14 Jul
Google has always been pretty vague about the details about getting a featured snippet. This was the case when they were First introduced in addition to SEO efforts, making a business considered a cherry is still largely true.
Reveal highlights from Featured snippet research Analyzing over a million SERPs with featured snippets, this post reveals practical suggestions for enhancing your optimization strategy and ultimately winning its Google award.
The key to featured snippet optimization lies in a few specific areas: long-tail- and question-like keyword strategy, date marked content that comes at the right length and format, and a succinct URL structure.
What is a featured snippet?
As featured snippets appear above the organic Google search results, their main aim is to quickly answer a user’s query clearly and concisely with a ‘snippet’ of text from a web page. As Google puts it “When we recognize that a query asks a question, we programmatically detect pages that answer the user’s question, and display a top result as a featured snippet in the search results”. So there you have it, featured snippets are all about providing simple (and quick) answers to common questions.
But how do you get one? Although you do not have to be in the very top organic spot to achieve a featured snippet, they are typically taken from an article on the first page of results (especially the top 3 results), so you need to make sure you are ranking well for a particular query that you want to generate a featured snippet for. After that, there are some ways that you can optimise your web pages to increase the chances of gaining a featured snippet, depending on the type of featured snippet Google wants to show.
The different types of featured snippets
Featured snippets can come in a variety of different styles, depending on the search query, but there are 4 key types of feature snippets that are most commonly seen.
1. Text/Paragraphs
This is the featured snippet you have most probably seen and benefitted from as a user. This is simply a block of text, often around 40-60 words long, giving a brief definition, intro, or overview to the search query. This is the most common form of featured snippet and it typically appears for specific and long-tail search queries. You often see this snippet used for “what”, “who”, “why”, “how-to”, and other question-based queries. Google will choose text from a page that they deem best answers the user’s query to show as a featured snippet.
2. Lists
Another very common featured snippet, most often used for step-by-step guides, these can appear in both numbered and bulleted form. You most often see them for recipes, step-by-step guides, or queries which feature “best”, “top”, “highest” or “biggest”, and other similar search queries.
3. Tables
Another self-explanatory featured snippet format, the table snippet features a table of numerical information. These are served when users ask a question that requires numerical data. In this type of featured snippet, Google uses data from a page and displays it as a table. This is often seen for things like measurements or size charts when more than one variable is needed.
4. YouTube Videos
In terms of featured snippets, this format is fairly new, so it’s not used for a high percentage of search results but we expect this to grow over the next few years. Videos will appear as a featured snippet if the user’s search query requires a more visual answer, or when the user is looking for a guide (like how to make a chocolate cake). Clicking the video will take users straight to YouTube. Another very helpful feature for users, is that with these videos Google will often begin the video right at the point where it answers your query – no need to sit through all the fluff at the beginning of videos.
How to optimize for featured snippet
1. Optimize for long-tail keywords and questions
When it comes to optimization and keywords, employ ‘the more the better’ logic. Our study found that 55.5 percent of featured snippets were triggered by 10-word keywords, while single-word ones only showed up 4.3 percent of the time.
One thing even better than long-tails is questions. In fact, 29 percent of keywords triggering a featured snippet begin with question words – “why” (78 percent), “can” (72 percent), “do” (67 percent), and in the fewest cases, “where” (19 percent).
2. Use the right content length and format
The SERPs we analyzed included four types of featured snippet: paragraphs, lists, tables, and videos:
- 70 percent of the results showed paragraphs, with an average of 42 words and 249 characters
- Lists came in as the second-most-frequent featured snippet (19 percent), with an average of 6 item counts and 44 words
- Tables (6 percent) typically featured five rows and two columns
- Videos, whose average duration stood at 6:39 mins, showed up in only 4.6 percent of all cases.
Of course, don’t blindly follow this data as the golden rule, rather see it as a good starting point for featured-snippet-minded content optimization.
Plus, keep in mind that content quality always prevails over quantity, so if you have a high-performing piece that features a 10-row table, Google will simply cut it down, showing the blue “More rows” link, which can even enhance your CTR.
3. Don’t overcomplicate your URL structure
As it turns out, URL length matters in Google’s choice of a site that deserves a featured snippet. Try to stick to neat site architecture, with 1-3 subfolders per URL, and you’ll be more likely to win. Just for reference, here is an example of a URL with three subfolders:
xyz.com/subfolder1/subfolder2/subfolder3
4. Make frequent content updates
In the “to add or not to add a post date” dilemma, based on our featured snippet analysis, we’d suggest that you publish date-marked content.
The majority of Google’s featured snippets include an article date, with the following breakdown: 47 percent of list-type featured snippets come from date-marked content, paragraphs – 44 percent, videos – 20 percent, and tables – 19 percent of the time.
While fresh-out-of-the-oven content can be favored by Google, 70 percent of all content making it into the featured snippet was anywhere from two to three years old (2018, 2019, 2020), meaning once again that content quality matters more than recency, so you shouldn’t worry that putting a date on it will work against you.
5. Look at your competitors
Is there a particular featured snippet that would like to show for? You need to work out exactly what that website is doing to achieve this and what they might be missing out on. Look at current featured snippets and decide what makes them successful. Try to find a way to provide a more useful and relevant answer than your competitors are currently offering. SEMrush is a great tool for monitoring the performance of your competitors and they can even tell you which search queries your competitors are getting featured snippets for.
Conclusion
Before your site can capture Google featured snippets, it needs to rank well for your target keyword and phrases: Pages that rank lower than 15th in the SERPs have almost zero chance of gaining a featured snippet for that phrase. If you need to boost your rankings for high-value keyword phrases we can help. Once you rank for more keywords, you’ll be able to target those snippets more effectively.