It is the challenge of every SEO marketer to reach position 1 in the search results. But did you also know that you can reach a ‘position 0’? And maybe even easier. We are talking about ‘featured snippets’ here. These are the search results at the top of the page and immediately answer the ‘How’ and ‘What’ questions.
This article explains what you need to do to be found with featured snippets.
What are featured snippets?
Featured snippets are short replies shown directly below the search query in Google. So it is the first search result. However, these results are not always shown. A featured snippet is only shown in 10% of the cases. That is why it is also called ‘position 0’.
Google determines this with a program that a page is likely to have the best answer to a question and show that answer from this site as a featured snippet. By showing featured snippets, Google wants to offer an even better and faster user experience.
How do you get to the top of Google with featured Snippets?
Even though Google does not provide further insight into the conditions for achieving a ‘position 0’, several experiments and studies have shown that there are indeed variables to take into account.
This article tells you in 3 steps what you can do to get your web pages at the top of the search results list.
Step 1: Assess the odds of your website
Before you get started with optimizing a page for the ‘number 0’ rating, it is, of course, useful to know whether your website has a chance at all of these types of search results. After all, certain branches and disciplines do not or hardly qualify. These include webshops, locally-oriented websites, and photo/video websites. If you belong to one of these categories, it is smarter to spend your time on the Google local pack.
Do you have a website that is aimed at a niche? Are you a specialist in a particular field? Or do you offer educational content? Then there is a good chance that the website is eligible. Branches such as ‘food and drink’ and ‘health’ have proved particularly suitable for featured snippets. If you want to know exactly which industries are or are not suitable, download the results of the ‘Featured snippets’ survey on the Stat website.
Step 2: Find the right keywords
Now that you know whether your website might qualify, the next step is to choose the keywords that correspond to the questions you will answer. When finding the keywords, keep the following points in mind:
- Keywords that are frequently searched for are more likely to be selected for featured snippets.
- Featured Snippets’ purpose is to answer questions—interrogative keyword combinations with words like how, what, where, why, etc. are important.
- Also, think implicit keyword combinations. When someone writes ‘search engine marketing’, they probably mean: What is search engine marketing? Or, How does search engine marketing work?
Tip: Answerthepublic.com
Use Answerthepublic.com to find complete keyword-based questions. Enter a keyword relevant to your website, and you will receive questions that you can use for the featured snippets.
Step 3: Optimize web pages for featured snippets
Now that you know which keywords and questions you want to be found on, it is time to optimize the page(s). In these steps, we explain what you need to consider to have a chance to be shown as a featured snippet.
When writing the page content, keep the following points in mind:
- The page must answer the question as concretely as possible. Record the H1 or H2 and answer the question in about 40 – 55 words that you process in one paragraph (answer).
- Place the paragraph with the answer directly below the H1 / H2 containing the question.
- Put the most important (the core) at the top of the page and then complete the page with broad, detailed content. This gives you a direct answer to the question, but the page still gets enough ‘body’.
- Of course, make sure that the page consists of a clean code that Google can easily read.
- Pay attention to user signals (e.g., low bounce rate). Web pages that show positive user signals are more likely to be featured as a featured snippet.
- If you want to be found with an answer that consists of several steps (‘for example: how do you replace a car radio?), It is advisable to use a numbered list.
With the tips in this article, you have all the information to be found with featured snippets!
