Google has caused an uproar in the SEO community as featured snippets go through a change that could see click-through-rates and traffic decrease dramtically for websites.
What Is A Featured Snippet?
A Featured snippet (or position 0 as it is sometimes called) appears at the top of Google listing when a user performs a search for a phrase in Google. It is usually the first result, just below the paid pack, and they usually appear for informational searches that answer a question, rather than a transactional search.
In the day and age of voice search and mobile search, people want answers now and the featured snippet allows the searcher to find the answer to a question without actually leaving the Google browser.
How Do I Get One
Unfortunately, Google is selective about when and where they appear. The best way to obtain a featured snippet is to look at search terms in your field that already produce a featured snippet and follow the strategy outlined below. You can find an excellent guide here produced by Ahrefs. If you use the below strategy on any content you want a featured snippet to appear you increase the likelihood of one showing. However, remember this is still at Google’s discretion.
Informational Queries
The first thing to remember with featured snippets is that they are usually shown on informational queries to answer a problem. I.e How To Soundproof A Ceiling? How To Change A Starter Motor? Etc.
Answer The Public
To find FAQs in your niche you could either try Answer The Public (credit given to Pamela Hopkinson of SMS UK Ltd for this tip) or type a phrase into Google and you will often see the “people also ask” box.
How To Optimise Your Content
Once you have a list of questions that provide featured snippets it’s time to optimise or create a new page to answer the question.
Although there are no guarantees your site will be chosen, like anything in SEO, that are best practices and strategies you can follow to increase the likelihood of a featured snippet.
I will list these below:-
- Google is after a concise answer to the question. Make sure you answer the question within a short concise paragraph between 45 words to 97 words. The best strategy here is to place the question as a header within the content and then answer the question within the content
- With this in mind, most featured snippets are longer-form content. You should answer not only the question that has produced the featured snippet but other questions too related to the subject matter. This is called semantic indexing and Google will want to see that your content is authoritative.
- Structured data and snippets – This is a piece of code that labels information in a structured way for Google. For example addresses, tables and bullet points, recipes, etc. Again the easier you make it for Google to breakdown your content into easily understandable information the more chance you will have of gaining a featured snippet
- Click-through-rate and engagement – 98% percent of featured snippets already had a first-page ranking). To optimise your page accordingly and make sure you follow other SEO best practices to rank including content, meta tags, inner and external links.
This is why it is easier to optimise for a page that already has a featured snippet as you analyse the page and see how it answers the question and maybe provide more relevant or upto date information.
Here I have spoken about just one type of featured snippets, but they can also appear for video and bullet points/lists.
What Has Changed
As of the 22nd January Google made a change to the way featured snippets are going to be shown in the future. Instead of position 0 and then a page 1 ranking, if you have a featured position, you will lose the organic ranking. This is a process called de-duplication. Danny Sullivan Of Google said
“If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show.”
How Will It Effect Things
Well when featured snippets were first released, there was an uproar about Google stealing user’s content and not rewarding them with a click through to their website. Because the question is usually answered with the actual listing, there is no need for a searcher to visit the site.
By removing the URL underneath, this seems to work all in Google’s favour and nothing for the site owner or creator of the content.
How To Get Another Listing Appearing
Although the de-duplication process makes ranking harder if you already have a featured snippet it is not impossible to have another page appearing. For example, if a featured position appears on a keyword phrase that could be both informational and transactional. For example “wall proof soundproofing”, provides a mixture of both informational articles and product listings. If you find your organic listing has disappeared due to it obtaining a featured position, make sure you optimise the product page for the main keyword accordingly and link to the page within the page that features for a featured snippet.
If you need any help with featured snippets or to discuss help with SEO please don’t hesitate to get on touch on 01143 999818. Don’t forget you can also get a FREE SEO audit of your website here.
