Featured Snippets

What Are Featured Snippets?

Featured Snippets are short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google’s search results in order to quickly answer a searcher’s query. The content that appears inside of a Featured Snippet is automatically pulled from web pages in Google’s index. Common types of Featured Snippets include definitions, tables, steps and lists.

Why are Featured Snippets Important for SEO?

Here are a few benefits that featured snippets can have for your website:

• Improves click-through rate (CTR): While the snippet gives users a simple answer for their query, they might be looking for more in-depth information. They can easily find what they’re looking for by clicking your featured link.
• Increases your credibility: Featured snippets present your business as an authority on a subject. They make users much more likely to accept you as a thought leader in your field.
• Helps you capitalize on voice technology: Virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana typically use featured snippets to answer their users’ vocal search queries. Over 40% of internet users perform voice searches every day on computers and mobile devices. 
• Indicates your content is effective, useful, and arranged well: Featured snippets help you evaluate your material. If Google chooses your website to be part of a snippet, it’s a good sign that content is valuable to readers.
• Helps you weed out users not looking to buy: Featured snippets increase “no-click searches” (searches when a user doesn’t click any results) because users already find what they’re looking for. This means that if a user clicks on your link (for something like product information), there’s a higher chance they’re looking to make a purchase. 

Types of Featured Snippets

There are 4 main types of Featured Snippets that appear most often in Google’s search results.

1. The Definition Box: This is a snippet of text designed to give searchers a direct, concise definition or description.

For example, when you search for “rich snippets”, there’s a definition box at the top of the results. 

Definition boxes are commonly used by Google to answer “what is” queries.  

The definitions that Google tends to use are short and sweet. In fact, the average definition of a Featured Snippet is between 40-60 words long.

2. The Table: This is where Google pulls data from a page and displays it as a table.

3. The Ordered List: This is a list of items presented in a specific order. Google tends to use Ordered Lists for queries that need a set of steps. They also use ordered lists for lists that rank things in a specific order.

4. The Unordered List: This is Google’s way of presenting a list of items that don’t need to be in any particular order. For example, a list of keyword research tools isn’t in order of best to worst. It’s just a list.

Why Is Position Zero Valuable?

Marketers initially protested that featured snippets would hurt their traffic and people wouldn’t visit their sites. But position zero doesn’t hurt stats. In fact, position zero has been shown to vastly improve stats, including visits, click-throughs, and conversions.

When it comes to SEO, zero is the new number one. In addition to boosting traffic and sales, position zero is great for establishing brand expertise. When your business provides the definitive answer to a question, that’s a powerful statement about your brand.

Position zero results are also used in voice search, so that can be an incredibly helpful boost as voice search becomes more common.

How Do I Get My Content to Rank for a Featured Snippet?

Unfortunately, there’s no way to guarantee that Google will use your content as a featured snippet. Google has algorithms that consistently evaluate snippets (and search rankings) to see which provide the best responses to certain user queries. What may have been answered in a list may end up being replaced by a video, depending on any algorithmic changes that impact the SERP. 

However, what you can do is create high-quality, targeted content that has a high chance of being chosen. In the next few sections, we’ll run through some ways you can give yourself an advantage over your competition.

• Use Keyword Research to Find SERPs With Featured Snippets
• Write Clear, Concise, and Objective Content
• Add Structured Data to Your Page
• Use Effective Headings and Subheadings