What Is a Featured Snippet?

A featured snippet summarizes an answer asked by a user’s search, displayed at the top of the search results. Google takes the response from a web page and includes the title of the page and the URL. Think of a featured snippet like a quick snapshot or overview of a thorough answer to a question a user asks that can be viewed on google without clicking on the link.

Why Should You Care?

1. Featured snippets show up for the terms your target customers are searching for.
2. Featured snippets are used in voice searches which are starting to account for more than 70 percent of search inquiries.
3. Focusing on featured snippets will be an effective strategy that aligns with how people are already searching.
4. Featured snippets enable you to rank higher than the number 1 organic result in a unique way compared to a meta description.

Ways To Optimize Featured Snippets

1. Analyze your blog post ranking 1-5 on Google, and see which keywords it ranks for. Additionally, it might be good to see which keywords your target audience is already searching for and restructure your relevant content to match these searches.
2. Research the keywords you are ranking for and see if there is already a featured snippet.
3. Mark the keywords that have featured snippets and focus on these.
4. Optimize your posts by adding a quick synopsis at the top of your post or a list to make it easier for Google to pull this from your website into a featured snippet.
5. Once you have made changes and optimized your blog post, make sure to resubmit the URL’s to be re-crawled.
6. Measure every day for a month to ensure results.

It is important to note that format of your blog post and a quick summary at the top is critical for getting a featured snippet on Google. The easier it is for users to get their answers to their questions, and the better the format, the more likely you will receive the featured snippet for a specific search query. Brief and concise answers to users’ questions are a sure way to get a featured snippet.

Featured Snippet Tools

1. Google Keyword PlannerGoogle Analytics
2. Google Search Results
3. SEM Rush Position Tracking Tool

Want to work with our team to implement SEO best practices and start your journey to achieving featured snippets? Please take a look at our SEO packages to get started today!