Attracting the largest number of new potential customers to your website is an arduous task. An excellent web positioning tactic is to optimize your content so that it appears in the so called Featured Snippets.
Having your web content displayed as a prominent fragment on the top of the page gives you great visibility. This technique allows you to stand out from the rest of the results in the search engines. And you can achieve the first position by appearing at the top, just behind the paid search results. Now this is great!
But, maybe you wonder …
What are the prominent Google snippets?
A highlighted fragment or highlighted response is a result that offers a clear and direct answerto a user’s query. In this result Google also provides a link to the page of the content shown as an answer along with its title The purpose of the featured snippets is to improve the search experience.
The image featured in this article is an example of how the results of a highlighted fragment are shown in Google.
The position “0” in the search engines is a relatively new SEO opportunity. To reach it, it is necessary to know how to work with the Google’s featured snippets of, and this if going to be explained here.
Reaching zero position has great benefits for the sites that manage to occupy it. For example, SEMrush and Ghergich & Co.t. analyzed 6.9 million featured snippets and we understood the exact text length(as well as other parameters) that you should use for each type of snippet We also have insights into feature snippet hubs and why Google trusts their content.
In addition to improving the CTR, featured snippets can also improve visibility to increase brand authority, generate more traffic and enhance credibility. There are different types of featured snippets, let’s take a look at them.
So, How many types of featured snippets are there? There are four of them, namely:
Paragraphs
These are the most common featured snippets that exist today, according to data from OptinMonster, they represent 82 percent of all the snippets. These are relatively long texts extracted from the source page, which give a direct answer to a question that is asked in the search engine.
Lists
As the name implies, these are prominent lists that are thrown as a result in the search engine. These can appear in the form of numbers or as bullets and are shown with the content that explains step by step how to do certain things, basically this is , “How To” content., This featured snippet can also show up in case of lists where the order doesn’t really matter, for example if you are looking up the list of social networks.
Boards
These are prominent snippets that are designed to show sets of data on a particular topic. These can be generated automatically by Google if the engine finds the data that can be tabulated, and although it is not necessary to showcase data in tables on your website, it is advisable to facilitate the reading in case the user decides to enter the website.
Videos
These are one of the most recent types of featured snippets or at least not the easiest to come across. Like the listings, these featured snippets usually appear when people search how to perform certain things, that is, “how to” search queries.
Now that we explored the main types of featured snippets, let’s see how you can adjust your content in accordance with each of the existing formats.
How to optimize the content for the featured snippets?
Optimization for paragraphs
For this first type of snippets it is necessary that you consider that they are designed to answer queries of the type “comparison between X vs. Y”, “Who is …”, “What is …”, “Why …” and “How”. To improve the chances of appearing as an answer, it is necessary that the text has a word limit between 40 and 50 and that it has the question as a heading.
Optimization for lists
To optimize content in the format of lists, a process similar to that indicated in the previous point should be followed, place the content in no more than 40 or 50 words and put the question as a heading. Another way to achieve this is by putting the list with the information in a table format, for this you must outline the steps with ordered or unordered list labels and for each action or important point include a header so that Google is responsible for creating the list.
Optimization for tables
To get this type of highlighted fragment there is no clear way but it is recommended in this case to help Google by placing your data in a table so you can find them more easily. On the other hand, it is also recommended to add a header that comes followed by the table and the data.
Optimization for videos
Finally, to optimize the fragment of videos it is only necessary to organize your content in a step-by-step format, upload a script with closed captions of the video and optimize the video including long-form keywords.
Now that you know the types and ways in which you can optimize your content for featured excerpts, would you like to know how to get more of them ?, here are some latest recommendations:
Be concise
If you are concise and specific you are more likely to get results, remember that you should not exceed 40 or 50 words to answer a query, and also remember that, in matters of SEO, Google favors long-form content. In that sense, after answering a question it is ideal that you continue to develop the theme.
Now is your moment!
As a content creator, you have the opportunity to increase your traffic significantly by showing the content of your website exactly to the people who are looking for it. It is a win-win.