How to optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets

So you’re interested in what Google’s featured snippets are all about?😁 You might be asking yourself how you can use them to optimize your content marketing campaigns, increase your organic traffic, and make your content more discoverable and accessible to more people. 

Climbing to the top🔝 of Google’s organic search results is a tough💪 challenge, due to high competition and other reasons. But just because it’s tough doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

Even if you are not in the first place, you can outrank it. 

How?🤔

By claiming a featured snippet of course.

Optimize for the featured snippet, and you may rocket🚀 your site to the top of the search results by making just tiny changes to the content of your page.

“ In the world of SEO, if you don’t keep up you will quickly fall. To succeed — even to survive — you must continuously adapt. ”- Oberlo

What are Featured Snippets?

Featured snippets are pieces of information that appear at the top of Google’s search results. They respond to search queries by gathering relevant information from top-ranking pages.

Featured snippets bring your website to the top of the SERPs and make it more clickable, whether on mobile or desktop.

Let’s say we do a Google search on: “ why SEO is important “

People’s online searches are easier via featured snippets since they can see the information they’re looking for right away. Google chooses the best response from a third-party website and displays it in a snippet automatically.

If Google chooses to display your content as a featured snippet content, imagine the visibility, and prospects you may receive😏.

Types of Featured Snippets

When optimizing for featured snippets, you must first understand the several types of featured snippets available.

1. Paragraph Featured Snippets

This type of snippet shows paragraph answers. These kinds of snippets are the most popular. Paragraph snippets were most common, showing up in 82 percent of featured snippets.

In paragraphs, snippets are often shown questions like Why is, Who is, How to.

2. List Snippet

This snippet type includes answers provided in numbered or bulleted lists. List snippets are most frequently used in posts with step-by-step instructions and recipes.

This is the next most common type of Featured Snippet.

3. Table Featured Snippets

Table snippets display content in the form of a table. They are typically shown in posts that include comparison charts. Google prefers content that is well-structured and includes prices, rates, years, and other numerical data. Google will sometimes pull only the most useful information from a page and create its own table in answer to a user’s query.

Remember: If you want to rank for Featured Snippets, first you need to determine which featured snippets your competitors are ranking for.

Benefits of Featured Snippets

You might be thinking why do people work so hard to get them?

 How do featured snippets benefit us?

Here’s how:

1. Increase in Website Traffic

The most obvious benefit of having a featured snippet is increased traffic to the website. Getting to the top of the organic search results is a fantastic achievement and a terrific traffic driver.

2. Win Big

When Google selects your site as the quick answer to a given query, the result is shown above the organic results, giving you an advantage over the competition. You win over the competition, which may include a site that ranks first in that search result.

3. Maximum Trust and Authority

Google only chooses websites that it trusts to show in the snippet, so achieving this shows that your website is a good source of information in the eyes of the search engine, which is likely to boost your ranks for other keywords.

How to optimize for featured snippets?

1. Start with Keyword Research

 Keyword research is an important tool for creating effective content, especially content that ranks for a featured snippet. Usually, most of the featured snippets are produced by long-tail keywords.

In fact, the more keywords typed into the search box, the more likely a featured snippet would appear.

When doing keyword research for featured snippets, keep in mind:

• Make sure to answer most of your target audience’s query. 
• There are several keyword research tools available to help you with this. If you use Ahrefs: you can type in the keyword and click the tab Questions.

2. Browse Google’s “People Also Ask” Section

While keyword research is incredibly useful, don’t forget to look at the “People also ask” section. This section is frequently seen beneath a featured snippet.

Consider this a treasure since it provides you with more possibilities to explore a topic. In a single blog post, you’ll be able to answer as many questions as possible.

3. Improve your On-page SEO

On-Page SEO is an important step for featured snippets. You must provide the best answers to users with optimized content. And what you need to do is: 

• Diagnose SEO( search engine optimization) issues and remove any penalties
• Make it simple for visitors to navigate and crawl your website.
• Use internal linking and pointing to high-quality external sources.
• Make your website mobile-friendly and fast.
• If you still use the HTTP protocol, upgrade to SSL.
• Use URLs that are easy to remember.
• Keep your content fresh by targeting it with search intent.
• Optimize your images (high-quality images).
• Make your page readable and easy to use.

5. Add a Q&A page to your website

Q&A pages are useful for website owners that sell products or services. By answering issues, these pages display your knowledge. Most significantly, they provide additional possibilities to appear in a snippet.

Show the information that most people in your niche want to know when developing a Q&A page. Provide full answers in short paragraphs that are clear and precise.

Conclusion:

If you want to increase traffic to your website and improve its SEO, you should know that ranking top in Google search results isn’t the only solution. You get a second opportunity if you rank in featured snippets. 

Finding out how to get a featured snippet on Google can be overwhelming, frustrating, and confusing. The most important thing to remember is that without quality content, you won’t get very far. Be sure to work on providing well-written and valuable information before you optimize for featured snippets.

• Answer the questions your audience wants to know, 
• Improve on-page SEO to increase your ranking.

Make featured snippet optimization a key part of your SEO strategy.