Benefits of Featured Snippets for Your Online Business

Featured snippets can significantly boost your online business by increasing visibility and driving more traffic to your website. With up to 30% of search results clicking on the featured snippet, it's a game-changer for businesses looking to get noticed.

According to studies, 72% of users click on the first result, and 28% click on the second result, making the featured snippet a crucial spot to be in. This is especially true for businesses with limited resources, as it can be a cost-effective way to increase visibility.

By optimizing your content for featured snippets, you can improve your website's credibility and establish your brand as an authority in your industry. This can lead to increased trust and loyalty from your target audience.

Featured snippets are a type of Google search result that provides a short answer to the user's search query, in addition to the link to that answer's source.

They're sometimes called "answer boxes", and they can greatly increase the chance that a user will click on a search result. A featured snippet example is the brief definition that appears at the very top of the SERP when you Google "featured snippet."

Google bolds the most important part of the definition and highlights it in blue, making it stand out. The URL and linked title tag are listed below the snippet.

Featured snippets can boost click-through rate (CTR) by a whopping 859%, from 2.7% to 25.9%, according to a study from the digital agency Tallwave.

Featured snippets are a game-changer for businesses and individuals looking to boost their online presence. They increase credibility, as people are more likely to trust a brand that appears as a featured snippet.

Getting a featured snippet can significantly improve your click-through rate (CTR), especially since users are often looking for quick answers to their queries. This means you'll get more traffic to your website.

Featured snippets also capitalize on voice technology, with devices like Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google Assistant often pulling information from them. This can be a major advantage for businesses looking to reach a wider audience.

In fact, featured snippets can have a broader impact on your marketing channels and KPIs, such as increasing direct traffic to your website. This is because people become more familiar with your brand when they see it at the top of search results.

The most obvious benefit of featured snippets is their enhanced visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). They instantly grab users' attention, especially on mobile devices, where they take up a significant amount of space. This can boost your traffic and position your brand as a leader in your industry.

You can use Ahrefs to find keywords with prominent snippets and spy on your competitors' rankings.

To find featured snippets on your website, start by entering a domain name in the search bar, then go to the Organic keywords report and click on the SERP features filter. Select Featured snippet from the drop-down menu and hit Apply.

Add a Position filter from 1-1 and hit Apply to get a list of keywords that trigger a Featured snippet result for the top spot of the website you entered.

It's a good idea to copy the URLs of important featured snippet opportunities into a list, as you'll use them later to track progress in Portfolios.

You can also find featured snippets from competitors by updating the Position filter to 2-5 and adding a Keyword difficulty (KD) filter from 1-10. This will highlight keywords that you could possibly win from competitors.

To see what part of the content Google is scraping, go to the page and inspect the code.

To get featured snippets, you need to create high-quality content that answers a user's question directly and concisely. This means your content should be to the point and easy to understand.

You should aim for a question-answering format, as seen in the example of "What is the capital of France?" where the answer is provided directly in the search result. This format is favored by Google's algorithm.

Your content should be optimized with relevant keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing. The example of "What are the benefits of meditation?" shows how incorporating relevant keywords can improve your content's visibility.

Make sure your content is up-to-date and accurate, as outdated information can harm your credibility. The example of "What are the symptoms of COVID-19?" highlights the importance of keeping your content current.

You can also use tools like Answer the Public to find questions related to your content and create content that answers those questions. This can help you create content that is more likely to be featured as a snippet.

To get featured snippets, you need to make it easy for Google to find your content. This can be done by including direct questions in your content.

You can also help Google find your snippet with subheadings. GoCardless, for example, included a subheading in their featured snippet text for the search term "accounts payable vs. receivable."

The key is to make your content concise and perfect for the search query. Google can then easily recognize it as a good featured snippet.

The Jeopardy Principle is a game-changer for getting featured snippets. It involves putting your keywords in the form of a question.

This technique works because people often type questions into the search bar on Google. For example, if you're offering training courses in Adobe software, you might ask "What is a keyframe?" instead of just "keyframe."

You can use tools like Answer the Public to find related questions and prepositions to use as inspiration for your content. Plugging in the word "keyframe" yielded 86 questions, 72 prepositions, and 54 comparisons.

Google loves to include lists in snippets, so it's a good idea to answer questions with bulleted lists. This makes it easier for people to quickly grasp the information they need.

You can use the H2 tag for the question itself, as it's one level below the title. For instance, if your title is in the H1 tag, your question would be in the H2 tag.

About 11 percent of search engine results pages (SERPs) have featured snippets, offering a great opportunity to win some snippets. To get them, you need a strong featured snippet strategy.

Here are some strategies to help you succeed:

To implement a featured snippet strategy, focus on proper keyword research and SEO best practices. You can win with a strong featured snippet strategy, which can be valuable for brand awareness, share of voice, and authority.

To help Google find your snippet, use headings and questions in your content. For example, you can include subheadings and direct questions to make it easy for Google to recognize that your copy would make a good featured snippet.

Here are some tips to help you structure your content for featured snippets opportunities:

There are four types of featured snippets that appear in Google's search results. These include paragraph snippets, list snippets, table snippets, and video snippets.

Paragraph snippets are the most common type, making up about 70% of search snippets.

List snippets come in two forms: numbered and bulleted lists.

Table snippets are less common, but can be a great way to present complex information in a concise format.

Video snippets are the rarest type of featured snippet, but can be an effective way to communicate information through visual content.

To find your competitors, take a look at your competitors. You can use SEMRush to spy on them by plugging their URLs into the search bar, one at a time.

Make a note of their stats and quietly say to yourself: "Challenge accepted." This is a good starting point to identify areas where you can improve.

Pay attention to where the competitors' snippets are coming from, as this can be a key factor in understanding their tactics. Ask yourself if their snippets are coming from content on the blog, the homepage, or category pages.

You can use the following questions to guide your research:

This will help you identify potential areas for improvement and give you a better understanding of what's working for your competitors.

About 11 percent of SERPs have featured snippets, which means there's a great deal of opportunity to win some snippets! To get them, you need a strong featured snippet strategy.

You can win with a strong featured snippet strategy, which can be valuable for brand awareness, share of voice, and authority. It can also offer a quick win when things are slow or on hold.

Focus on page one keywords, as you're already doing well with keywords that appear on page one. Build on that momentum by focusing your featured snippet strategy here, which is the best way to earn those quick wins.

To implement a strong featured snippet strategy, consider the following steps:

Your ultimate goal is to be the best at answering the searcher's question, so your answer should always contain well-researched and factual information.

By following these steps and tips, you can create a strong featured snippet strategy that will help you win more snippets and improve your online presence.

Tracking your featured snippets is crucial to understanding their impact on your website's traffic. You can use tools like Ahrefs to keep track of them.

There are two ways to track featured snippets in Ahrefs: Portfolios and Rank Tracker. Portfolios are best for tracking a few key snippets when starting out, while Rank Tracker is best for tracking snippets across every page of your website.

To create a Portfolio, head to Portfolios in the dashboard, click + Create, and add the URLs you want to track. This will enable you to track 100-1000 URLs from 10 different domains in a group, depending on your plan.

If you want to track your complete website, you'll need Rank Tracker. You can add keywords directly from Keywords Explorer by selecting the keywords you want to add, clicking + Add to, and selecting Rank Tracker on the dropdown menu.

Once you've added all the keywords, head over to Rank Tracker to get a summary of SERP features you've won. You can also filter for specific URLs in Google Analytics or Google Search Console to track your efforts.

It's essential to track specific URLs, as featured snippet URLs get parameters added to them that you can filter for. Approximately 70 percent of featured snippets were published no more than two to three years ago, so keep your content current to maintain your hold on your featured snippets.

To increase your chances of winning featured snippets, it's essential to follow SEO best practices. This will give you a better chance at winning the featured snippets you're going after.

Optimizing your website's foundation is key to success. Set the right foundation in place by following SEO best practices.

A well-structured website is crucial for search engines to understand your content. This will help you appear in the search results and potentially win featured snippets.

Featured snippets can be a double-edged sword, offering benefits but also presenting challenges.

The biggest challenge is that only a select few websites can earn a featured snippet, with only 0.12% of Google search results displaying a featured snippet. This can be discouraging for smaller websites that struggle to compete with larger ones.

However, for those who do manage to earn a featured snippet, the benefits are well worth the effort. According to Google, featured snippets result in a 67% increase in click-through rates, making them a valuable tool for driving traffic to your website.

Using SEMRush to find keyword opportunities can be a game-changer. SEMRush has already done a lot of the heavy lifting for you on its Featured Snippets Report.

Click the "Opportunities" button at the top of the table to see highlighted keyword opportunities. You can then export these keywords to a spreadsheet for further analysis.

You might notice some crossover between the two spreadsheets, but that's okay - it's better to have keywords listed twice than not at all.

Google started highlighting the direct response to a query in blue.

This change is part of a larger trend where snippets are growing in popularity and importance, making them worth going after.

Google expanded the number of pixels a featured snippet takes up on a SERP, increasing its real estate.

As a result, snippets are becoming more prominent on search engine results pages, which means you need to optimize your content to stand out.