11 Nov What Are Featured Snippets?
Featured Snippets are short writing of text that appears at the top of Google’s search to quickly answer someone’s question. The content inside a featured snippet is automatically pulled from a web page in Google’s index. Examples of featured snippets include definitions, tables, steps such as recipes and lists.
In this blog, we will tell you all about how the Featured Snippet works and our tips and tricks how to gain that top spot! Read this blog to find out exactly that…
SEO and Featured Snippets?
Featured Snippets help with SEO by giving an opportunity to get in the organic search results, without high Google rankings. Many people refer to the Snippet box as ‘position 0’ because it appears higher than the first spot.
According to Search Engine Land, the Featured Snippet gets approximately 8% of all clicks. Therefore, if it’s possible to get your content in the Featured Snippet, this will give your organic traffic a boost. Why wouldn’t you want to get free organic traffic! It’s great for your site’s authority.
Why Should You Care About Featured Snippets?
The Featured Snippet is important as it gives an additional SERP feature, which can be secured. This is at the top of the search results pages, which gives a greater visibility to searches and can boost brand recognition.
Types Of Featured Snippets:
- Text: The answer will be a written-out paragraph. This can usually be only text, but sometimes we find there can be an image too.
- A Table: This is when Google pulls data from a page. Here’s an example:
- An Ordered List: This can be when Google uses Ordered Lists for questions that require a set of steps.
- Videos: This is quite a new one and usually tends to be Youtube videos. Mainly around food, so when you are searching for a how to around food.
How Can I Optimise For Featured Snippets?
Look for a search results page which has a Featured Snippet already, this is an opportunity. This way you know that Google shows a featured snippet for that term. This is called competitor analysis.
Next step would be to see what type of Featured Snippet Google wants to show for this term, whether it would be a video, ordered list or even a table.
Winning the featured snippet can be the difference between somebody clicking onto your website or not. If they do click onto the website, you will have the opportunity to secure a conversion or sale. With the right content, you could really increase traffic by winning this snippet. It’s also important to note, the content must be really accurate for the search term, as you wouldn’t want to gain a high bounce rate from this. A high bounce rate would be someone clicking onto your site (if they think the site has the information they’re looking for) but then clicking off as they’ve realised it doesn’t apply to them. It’s best to have a low bounce rate.
Will My Webpage With Featured Snippet Appear Twice on Page 1?
Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed that webpages in a featured snippet position will not be repeated in regular page 1 organic listing. This change would’ve affected 100% of all search listings, as it was only announced in January 2020.
Previously it was fine to see webpages in a featured snippet position appear twice on the first page of the google search results. Moving forward this is not the case, so the webpage only gets one opportunity to appear on the first page. Sullivan also states, featured snippets count as one of the 10 webpage listings shown on the first page.
What If You Lose Your Featured Snippet?
If you lost your featured snippet in past, you would still be on page 1. Now if you lose your Featured Snippet, we believe the high-ranking organic web page, should go back to page 1. As the web page would have had to rank pretty high to have been a Featured Snippet in the first place.
So, now we know how important the Featured Snippet is and why we would want to target our webpage to sit in that position! I hope these tips and information helps you gain that Featured Snippet spot! It may take you a while, but I’m certain you will get into that spot in the end. Even if it does take you de-indexing your competitors sites to get into that spot… We won’t tell!
Thank you for reading this month’s blog on what Google’s Featured Snippets are. To find out more, please get in touch:
Contact Us Today
For any advice and expertise, please get in touch on 01234 634734. Please feel free to fill in the contact form on our contact page with any questions you may have.