4 ways you can optimize your content to rank in Google’s featured snippets

4 ways you can optimize your content to rank in Google’s featured snippets

how to optimize for featured snippets

It seems like there’s a change or something new on Google every other day. While it can feel impossible to keep up with the constantly evolving algorithm, there’s been one feature that has been making waves in the SEO world: featured snippets.

We will help you learn how to optimize your content and boost your chances of reaching the top of Google. Read on to learn four strategies to incorporate into your content marketing planning that can help you optimize for featured snippets.

What is a featured snippet?

A Google featured snippet is a highlighted excerpt from a search engine result that appears at the top of the page. The goal of featured snippets is to give the user a quick answer to their question from a credible source. 

How often a snippet appears varies depending on the source you look at. One source claims that 6% to 15% of search engine results pages (SERPs) have one. In any case, there’s no doubt that social snippets are still important to a brand’s traffic increase goals. Websites that were highlighted by featured snippets received 35.1% of a SERP’s total click share on average.

Google’s featured snippets can give you the opportunity to have increased organic traffic, click-through rates and visibility. If you want your site to appear in a Google featured snippet, we can help. 

1. Identifying featured snippet opportunities

Featured snippets are found at the top of many SERPs, but the more common a keyword is, the more likely it is to have a featured snippet. This is where keyword research comes in handy. You can use a keyword research tool to see what people are searching for. Some tools you can use are Semrush and Google Search Console

Once you know what people are searching for, you can determine the specific searches that the algorithm may prioritize for featured snippets. Pro tip: Long-tail keywords (i.e., longer search phrases) are highly likely to trigger a featured snippet.

You can also take a look at the featured snippets that are appearing in organic search results for your competitors. You can then compare them to the snippets that are appearing for your brand. Making this comparison can help you figure out what’s making theirs work, whether it be how a snippet is worded or the context that it’s placed in.

You can identify when your site has a featured snippet and keywords that might trigger a featured snippet with Google Search Console. Having this information makes it easier to compare your snippets to your competitors’.

You may also want to look at what type of featured snippets are appearing for your competitors. Some of the featured snippet types you may see include:

  • Paragraph snippets 

The most common type of featured snippet. They provide short answers to search queries.

  • Video snippets 

These snippets appear for queries that are best answered with a visual demonstration. Common video snippets include “how-to” videos, product review videos and DIY videos.

  • Table snippets 

Snippets that appear for data that needs to be displayed in rows and columns, such as prices, dates, sizes and tax slabs.

  • Numbered snippets 

This type of snippet is used to display the steps needed to complete a task.

  • List snippets 

These are snippets that are used to display multiple variables.

  • Double snippets 

Used for results that have different types of content, such as a text element and visual element. For instance, a double snippet might include a bulleted list and an image from a website.

2. Structuring your content for featured snippets

The whole point of a featured snippet is to give the user a quick, concise answer to their query. That can’t happen if you spread the information throughout the entire piece of content.

One way to start creating content with snippet optimization is to use keyword research tools. You can try tools like Semrush or Google Search Console. These tools allow you to find relevant keywords for your content that may trigger featured snippets.

By addressing a relevant keyword with the right information in your content, you’re increasing your chances of that section standing out to the algorithm when it receives a user’s query with that keyword. This can lead to the algorithm choosing your text for a paragraph featured snippet.

Let’s look at an example of how this might work. If a popular keyword is “what is the most common flu symptom?” and your content says, “The most common symptoms of influenza are fever, cough and muscle aches,” it makes it easy for the algorithm to make a snippet. Structuring your text like this is also known as using question-based direct answers in your content.

Incorporating structure elements like numbered lists or bulleted lists in your content can also help. Having your content in an ordered list with numbers or bullet points makes it easier for the algorithm to create list featured snippets.

Another structure factor to consider when shooting for featured snippets is adding structured data to the backend of your page. You can add structured data (aka schema markup) factors to your website pages’ HTML code. This information allows for the creation of special SERP features called rich snippets or rich results. It can also make your page more appealing to search engine crawlers looking for data to include in SERP featured snippets. 

3. Optimizing on-page SEO

On-page SEO factors show that your content, such as a blog post, is targeting the right demographic, prioritizing user experience and highlighting credible sources. Along with the structure of your content, the algorithm also looks at other on-page SEO factors on the webpage such as:

  • Meta descriptions
  • Images
  • External links
  • Content quality
  • Page speed
  • Mobile responsiveness and more

By improving on-page SEO factors for your content, you can better appeal to the algorithm. This can help your content be chosen for a featured snippet.

4. Enhancing content quality

The featured snippet is meant to grab the user’s attention, but you need to help maintain that interest once they click through to your site with high-quality content. The algorithm isn’t looking for just one good sentence in a sea of average content. The entire webpage, blog post, social post, etc. should be engaging and relevant and provide value.

A couple of important aspects of your content quality are comprehensiveness and clarity. While you want your content to be specific to the target keyword, you want to make sure that you’re answering any related questions that the reader might have. If your content isn’t covering all the information, they may click off to find a page that will. You also want to be as clear as possible with your content. You have to be sure that your information won’t leave the user with more questions than answers.

Other aspects of content quality you should be paying attention to are:

  • Including optimized videos and multimedia
  • The relevancy of your content to search intent and keywords
  • Including authoritative and relevant internal links and backlinks
  • How mobile-friendly your content is
  • The on-page user experience your content creates

Common mistakes to avoid when trying to rank in Google’s featured snippets

Now that we’ve discussed what you should do when trying to be in a featured snippet, let’s look at the other side: what not to do. There are quite a few common mistakes that SEO teams make that may be impacting their chances of being in featured snippets, including:

  • Overlooking user intent 

While we may have spent this whole post talking about how to appeal to the algorithm, that shouldn’t be what you think about when you create content. If you only think about what the search engine wants, you may forget what the reader needs. The reader should always be your main focus.

  • Ignoring content updates 

You may have old content that hasn’t been improved for featured snippets, which are fairly new. Think about what content that has performed well in the past, and see if it can be revised and updated to align with what the algorithm is looking for.

  • Not optimizing for voice search 

Research shows that about 30% of people aged 16 to 64 use voice assistants every week. You should consider how your information will be shared through voice search. You can then format your content so that it is more likely to be chosen for a voice search featured snippet. 

BURG+CO. can help optimize content for featured snippets

When it comes to taking the steps needed to appear in featured snippets, two of BURG+CO.’s strengths come into play: SEO and content creation. We understand that it can be a bit confusing and intimidating to optimize your work for featured snippets. That’s why you should let us tackle the task for you. We can find the best way to create high-quality, search engine and user-optimized content for you that is a prime target when the algorithm is looking for information for featured snippets.

Contact our team today for more information about digital marketing or to schedule a complimentary consultation.

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