Winning a featured snippet can mean better search visibility for your business, increased and better-qualified website traffic, proven website authority, and, ultimately, more customer conversions. But what exactly are featured snippets and how can they impact your SEO?
What are featured snippets?
Featured snippets are highlighted excerpts of text that appear at the top of a Google search results page. They are known as ‘Position 0’ as they come before a link to a page, not after. Snippets provide users with a quick answer to their search query and you might also find them within the “People also ask” section or along with Knowledge Graph information.
Google usually displays featured snippets when their systems conclude that this format will help people more easily discover what they’re looking for. Clicking a featured snippet will take the user directly to the section of the page that appeared in the featured snippet.
How featured snippets are chosen
Featured snippets come from web search listings. Google’s automated systems determine whether a page’s content would make a good featured snippet to highlight for a particular search request.
The featured snippet appears to work on a simpler algorithm than Google’s primary one. It’s much more influenced by on-page adjustments that clearly define the topic to users.
Types of featured snippets
There are four main types of featured snippets that appear most frequently in Google’s search results.
1. The Definition Box
This is a short bit of text that gives the searcher a direct and concise definition or description. For instance, when you search “what is a featured snippet”, you get the below Definition Box at the top of the results. This type of snippet is mostly used when beginning your search with “what is.”
2. Table
A Table snippet is where Google pulls data from a page and displays it as a table. This is the least common type of featured snippet.
3. The Ordered List
This is a list of items in a specific order. Google tends to use Ordered Lists to present a set of steps or for lists that rank things in a specific order.
4. The Unordered List
This is Google’s way of presenting items that don’t need to be in any particular order.
How to get a featured snippet
Unfortunately, you can’t simply mark your page as a featured snippet. That’s up to Google to decide. But there are ways to increase your chances of your content becoming a featured snippet.
Search Engine Land recommends these tips to optimise for featured snippets:
- Add a “What is” heading in your content.
- Use an “is” sentence structure as this allows Google to easily find relevant text for the featured snippet.
- Match the featured snippet format (paragraphs – most common, bulleted or numbered lists, tables – least common)
- Don’t use your brand name
- Don’t write in first-person
- Scale featured snippets
- Prioritise when you rank in the top five
- Iterate optimisations
Featured snippets and SEO
Featured snippets impact SEO in two main ways. First, they are an opportunity to get more clicks from organic search results, without being the top spot on the results page (another reason why featured snippets are referred to as ‘Position 0’)
Second, featured snippets increase the number of ‘zero click searches.’ This refers to searches not clicking on any of the search results because the snippet gives them the answer they’re looking for. So before you decide on a keyword, it’s important to check whether or not the search results have a featured snippet as this could impact the amount of clicks you get.
That’s not to say you should completely avoid keywords with a featured snippet. Competition, monthly search volume and featured snippets will all factor into the process for SEO experts to choose keywords. And in fact, a featured snippet about a complex topic could actually entice the searcher to click the result and read more.
Cutting-edge SEO to get ahead of the competition
Our content and SEO teams are well-equipped to create and optimise content that can increase your chances of ranking higher on Google and even landing a featured snippet! Get in touch to find out more and ask us about our free SEO website audit.
