Do you want to climb to the top of Google’s search results without constructing links or substantially altering your content? You can do that with the aid of featured snippets.
Featured snippets are a particular kind of search result that appears at the top of Google’s results page and provides a brief response to the search query. Google obtains this data from one of the pages with the highest rankings, which are subsequently promoted to the top of the organic search results.
You might be asking yourself how that benefits the website that owns the featured snippet. In this blog post, you will get the answer to how to optimize Google featured snippets.
What are Featured Snippets?
Featured snippets are small piece of text from one of the top-ranking web pages that appears at the top of Google’s SERP and directly responds to the user’s search query. Answering the queries raised by the user in Google is the ultimate aim of the Featured Snippets.
Types of Featured Snippets
Based on the query raised by the user in a search engine like Google, it shows the Featured Snippets in the form of
- Paragraph
One of the most common types of Featured Snipped that appeared in the search engine is a Paragraph.
This one is a little unique because Google occasionally blends People Also Ask (PAA) boxes with featured snippets. There, you can find additional queries associated with your search and click on them to see more details. As you can see in this instance, that frequently originates from a source other than the featured excerpt itself.
- Bulleted or Numbered List
Listicle-highlighted snippets are responses that are listed with numbers or bullets.
They are frequently shown in response to “How” or “What” question inquiries that demand detailed instructions or a list of things.
- Tables
The Table is the one that represents the result for the user in the ordered form by listing it from top to bottom.
It is used for displaying the various products that are available in your business to know which is the best one.
- Videos
It is also one of the important Featured Snippets. In some cases, Google may also show a highlighted video sample of a video that will begin playing at a specific point in the film.
How to Optimize for Google Featured Snippets?
To display your site or business on the search engine result page, it is critical to realize that you can’t convince Google to use your material for a featured snippet; rather, the search engine decides which pages qualify and which don’t.
And also, due to the numerous dynamic ranking signals and algorithms, featured snippets frequently alter, vanish, and reappear over time.
There are a few things that are explained below to make your content for the featured snippets.
Optimize for Long-tail and question-like Keywords
Basically, the Featured Snippets are triggered in the search engine result page by the use of long-tail keywords and question-like keywords.
The search engine can use your pages as potential replies and display them as highlighted snippets for those inquiries by optimizing them around these long-tail keywords and questions. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer any official tools for webmasters to use in order to determine whether keywords are in fact causing featured snippets to appear in the SERPs.
Remember the following factors, when conducting keyword research with featured snippets.
- Because of the simplest to spot, start with question-type search searches (those that contain question terms like “what,” “why,” “how,” etc.), but don’t stop there…
- Not simply inquiries, but informational intent as well. While featured snippets attempt to provide a fast response to the user’s query, other types of inquiries can also result in those featured results. The great majority of keywords that result in featured snippets are long-tail queries without any question words.
Improve Your Ranking
Your page needs to rank among the top 10 search results for the provided query in order to “earn” a featured snippet. Only pages that are shown on the first page of the SERP are used by Google for its featured snippets.
This may sound very unpleasant, but remember that Google is continuously working to give its consumers the most trustworthy and credible answers, and that can only be done by using top-ranking pages that have high authority and excellent content.
Fortunately, there are various strategies to enhance and optimize your content to raise your Google Search ranks.
Find Low-hanging opportunities
For keywords that you already rank for anywhere in the top 10 search results, you can win featured snippets. These keywords might be considered “easy wins” because all you need to do is optimize your content for those searches by providing a succinct and understandable response.
Your pages which are ranked high in the search engine and also displayed as Featured snippet is tracked by using the tracking tools.
By using any of the tracking tools you can get the list of keywords. From that list of keywords, you can identify low-hanging keywords by small quotation marks before their ranking. To increase the chances of these keywords appearing in the Featured Snippets, make use of the keywords in the heading and give them a brief answer.
Format your Content
In addition to writing style, a key component of featured snippet optimization is good content structuring.
If a table is displayed as the featured snippet for a certain query, for instance, you must construct a response in the form of a table; if a listicle is displayed, make sure your material is presented as a list with items or hierarchical headings.
For featured snippets, prepare your blog article as follows:
- With header tags like H1, H2, H3, etc., create descriptive headers with long-tail and question-like keywords and direct responses underneath.
- Use succinct, direct sentences that answer the question (for paragraph snippets).
- Use bulleted lists, tables, graphs, or lists with numbers (for table and list featured snippets)
- Along with the snippet query you’re addressing, include a pertinent image.
Make Use of Images
Images in a paragraph featured snippets are exponentially more attractive than plain featured snippets and optimize the images perfectly. I experimented with giving it several names and featuring it in the WordPress editor. When trying to direct Google to a better image on the website, it seems to pick up a random one instead.
The only way to change that, however, is to make sure that every single in-article image you use is attractive, branded, and properly captioned so that it will seem good regardless of which one Google chooses to highlight.
Keep an Optimal Word Count
The majority of featured snippets are ranges from 40–50 words long. As a result, you should limit your responses to 58 words or less and keep them concise and to the point.
Although there isn’t a set word limit for the highlighted snippet, there are numerous other factors that the search engines consider in addition to the text length.
The precise minimum length needed to be displayed as a featured snippet is not specified by Google. This is due to the fact that the minimum length varies depending on a variety of variables, such as the language, the platform (mobile device, app, or desktop), and the information in the snippet.
Conclusion
You can’t predict when you’ll get the results and it requires a lot of planning and research (especially if you don’t have many top 10 rankings yet), but consider it this way: Your motivation to produce better content is the possibility of being highlighted in Google search results. Along the process, you’ll accomplish the following significant objectives
You’ll find countless fresh content ideas and become better at thoroughly researching each subject.