering a specific search query. Keywords used to make the search usually appear in bold to confirm the relevance of the snippet. Again, the content is very much written as an answer.
Another snippet type is a table. These don’t appear as much as the other types but are ideal when answers require an accumulation of data.
How Can I Optimise for Featured Snippets?
There are many things you can do to optimise your content for featured snippets. For example:
- Focus on Keyword Research
99.58% of all featured snippets are from pages that rank on the first Google SERPs page for that term. So, it’s a good idea to optimise featured snippet content around keywords you already rank for. If your overall SEO rankings are not high, take the opportunity to address your keyword strategy and look at what people are searching for in relation to your brand. Knowing specific search queries will help you come up with optimised answers that’ll improve your overall SEO and help you feature in snippets.
- Add Snippet Bait to Your Page
If you want to appear in featured snippets, then it’s a good idea to add plenty of snippet bait to your page. This means creating blocks of content around 40-60 words long that are specifically designed to rank in the featured snippet spot. The trick is to keep things short and sweet. Focus on the keyword that’s most relevant to specific search queries and write concisely so that Google knows instantly that your content is important to a search term.
- Use a Question and Answer FormatÂ
Create concise answers to questions you think are going to be asked from various keyword research. Write the answers under a heading format on your site so that Google can instantly lift your answer in response to a matching search query. It’s all about making Google’s job a lot easier with your content strategy.
- Optimise for the Right Type of Snippet
Think about the type of business you run and what kind of snippet would work best for your brand. If you’re a catering company, producing recipes as a list could work. Or your might decide to create ‘how to make’ videos around specific search query research.
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