Optimize for Featured Snippets: The Latest and Greatest Techniques

Optimize for Featured Snippets: Definition

Anyone who uses Google Search, both SEO professionals and laypeople, is familiar with the idea of highlighted snippets. Featured snippets, commonly known as “Position Zero,” are, in essence, the first result that appears at the top of search engine results pages.

A featured snippet may not appear in every search result, but when it does, even the top search result is forced to give way. Contrary to popular belief, a featured snippet can take many different forms. It can be an image, a video, a paragraph, a table, or a list extracted from an article.

How a Snippet gets to be featured at Position Zero

Optimize for Featured Snippets: Statistics

Analyzing one million high CPC queries, STAT reports key findings as follow:

• 9.28% have featured snippets
• 27.58% of featured snippets are images
• Featured snippet frequency x2 in case of keywords with high search volume
• Featured snippet frequency increases with longer query
• In readability tests, featured snippets are rated higher
• Featured snippets have high average social share, at 12.5% (results based on data collected from social sites such as Pinterest, Facebook or LinkedIn)

On the other hand, another study identifies certain industries with higher featured snippet frequency:

• Travel and tourism
• Electronics and computers
• Arts and entertainment
• Science

A Featured Snippet schema for SEO results

Optimize for Featured Snippets: Rich Snippets

The most thorough and informative snippet kind is the rich snippet, which gives users all the information they need right away. A rich snippet’s title, URL, and meta description are its fundamental parts. Avatars, ranks, internal linkages, navigation, etc. are additional components.

How to optimize for Rich Snippets to get featured on Google

Optimize for Featured Snippets: The Importance to SEO

Featured snippets play a significant role in website SEO success, particularly when it comes to encouraging the highest keyword rankings. Therefore, the top concern for all SEO specialists is figuring out how to get your content to appear at Google’s “Position Zero.” Let’s examine a few justifications for why featured snippet optimization is “must.”

• To create a solid foundation for getting featured, you don’t need to optimize keywords to reach Top 5. In some cases, your content can make it to Position Zero despite the keyword ranking of your site being in the Top 20.
• Help increase the authority and visibility on SERPs.
• Prevail over competitors with ease.
• Boost organic traffic. Sometimes Position Zero yields a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than Top 1 result.
• Save costs in SEO projects.

Optimize for Featured Snippets to boost SEO

Optimize for Featured Snippets: 3 Main Types

Paragraph (63%)

The paragraph featured snippet is a small excerpt from an article. Sometimes it will come with images related to the content the user is looking for. This snippet type is often used to answer “What is…” questions. 

For example, when you input a Google query as “What is featured snippet”. Immediately, you will be shown a paragraph summarizing the definition of featured snippet. This paragraph is usually brief and informative, and displayed just below the search toolbar.

According to Semrush’s research, a paragraph featured snippet is usually 40-50 or 250-300 word long. It also depends on the query and how you optimize the content.

List (19%)

The list featured snippet shows the answer to a query in listing format. There are two varieties:

1. Numbered list

Information will be listed in a certain order. When the search result returns a numbered list featured snippet, you will either see a concise, step-by-step snippet, or a detailed list sorted based on the subjective viewpoint of the writer.

2. Bulleted list

In this case, Google will show you a list but not in any certain order. The only “order” here is based on the writer’s opinion.

Table (16%)

With this type of featured snippet, Google will return search results in the form of tables. 

In addition to these 3 popular featured snippet types, there are also charts, images, etc.

Research on different Featured Snippet types

Optimize for Featured Snippets: Best Practices

Choose high potential keywords

Remember, not all keywords can be optimized for featured snippets. Most of the time, Position Zero is occupied by definitions, comparisons, how-tos, etc.

Therefore you need to take the task of choosing potential keywords very seriously. So how can you know which keywords are “featured snippet potential”? Let’s do keyword analysis. 

To boost the chance to get the best keywords, analyze both domestic and foreign markets for more data. And of course, to reach Position Zero, original, superior SEO copywriting content must be created based on these keywords.

Let’s take a look at the process of analyzing keywords using Ahrefs:

1. Specify a list of your competitors’ domains
2. Login to Ahrefs and enter those domain names in Site Explorer
3. Scroll down and select Organic Keywords
4. Turn to SERP features and check the Featured Snippet box

At this point, you will see the keywords featured in Position Zero. Now your task is to pick the most suitable and research for more sub-keywords to facilitate the optimization process for phrase match keywords.

Analyze featured snippet using those keywords

What does that mean? really simple! All you have to do is figure out how many words the highlighted sample has that contain those terms.

For instance, the term “what is booking kol” featured sample contains 59 words overall. Therefore, try your hardest to convey your main ideas in 50–60 words. This helps the keyword reach Position Zero and makes declaring it to Google simple.

However, don’t forget to consider the featured snippet’s genre. Is it a table, a movie, a list, or a paragraph? With this information, you can choose the best content arrangement with ease.

Optimize the content and layout

Your content must be accurate and cover the topic in the query. Especially, content with depth and higher quality than competitors’ will be the solid foundation to promote chosen keywords.

Besides, don’t forget to invest time on the format or layout of the article. The most important are heading tags, which need to be optimized for keywords in the featured snippet so that Google can easily recognize it. Depending on the context, choose the most appropriate heading type such as H2, H3, H4, etc. On Digitals recommends a focus on H2 to optimize for featured snippet keywords.

For example, if you want to optimize the keyword “what is pbn”, put it somewhere in the H2 of the article. It’s even better if the keyword is H2. Also, the content needs to clarify the meaning for H2: What is PBN?

Then, based on your competitor’s featured snippet, decide your content format to optimize. If it’s a paragraph featured snippet, you will need to write a piece of content explaining clearly what PBN is. The same goes for lists or tables.

Note that you should also make the featured snippet pleasant to the eyes. It will give you a higher chance to reach Position Zero.

Also, remember to add Alt tags for images with exact keywords, and if you have videos to show, it will create a bigger impact. Google is known to have a preference for these.

Best ideas on Featured Snippet to increase traffic

Submit your article to Google

For Google to receive new articles quickly, do submit your URL using Google Webmaster tools aka Google Search Console. 

This tool helps you request GoogleBot to crawl your article as well as your website. After that, Google will re-update the article content and give you high rankings if your content is of high-quality.

Optimize for Featured Snippets: Key Notes

Here are some notes to keep in mind when you optimize for featured snippets i.e. Position Zero.

• A high site ranking or the content containing the right keywords will have a higher chance to get to Position Zero. Usually, Top 5 results are prioritized. But sometimes search results in Top 10 can still get featured.
• Position Zero is highly competitive, so most “occupants” don’t spend a long time there. This represents both an opportunity and a risk. If you don’t do SEO better than your competitors, Position Zero is a close-yet-unreachable goal.
• Promoting your site’s keywords to Position Zero will take a lot of time. Patience and consistency are your loyal companions.

Read more: Onpage SEO optimization that all businesses need to know.

Conclusion

A crucial first step in raising your site’s SERP rating is learning featured snippet optimization. For the fastest route to Position Zero, conduct in-depth keyword research and select the best alternative. When you receive a featured snippet, more people will visit your website, which helps build brand awareness and draw in new clients.

We hope the article has cleared any confusion about the featured snippet concept on time, including its schema and important role in SEO, and helpful optimization ideas to increase your site traffic. If you want more information about SEO, Digital Marketing, Social Media and related topics, On Digitals is at your service.