How to get a Featured Snippet

Introduction to Featured Snippets

The search engine results page has features that enable the results generated to be more conspicuous, particularly the featured snippets, which generally capture the visitors’ attention through highlight essential information. The positioning of the featured snippet largely influences its visibility, hence promoting the content intended to be provided to the user. Furthermore, they help increase visitors’ suspense, driving them to search the comprehensive information from the website initially indexed.

Therefore, featured snippets are amongst the best improvements made by Google on the SERP features. Equally, every website owner should ensure that their websites are compatible with such technological advancements if they wish their pages to rank higher.

What is a Google Featured Snippet? 

Featured snippets occur on the top area of the browser’s search result page. They are meant to provide relevant answers for the proposed query by providing the appropriate content from high-ranking pages. Many website owners disregard featured snippets by assuming that when users get a glimpse of your content on the SERP, they might not click through your website. 

Though that’s not true since featured snippets only notify you of the absolute basics if you have to click through the website to get the comprehensive information you need, on the other hand, they might also increase the users’ anxiety to follow your website.  

How to Get a Featured Snippet

Before getting featured snippets on your website, you should first observe if your site is ranked anywhere within position zero. That can be established by manually auditing the Google Search Console Report or automatically using the SEM Rush tool. 

Google Search Console

Even thoughthis procedure is time-consuming since it is manual, it can adequately assist you in discovering the rankings for featured snippets. Below are the steps you should follow when auditing your site’s position zero through Google Search Console.

• Log on to the Google Search Console, then look for the Search Results Report.
• Ensure to check on ‘CTR,’ ‘Clicks’ together with the ‘Position’ at the top of the menu, then audit the data within the last ninety days.
• Categorise the data based on ‘Position,’ then evaluate the ‘CTR’ and ‘Clicks.’
• You will observe search words associated with featured snippets ranked within Position 1-5 with having a high ‘CTR.’
• Create a new window browser, search for the search terms you previously observed with high CTR, and check for any featured snippets on your web pages.

SEMRush Tool

If you think the above procedure is tasking, you may use the automated one, which involves the SEMrush tool. Google recently incorporated technology with a feature that helps to show website ranking on SERP using the SEMRush featured snippet. Below are the steps to take if you wish to know whether your site has ranked on ‘Position’ zero

• Log on SEMRush and key in your website on the search bar, then click search.
• Apply the Advanced Features to only check for Featured Snippets when the results are generated.

Google Featured Snippets 

Notably, hundreds of thousands if not millions of web pages address similar queries, but how Google selects the appropriate sources of a featured snippet remains a big question to many online users and website owners. Here are tips on following and enabling your web pages to be selected as a viable source of featured snippets.

First, the page must have quality conventional signals. The webpages must, at this point, be ranking higher in the regular search results, have the correct keywords, portray quality content and user experience, and then finally command some authority through backlinks.

Secondly, the content must be formatted in a snippable manner, such that Google can quickly put different sentences together to develop a paragraph, thus making it easier and faster for Google algorithms to establish your site as a good source for deriving featured snippets. 

Thirdly, if your website is already using SEO, your objective would be to ensure that Google quickly snips content from your site.

Here are the different types of featured snippets:

Snippets as paragraphs

They are the most basic formatthat is meant to offer you some hint or brief description of the information embedded in a particular page. It may have illustrations. However, it is dominated by text, with the search terms included in the query prominently highlighted within featured snippets or phrases where it was initially indexed in the website.

Snippets in List Form

Arranginginformation in list formmakes it look simple and more comprehendible. When the user inquires for a set of tips or items, the featured snippet might appear in list form, either bulleted or numbered.

Snippets as Videos 

They provide users withthe best solutions for how to do things; they come in handy where the search needs demonstrations on how to do something, such as cooking lessons, automobile demonstrations, and short seminars.

Snippets in Tabular Form 

Featured snippetsmight also appear in a tabular form representing part of the whole table in the original webpage. Google generates such snippets where search queries involve comparisons or data ranking. 

Double Snippets

Notably, Google sometimes might generate two sources to fully equip the user with the most relevant information they asked for in their query. Commonly, double snippets are involved where emphasises are required based on the search term requested. 

Featured Snippets Updates 

Snippet updates were introduced about a year ago, before pages that popped up in the featured snippet containment area appeared again within the search results on the first page. Therefore, Google incorporated snippet updates to enhance the user experience. They are used to eliminate duplicate listings, thereby assisting visitors to achieve whatever they are searching for more easily. 

Conclusion

In summary, featured snippets can help you improve your rankings in Google without having to update content on your site or use backlinks thoroughly. However, many website owners are opined that snippets could lead users not to click through their website since they get to find the information they require before visiting the websites where the data is indexed. On the contrary, the information generated in the snippet could arouse the visitors’ desire to visit the site from where the content originates. Similarly, snippets also provide users with hints and clues on what they expect from the website. They do not go through the trouble of perusing different web pages to find what they are inquiring.