How to Optimize for the Featured Snippets

Do you want your website or a page on your website to be on the top search results of Google? You would be wondering how it is possible as several contents are available on the same topic. It does not seem very easy but it does not mean that you cannot achieve it. You can get more traffic even, if you are not on position 1. How? Featured snippets is the key.

In this post, we will discuss what are the featured snippets, how to use this feature and some tips and tricks regarding them.

What are the featured snippets?

To answer an explorer’s query, small snippets of information appear at the top of search results of Google, usually in a box below the ads. This information is  called Featured Snippets. And the stuff that appears in Featured Snippet comes from top-ranking pages of relative searches.

It is a certain block above search engine’s results that answers certain queries, usually questions (i.e., who/what/where/when/why/how).It holds a paragraph, table, list, or video, along with the page title, link to a webpage from which the answer derived, and URL.

What happens when your page gets Featured

When your page gets featured in Google search results, it means that Google has selected your page as a highly relevant and authoritative result for a particular search query. Depending on the type of feature, this can result in several potential benefits:

• Increased visibility: Featured snippets, in particular, are highly visible, appearing at the top of search results and featuring prominently in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). This increased visibility can lead to more clicks and more traffic to your website.
• Improved click-through rate: Because featured snippets, carousels, and other featured results provide users with instant answers to their search queries, they often have a higher conversion rate than regular search results.
• Increased credibility: Being featured in Google search results can increase your credibility and authority, as it signals to users that Google considers your website to be a trustworthy and reliable source of information.
• Improved brand recognition: Being featured in Google search results can help to increase brand recognition and awareness, as users become more familiar with your brand and associate it with high-quality content.

It’s important to note that while being featured in Google search results can provide significant benefits, it’s not always easy to achieve. It requires a comprehensive SEO strategy, including high-quality content, keyword optimization, technical SEO, and link building, among other factors.

What are three types of Featured Snippets?

Generally, featured snippets fall into three types, the paragraph, the list (bulleted or
numbered) and or table snippets.

According to Getstat “paragraph snippet” is the most famous featured snippet.

Types of Snippets	Percent of Total Snippets
1. Paragraph snippets	81.95%
2. List Snippets	10.77%
3. Table snippets	7.28%

Let us see each type one by one, how they work.

1.The Paragraph Featured snippets

It is the most prototypical featured snippet we all aware of it and love it. In an attempt to answer the explorer’s query, google selects text from a relevant page.

The way to make this type of snippet support, instead of hurt, your click-through rate, is by responding the questions right away, and then adding extra information that triggers the seeker’s interest and inspires them to click through.

Therefore ,frequently asked question pages are perfect for replying multiple short questions at the same moment, while dedicated blog posts are better for more problematic queries.

Featured Paragraph Snippets mostly answer questions like:

• who is…
• how to do or get…
• why is…
• what is…

The screenshots above and below are examples of a paragraph featured snippet.

2.List Featured Snippets

In this featured snippet result shows a list. The list could be of ingredients in a recipe or a recipe itself, a top-10, steps in a process, etc. These can be the lists from within the subject, or a list Google produces by getting the relevant information from the website pages.

List Featured Snippets can be of two kinds: numbered lists and bulleted lists.

Numbered List

In numbered list order of items in the list is crucial. For instance, a recipe, or a top-10 list.

Bulleted List

In bulleted list, the order of the items does not matter. For example, a list of foods that are rich in Iron and calcium, list of novels by an author, and similar searches.

3. The Table Featured Snippet

Google shows a table featured snippet when you request for information with two or more
variables – for instance, price comparison for various models of vehicles or phones. This might not be shown as a table format within the actual searched page, but Google withdraws the relevant data to produce the table.

Above screenshot is an example of table featured snippet.

Optimization for Featured Snippets

There is no supernatural power or special markup that can feature your website. This is a best proposal, to begin with general SEO practices because you can feature yourself only
if you rank high for the question. So, there is a perfect chance to feature by delivering a clearer answer.

Whether you want traffic increase to you website or gain other benefits of enhanced visibility,  here are some informative tips and tricks on how to be seen in a featured snippet.

1.Answer each question concisely and precisely

My experience with result blocks led me to see that Google prefers to highlight an answer that is described inside a section.

AJ Ghergich cites’ research says that the normally a snippet paragraph consists of 45 words that can exceeds up to 97 words. So, it provides a guideline about what should be the actual length of a paragraph in order to feature the blog.

This does not mean that your articles should be one paragraph long. On the other hand, it seems, these days Google is giving inclination to long content, called as cornerstone content. That contains logical subsections featuring attention-catching images. Does
cornerstone content is effective? If you do not believe that cornerstone content gets much traffic, you must know that by concentrating on long-form blogs
you get more relevant queries within one page.

You are required to fix your article writing techniques a little bit. Following key points must be kept in mind.

• Request the queries in your blogs (that may perhaps be subheadings)
• Instantaneously give one-paragraph answer after the query
• Provide detail further in the article

This trick can make better structured blog and thus making it easy to read.

2. Genuine and organize well

Google gives preference to numbers, lists, tables and steps. The study performed by AJ Ghergich deduced that appraisal charts and lists provide a perfect chance to feature because Google like organized material. As a matter of fact, even for imprinted questions Google would extract a table from another site if table is present in it:

This demonstrates that how greatly Google likes organized and structured, factual,
and numbered stuff.

3. Assure single article satisfies many identical queries

The research of featured snippets by Ahrefs observed that if once a blog gets featured, there is strong possibility that page makes its way to feature in a lot of related questions. 

Google, the search engine is super genius at verifying similar and tightly related queries,
therefore, you should be so smart. It is not a wise practice to create an individual
page responding each particular query.

Producing one strong article tackling many associated queries is a great creative scheme if you aiming to get featured in answer blocks. 

4. Arrange your queries precisely

To merge many closely associated queries in one article, you need to structure your questions properly. And this will also assist you organize your content well.

Here are some tips on how to organize keywords when building a website or creating a page on a website.

• A universal keyword styles a piece or class of the article
• The most precise search question is responsible for the title of the blog
• Precise requests clarify the headings of the blog and hence, describe structure of it.
• There are multiple questions, related to each other that they will come under a single
  subheading

5. Ensure to use eye-grabbing images

Image snippets’ paragraphs are unreasonably attention-grabbing than regular featured snippets. Make sure that your images in article are striking, branded, and marked up
well, so that it will look nice.

You can use banners  to create attention-grabbing trademarked images. I like picture editing functionality of them. Moreover, graphics can be made instantly over there,
then resize them to use again as social media pictures and posters.

Conclusion

It requires lots of study and preparation and still no one can assure that you will bear the top positions. (primarily if you are not included in top 10 rankings yet). It is your motivation
that you are featured in Google’s search results, to work harder on your business.
Consequently, you will discover the need of the things below when building your website.