How to Optimize Feature Snippets: 10 Valuable Tips
Are you looking for ways to optimize your site content for featured snippets? Then use this guide to learn the basics of optimizing content for featured snippets to enhance your site’s reputation and drive organic traffic. It’s not a secret how much featured snippets influence a website’s growth. In this blog, we will walk you through how to optimize content for featured snippets.
Nowadays, it’s getting quite challenging to drive traffic from Google due to huge competition, and if you are running a business or giving services to people on the internet, you likely wish to rank first in the search results on Google. So for this, I will help you know how to optimize your site with snippets.
What is Meant by Featured Snippets?
Featured snippets are small text snippets that emerge at the top of the Google search result to respond rapidly to a person’s query. Hence, the content that emerges inside a featured snippet is automatically pulled from web pages in the Google index. Some of the snippets are tables, steps, lists, and definitions. Although, these snippets play a huge role in ranking content in the first position without being anxious about other factors. In a nutshell, we can say that Google snippets are the best to answer the user’s need in the search results instantly.
As per the reports by Ahrefs, keywords with snippets are taking 8.6% of all clicks while 19.6 goes to the organic result that is ranking 1st. Once you understand how to optimize featured snippets for your content, you will soon get the highest ranking on your site.
Different Types of Featured Snippets
Google can directly pull out any part of your content from the top-ranks web pages & shows it as a featured snippet in one of the snippet forms. Usually, there are several types of featured snippets, depending on the search query. The most common snippets are:
· Paragraph Snippet
Paragraphs are the most usual type of feature snippet that can appear in the SERP. It consists of a short part of the text that gives a brief answer to queries such as who, why, when, what, and how. However, 70% of snippets are paragraph-type, with an average of 40-60 words.
Tip– most of the “What” type query keywords have the highest search volume. But you need to search out the question keywords with low keyword difficulty scores to win them.
· Numbered/Bulleted Snippet
Numbered & bulleted snippets give information in the form of numbers or bullet points and show “best of” and “top-rated” queries. Numbered snippets are usually used for describing a process & are served in response to queries that start with “How to.” In contrast, bulleted snippets share various information points in unordered or unranked way.
· Table Snippet
Table snippets offer data that are selected from a certain page & display as an answer to the query in the form of a table. For questions such as “what are pant sizes?” it usually contains rows & columns that show values, prices, sizes, or years.
· Video Snippet
These are of video types, with the average of one being 6 minutes & 35 seconds in length. If your audience wants to watch video content, then a video snippet is the best way for you to boost your site traffic. As per the study, video snippets often appear for “How to” search queries where the title of the video matches the search query.
Why is it Important to Optimize Feature Snippets in SEO?
According to Researchers, featured snippets are the best way to drive organic traffic without pulling out the latest content or backlinks. Once you know how to get a featured snippet, you will be on your way to driving high traffic. So let’s have a look at why these snippets are important.
· Improve Rankings
A featured snippet can assist you quickly outranking your competitors & appear at the top of the search engine result page. It is basically significant for pages that are ranking in the top 10 search results for a specific keyword. Although, being shown in a featured snippet is a much quicker way to win the competition in the SERP as you don’t have to compete with them directly.
· Increase Brand Awareness
Featured Snippets are the best way to endorse the brand. When the website is in the featured snippet is the first thing that users actually see in the SERP. So by optimizing for featured snippets, users can recognize your brand more.
· Boost CTR
Websites that are shown as featured snippets may get a higher number of clicks than usual search results. However, the number of clicks achieved from the featured snippet depends on the plan behind the search need and the real position of the page used for the snippet. As per the study of Ahrefs, featured snippets are likely to get some of the traffic that would otherwise go to the top rank, and the featured snippet can take about 30% of the clicks on the first ranking page. This offers a massive traffic boost for any page that was ranked at the bottom of the search result page.
10 Optimizing Tactics: Learn to Optimize Content For Feature Snippets
If you wish to improve your ranking on Google search results, you must optimize your content with the featured snippet; you will content rank on the first page. But, it is significant to know that you cannot directly tell Google to use your content for a featured snippet. It solely depends on the search engine to select which pages are entitled to the snippets and which are not. However, there are some tactics that you can apply to your content to improve the odds.
1. Optimize Content to Rank on 1st
To appear in a featured snippet, your page must be in the top 10 search results for the given questions. First, you have to check out how to rank for the featured snippet on Google; you have to struggle to get a top position on the SERP. Hence, these featured snippets are most likely to rank in the first top 5 results of the SERP. As per Ahrefs, Google decided to feature snippets of content only from the top-ranked pages. However, you can improve your website’s ranking by improving your content and following SEO strategies.
2. Check Out Competitor’s Snippets
it is significant to find the competitor’s snippets, as it is the main point of everything. You must determine the featured snippets for your competitors to find out why they are ranked. After getting all the details, you can start editing your content by adding value and statistical data to optimize the featured snippet. So keep optimizing the content until you see your content in the featured snippet.
3. Publish Content That Answers Queries: To Optimize Feature Snippets
Most people use search terms in the form of questions that begin with words such as When what, how, whom, or where. Therefore, you have to find the question-based keywords and then write content to answer the queries. So make sure that you are optimizing the content for question-based keywords. You can also use the tools such as Ahrefs to search the related question on any topic. This way will boost your chance to rank in the featured snippets.
4. Stay Focused on Answering Queries throughout the Blog
While creating content, you have to be more focused on giving answers to the queries. Every part of the blog, including H1, H2 or H3, etc., should respond to questions related to the target keyword. The easiest way to discover the questions that the target audience asks is by scrutinizing the “People also asked” section on the search page. These are the most frequently asked questions that people ask Google, and responding to them in an accurate way can help you get the featured snippet chance.
5. Always Make Short & Relevant Answers: To Optimize Feature Snippets
If you are writing short answers, it will be easier for Google to recognize the content & consider whether it satisfies the people’s query or not. Hence, try to respond to questions within 40-50 words. Also, keep in mind to add question keywords to the heading tags; it will boost the chance of getting a featured snippet.
6. Layout Content Structure For Featured Snippets
Try to format your content with headings and tags like h2 and h3 to make a list structure for your content. Further, make sure to add a heading for each step; it will help Google recognize the content that is responding to an answer and optimize it in a featured snippet. You can also combine various related questions in one article in an organized way. It will help you format your content well.
7. Use Relevant Images for your Content
Along with the text, the image emerges alongside some snippets from other websites. So, try to add real-life or customized graphics & optimize your image for a given keyword. You can also search featured images for a keyword and try to optimize the image on your website with something attractive. Moreover, add an alt text more appropriate to the keyword and the given question, and add it to the top part of your blog content.
8. Include Steps in Content For Solving a Query: To Optimize Feature Snippets
However, some topics need a detailed step-by-step guide, so try to involve the steps process in your content. Hence, page format is extremely important here. Every step should be structured properly in a list format or represented on the page as heading 2 or 3.
9. Execute SEO Strategies
Optimizing the content according to the SEO techniques is also essential to get ranked. Here we will let you know some of the SEO Tips that assist with featured snippets.
- Title Tag- use a headline analyzer & snippet optimization tool to make an attractive title tag that fits the pixel need.
- Heading Tags- Try using the question-based keyword to optimize for a featured snippet.
- Image Alt Elements- for all images, ensure you use descriptive alt text to assist Google in knowing what the pictures are all about. Maximum ranked content has images with the alt attributes.
- Internal Links- try to interlink your content with other important site pages. It will help Google to spot your website’s important pages. If you win a featured snippet, you can also rank your best pages with it.
- Meta Description Tag- always try to make a meta description with a Keyword in it so that it will drive high clicks.
- External Links- inserting links from the other sites will let Google know which sites you trust the most with your credentials.
- URL- Structure- URL is the most important, so always keep it short with just 4 5 words to justify what the article is about.
10. Add FAQs in Your Content: To Optimize Feature Snippets
It is another way to improve the chances of appearing in the featured snippet. FAQS with proper schema markup for FAQ pages can display a good search result to the targeted audience and enhance the CTR along with the possibility to rank.
Final Words
It takes a lot of research & good quality content to get your content on top of the Google search engine. Although achieving this position is not easy, you must struggle in research to create content that will help you achieve the top position in SERP.
So, for your ease, we have mentioned some useful tactics that will help you get your content optimized for feature snippets. By following the above tips, you should be able to boost the chances of optimizing featured snippets for your site. Not only that, but you will get numerous benefits, such as engaging with your audience, increasing sales, and much more. Hopefully, this article will be useful for you, and don’t forget to share your thoughts with us.
