5 Strategies to Optimize your Content for Google’s Featured Snippet

The Internet has transformed into an incredible platform for businesses of all kinds to get their information, goods, and services in front of millions of prospective customers. People use search engines more than any other media to learn more, compare solutions to a problem, investigate possibilities, and stay up with trends.

There is countless potential for companies to produce valuable information that answers consumers’ search queries and inquiries, with an estimated 5.6 billion Google searches every day. While there are several search engines, we will concentrate on Google because it controls over 90% of the global search engine industry. With an MBA in Digital Marketing, you will be able to write content that will help you get your content get included in Google Featured Snippet.

What is the featured snippet?

It is critical to achieving a high ranking on a search engine results page. On the first page of Google, 71.33 percent of queries resulted in an organic click, and 67.6 percent of clicks went to the top five ranking pages. For some search queries, however, a featured snippet will appear above all organically ranked pages in a location known as “position 0.”

The highlighted snippet is a brief summary of a search query that appears at the top of the search results page. Google extracts the featured content from a website and adds the original source’s page title and URL. The featured snippet may also include a picture in some circumstances.

1. Improve blog entries that are already at the top of the search results.

Before you invest time researching and developing fresh material, check to see whether you already have featured snippets or if you’re performing strongly for a term where another site has the featured snippet. You’ll need an SEO or keyword research tool to complete this assessment. SEMrush will be my tool of choice, however, Ahrefs and Serpstat will also suffice.

Check to see if you have any featured snippets already. You may do this by going to the Organic Research Tab on the left menu (1), typing in your site’s domain, scrolling down to the area labeled SERP Features (2), and selecting Featured Snippet (3).

This displays a list of keywords that include your domain in the featured snippet, as well as the connected URL. Click the square icon under the SERP column to reveal the content of the featured snippet (4). You can add these keywords to a separate keyword list in SEMrush if you wish to keep track of them (5).

2. Use highlighted snippets to create fresh material based on relevant keywords.

You may also study new keywords with featured snippets and develop content for them now that you’ve identified if featured snippets exist for the material you currently have. To identify these terms, you’ll need to use a keyword research tool once again.

Navigate to the Keyword Magic Tool Tab on the left-hand menu of SEMrush. Enter any relevant term for which you wish to produce content. Click Advanced Filters, Search Features, and select Highlighted Snippet to locate terms with a featured snippet. To know more about keyword, we recommend you do an online SEO Course.

3. Improve the look and feel of existing material

You can change the format of your high-ranking material in a number of ways to make it more likely to appear in a highlighted snippet:

Add a short summary list with all your subheaders at the top of your post if you’re using bulleted or numbered list snippets. Place a title phrase adjacent to your list to make it easier for Google to construct a title.

Add a small paragraph at the beginning of your article that concisely answers the target query, comparable to a dictionary definition, for paragraph snippets. Include the target term as well in the paragraph.

Most featured snippets, according to SEMrush, are roughly 40-50 words long, so aim to restrict your summary paragraph or list to that length.

4. Make changes to your HTML structure

When it comes to optimizing your material for a featured snippet, the syntax of your HTML code is crucial. Google won’t be able to interpret your material and transform it into a featured snippet if your code is untidy or structured wrong. Here are some guidelines for optimizing your HTML:

• Only one H1 tag should be used, and it should be the post’s primary heading.
• Maintain a consistent structure and hierarchy. Every header behind an H3 subheader, for example, should be H4. Use the Paragraph Styles section of the Format tab to construct this hierarchy in a Google Doc. Many CMS systems also let you choose a heading type for a section of text directly. Another method is to change the heads in the HTML code directly.
• Remove any tags that aren’t necessary from headers.
• Your essay should be written in chronological order. This facilitates Google’s extraction of a list from your content.

5. Include a FAQ section on your website.

On one page, a Q&A section is an excellent method to target numerous related question-based keywords. It’s critical to keep your formatting consistent and correct. Create an H2 tag for each question and include a brief text beneath it that answers the question in roughly 50 words.

Check out the similar keywords Google provides at the bottom of the SERP or the “People also ask” box if you’re not sure what questions to answer. This one page may be optimized for several featured snippet possibilities if done correctly.

Conclusion

It might be exhausting to try to keep up with Google.

Featured snippets, on the other hand, appear to be here to stay. They’re actually on the rise. This means that search inquiries are dominated by pages with featured snippets.

They’re usually the first thing to appear in most SERPs, and they’re more than just links.

When you earn a highlighted snippet, you will rank for position zero, which is the highest-ranking location available without advertising.

Ranking for highlighted snippets is the way to go if you want to increase conversions, bring traffic to your website, and simply surpass your competition.

Author’s Bio

Karan Shah

Founder and CEO at IIDE

Karan Shah is an Edu-preneur, Tedx speaker, Harvard alumnus specializing in eCommerce, and the founder of IIDE – The Digital School.

He is a reputed author on the topics of education, digital marketing, and Ed-techs. Over the years he has penned a plethora of articles in leading news outlets such as Entrepreneur, BusinessWorld, Education Times, and Youth Magazine to name a few.