Think about the main reason why people use Google – to find answers to their questions. Ultimately, Google strives to do everything in its power to make it as easy as possible for its users to find the answers that they are looking for. If Google can provide that answer at the top of the search results without a user even having to click through to a link, fantastic! And that’s where featured snippets come in.
What are featured snippets?
Featured snippets are short snippets of information that are ‘snipped’ from a web page and displayed at the very top of the search results. The goal of featured snippets is to supply a quick, concise answer to a question or phrase that has been entered into the Google search bar.
Generally, there are four main types of Google snippets, namely definitions, tables, steps, and lists. There are also featured snippets that appear as videos, particularly when a Google user enters a ‘how to’ search query, such as ‘how to play poker’ or ‘how to tie shoelaces’.
How do featured snippets impact SEO?
There are so many benefits to landing a featured snippet on Google. For starters, it immediately gives your brand an authority boost and is sure to help increase brand awareness.
Secondly, since the snippet appears at the top of the search results, there is a much greater chance of people clicking through to your website to read more. Because of this, many SEO experts refer to the featured snippet as “Position #0” as it appears before that coveted ‘first position’ and, in many ways, is more valuable.
How to tailor your content to land a featured snippet
If you’re keen to grab a featured snippet or two for your brand, it’s important to figure out what type of snippet you need to aim for, as each type requires different forms of content and website optimisation.
Definition: Quite simply, these snippets are designed to give users a short, straightforward definition or description based on their query, such as ‘what is the largest animal in the world?’
In order to optimise for a definition snippet, try to keep content relating to your targeted keyword(s) between 40 – 60 words long.
Tables: Snippets featuring tables are usually displayed to answer search queries that require quantitative comparisons, such as ‘what are the different shoe sizes’.
If you’d like to land a snippet in a table format, do the obvious thing and create a table on your website. While it is possible for Google to ‘pull’ information from a web page and create its own table in snippet form, more often than not, the search engine prefers to scrape already-existing tables.
Steps: These featured snippets are essentially step-by-step guides that typically answer ‘how to’ questions, such as ‘how to make tea’.
Create easy-to-follow step-by-step guides with descriptive headings for each step if you have chosen to try to score a snippet for a ‘how to’ phrase.
Lists: Lists are snippets that offer up relevant options to a user’s search query, such as ‘best editing tools’.
Use plenty of bullet points in your content and there’s a good chance that it will show up in snippet format if you’ve ticked all of the other SEO boxes in the process too.
SEO services
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Article by, Bianca Marie Golz (Content Writer) – HashTag Marketing
