2020 Free Guide To Google's Featured Snippet.

We all know how impatient consumers are online these days, the quicker they find what they are looking for, the better. This is what makes featured snippets so important as they make people’s online search process experience easier and faster as they can see what they are looking for at a glance! Google will pick the best answer from a third party website and include it in the snippet. Imagine the exposure and traffic your website will receive if Google decides to display your content!? According to a featured snippets study, these snippets receive about 35% of the total share of clicks!

Normally, featured snippets are classified into three forms: lists, paragraphs and tables. Paragraph type answers will appear in paragraph form at the top of the page. Answers that are in the form of numbered lists or bullet points will show as a list featured snippet, a list snippet will mainly refer to posts that include step by step instructions. Often you’ll see table snippets show up for posts that contain comparisons charts. Google values well-structured content with prices, rates, years, and other numerical data.

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A quick way to begin optimising your content for the featured snippet is by breaking up each section on your site. In Wordpress, use paragraph styles to organise your structure. Use h1, h2, h3 or h4 tags for your header and sub headings and format the page in chronological order so that Google will be more likely to feature your content. For example, a subheading under a main heading that is h3 should be h4, not h2.

As always, keyword research will be your best friend and is an indispensable tool in creating content that will adhere to the requirements of a featured snippet. You have to aim for your content to be answering the questions that the majority of your target audience will be asking. Try and refrain from using needles words in your content, Google will always offer short, concise information, especially for voice results. Create answers and content that match this.

Underneath the featured snippet box, you will often find the ‘people also ask’ section. This is also an important place to look when conducting your research, it offers you more opportunities to expand on a topic. You’ll be able to answer as many questions as possible in a single blog post.

It is important never to forget the basics and you should always be aiming to be ranked on at least the first page of Google. By being on page number 1, you have a much higher chance of achieving a snippet, Google finds the majority of their answers from sites listed on the first page so increasing your organic ranking should always remain the main practice.

Another interesting technique is to create a Q&A section for the page you are aiming to rank. This mainly benefits websites who are offering a service or product. They are a good way to simply address concerns and answer any frequently asked questions that your customers may have. More importantly, they help to grow your chances of appearing in a snippet. Provide complete answers in short paragraphs and keep them straightforward.

So now you know the answer to the question ‘what is a featured snippet?’, you can now begin to optimise your content with the featured snippet in mind. But, in all honest, if your page doesn’t already rank on Google’s first page, your chance of getting in a Featured Snippet is practically zero. 99% of all Featured Snippets are from pages that already ranked on page 1.This makes sense if you think about it: the first page is a list of Google’s best, most trusted content about that topic. So they’re not about to pull info from a site that isn’t on the first page already. So besides formatting your content the right way, you’ll need to have a top quality SEO strategy in place if you want to compete at the top

The world of SEO is ever-changing and it is essential to keep up and stay ahead of your competition if you intend to rank on the first page of Google. But, if you’re not quite there yet, attaining a featured snippet gives you another chance to boost your website traffic and your sales. At Chrisp Design, we pride ourselves in rapidly becoming experts in every new technique possible and implementing the best methods to get to number 1, or in this case position 0.