Technology

How We Made it to Google Featured Snippets

Google’s search features and SERPs are evolving quickly. One such rapid evolution is Google’s featured snippets.

Since 2014, Google deliver featured snippet results for additional queries. Another advantage of this enhanced visibility comes with higher organic click-through rates.

In the rush to get to the first page of Google, a great SERP opportunity is getting more useful and more relevant – featured snippets.

What are the featured snippets?

The featured snippet is a piece of information displayed at the top of search results, which is a summary of the answer taken from a website. It includes the title and URL of the website.

Google selects the websites by detecting if they contains the best answer to a question.

You need to know about featured snippets

Before you start ranking for featured snippets, here are some basics:

  • Featured snippets are also known as answer boxes.
  • Featured snippets are often referred to as Position-0. This is because these snippets appear above the first organic search result.
  • Voice search and featured snippets are closely Voice searches get answers from featured snippet boxes.
  • Posts already featured on page 1 of Google SERPs would like to get a place in an answer box. This is confirmed by an Ahrefs study. 

What was the impact on organic traffic?

You can immediately see increased organic traffic from Google. So the featured snippets will definitely increase traffic and CTR.

Is it possible to get there with low authority domains?

Yes, absolutely! When search engine watch or Wordstream if reaches slightly just above the 10 domain authority, and having 0 backlinks and almost no social shares.

What have we learned?

We analysis this into 10 best practices:

  1. In order to be featured in a snippet we don’t need to rank first. But, being on the front page is essential.
  2. We need specific content that responds to the search query directly.
  3. Is it possible to boost the CTR of featured snippets? then yes. Formulate a copy that will act as a teaser for interesting stuff, it inducing users to click. A case study of Ben Goodsell explains that experienced a 516% increase in featured snippets sessions and CTR rose from 2% to 8%.
  4. Page authority and Domain authority don’t need to achieve higher values. The same applies to the number of visitors, backlinks or social shares.
  5. Well-structured content is essential to answer questions. On the other hand, it turned out that using questions was not mandatory.
  6. Avoiding keyword research is tantamount to suicide. Ask questions such as What is, How to, How do.
  7. Optimize specific blog posts in the best way. Even if you don’t turn them into snippets, you can boost your rankings.
  8. There is no special mark-up for featured snippets. Google algorithm determines which website can answer the question.
  9. If you don’t like your content in featured snippets, you can opt out by using <meta name=”googlebot”content=”nosnippet”>.
  10. Featured snippets are best for users. The best scenario is a snippet that contains all the information.

 

Joyce

Joyce is Managing Editor overseeing the coverage of Senonches.

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