Why are featured snippets important?
Featured snippets should form a core part of your SEO strategy; by appearing at the top of a search engine, you should become more visible to users. This approach may correlate with increased site visitors.
The increased website traffic may lead to changes in engagement rates, potentially affecting them on varying levels. Conversions may occur when visitors build trust with a brand through sustained interaction.
While featured snippets are important, you must still use natural language and ensure that the rest of your content delivers value.
How does Google choose featured snippets?
Google uses several factors to consider which articles it places within a featured snippet. These include:
- Relevance: Content needs to relate to what the user is searching for in the first place. For example, if a user searches for “What type of running shoe should I buy?”, your article needs to be about running shoes in some capacity. This should be the first priority before you even think about featured snippets.
- Quality: In addition to being relevant, Google will prioritize well-written content with a logical structure. What you create must make the topic digestible and easy for readers to understand, and you should also include as much information as possible.
- Completeness: The extent to which you answer your user’s question will significantly impact whether your article appears in a featured snippet. The word count doesn’t matter a huge amount, but your content does need to give a full answer to the searched-for question.
- Format: Besides being logical for readers, your content needs to be in a way that Google’s algorithm can recognize. Besides headings/subheadings, your content should also use bullet points, callouts, and tables where required.
- Schema markup: Use schema markups so that search engines know what your content is about. By doing this, Google might determine that your content should be placed in a SERP’s featured snippet.
What are the different types of featured snippets?
Featured snippets typically take multiple forms in Google. Some of the most common ones that you’ll encounter are paragraph, list, table, image, and video snippets.
Below is a more detailed explanation for each.
- Paragraph snippets: These use a short paragraph of text (usually 30-50 words). They’re the most common type of featured snippet and feature in the majority of query-based search results.
- List snippets: When a user is looking for lists and compilations, Google will typically show list snippets. For example, a user might ask “What is the best AI-powered website builder?” or “What are the best Christmas markets in Europe?”.
- Table snippets: If a user wants to compare different items, table snippets will often appear. These kinds of snippets are particularly common for tech-based search results, such as “Best mirrorless cameras under $1,000”.
- Image snippets: Google sometimes shows image snippets, which consist of a picture accompanied with a related caption.
- Video snippets: These are very similar to image snippets, with the primary difference being that a video is shown instead of a picture. Like image snippets, you will see a caption/description next to the visual content.
How to optimize your website for featured snippets?
Optimizing your website content to appear in featured snippets will require a multi-pronged approach and to understand your overall business objectives. Here are some of the most important factors to consider when optimizing for featured snippets:
- Target keywords: Do keyword research in advance and determine which ones relate to your content and target audience. From here, you should then optimize your content accordingly and experiment with different snippet types.
- High-quality content: While featured snippets are one way to drive web traffic, do not neglect the importance of high-quality content. Answer the reader’s question, and for more complex topics, provide as much detail as possible. Make your content easier for audiences to understand by using short paragraphs and breaking up your text with visual content where necessary.
- Data-structuring: Google’s algorithms often require structured data for comprehensive webpage context interpretation. Therefore, you should look into adding a schema markup to your pages.
- Metadata: Make sure that your meta descriptions are clear, concise, and accurate. Your title tags should also immediately tell the user what they should expect when clicking through to your page.
- Headings and subheadings: Always make the title on your page a H1, and organize the rest of your content into headings and subheadings. The main sections should be H2, while subsections should be H3; if you need to go into further detail, add more of these to structure your content.
- Answer questions: Google prioritizes content written for humans, not search engines. Therefore, you should answer the questions that a user is searching for.
- Performance monitoring: Once you’ve started writing content for your website, observe your performance in search results over time. Give each piece of content at least six months and observe what is and isn’t working. Then, optimize more for what is. Be sure to think of how to optimize your weaker areas, too.
Conclusion
Featured snippets should not be overlooked in your SEO strategy, and they should form part of your broader optimization framework. Appearing in a featured snippet can impact clickthroughs and brand authorities, and for this reason, it’s important to optimize content where possible.
Many of the principles that lead to ranking in featured snippets are also important for other SEO areas. For example, you need to create valuable and relevant content that users will find useful. Moreover, you should optimize your articles and pages so that they’re easy to read.
Focus on being a valuable resource first and then work backward to optimize parts of your content for featured search snippets.
