You've been hearing a lot about featured snippets from us at Moz lately, including how they power answers on the latest technology wish-list item, Google Home. I hope by now that you understand the value of ranking "#0," but you might be left wondering where to start. How do you find questions, determine if they have featured snippets, and track them over time?
I'm happy to say that, between Keyword Explorer and Moz Pro, we now have all of the tools you need to practically tackle featured snippets in a way that will be familiar for almost any SEO. This post takes you through the full featured snippet discovery and tracking cycle, from start to finish.
Step 1 – Finding questions
Finding question phrases that might trigger featured snippets is, first and foremost, a keyword research problem. So, let's fire up Keyword Explorer and check out some keywords for "seo." Click on "Keyword Suggestions" and you'll see a list like this one...
The third phrase on this list — "how to do seo" – certainly looks promising. Indeed, if I run a Google search for that phrase, I see a featured snippet from Search Engine Land:
This is all well and good, but it's going to take a lot of manual digging through keywords to find questions. Isn't there an easier way? Thankfully, yes. On the pull-down on the upper left, the last option is [are questions]. Give it a try, and you'll get back something like these results...
I've filtered the list to contain only phrases with search volumes of 101+, and now we've got a pretty solid list. These questions are a mix of machine-gathered and machine-generated, so some of them will need a human touch, but it's a great starting point.
Step 1b – More questions
Here's another trick to try out. What if you're interested in a specific type of question, like "Why...?" questions? Try entering a generic question into Keyword Explorer, such as "why seo." You'll get back ideas like these:
Non only do some of these queries show featured snippets, but this kind of research is also great for content brainstorming. These are exactly the kinds of questions people want answered, including prospective customers.
Step 2 – Choosing questions
So, let's put our first list to work. You might want to verify the presence of featured snippets manually, in some cases, but since I've only got 38 questions to deal with, I'm going to go ahead and track all of the ones that seem reasonable. So, I'll select what I want from my list, and then, using the pull-down above the keyword list, I can add those keywords to a list in Keyword Explorer:
In this case, I've selected 20 keyphrases of the 38 I filtered out. Give the list a little time to collect stats, and then you can visit the list page directly. At first glance, we've already got some good news on the list page – 16 of 20 phrases are showing featured snippets:
Scroll down to the full list details, and you can see more stats for the keywords/questions. You can use these stats to filter your options down even more, but since I've only got 20 in this list, I'm going to go ahead and add them all to one of my Moz Pro campaigns. Just select "I want to..." at the top-left and then [Add ... to campaign]:
You'll get a pop-over (which is hopefully self-explanatory) asking you to select a campaign.
Step 3 – Tracking questions
This is where the fun really begins. Once we've collected campaign data on the new keywords, go to your campaign, select the "Rankings" menu, and then go to "SERP Features." I've added the label "questions" to my new keywords, just to make tracking easier. You'll see a graph of all features across the top, and then a search filter and list below. I'm going to filter on my label, and I end up with something like this:
From here, I can easily see which keywords have which features (featured snippets are marked by the scissors icon). For featured snippets, the color codes also show which snippets my campaign is represented in vs. my campaign competitors. For example, the snippet for "how to do SEO" is occupied by a competitor I track. Notice, though, that I also rank #2 for that query, and there's an additional option labeled "Insights" next to the ranking. Click on that, and you'll see a message from our lead SEO, Britney Muller:
Featured snippets are organic results that Google visually enhances and places above organic position 1. For this reason they appear more authoritative to users and experience higher click-thru rates. Since you are in the top 5 organic results, you may have a chance to win this featured snippet and increase your traffic.
We've determined that, if you rank in the top 5 and don't currently occupy the featured snippet, this is a good opportunity to invest in rewriting your content to better target that question and potentially take the "#0" spot. Looking across my entire list, which I pruned down to only 20 questions, I can immediately spot a solid handful of opportunities – specific query/page combos to target for featured snippets.
Step 4 – Getting to work
I've written more in other posts about how to win featured snippets, and Ronell Smith had a good post recently on keeping those hard-won snippets. The next step is doing the work and continuing to track your question keyword list until the scissors finally turn blue:
I'd like to say that featured snippets are something you get to keep forever, but like organic rankings, they're awarded in real-time and are an ongoing battle. Fortunately, with Moz Pro, you can monitor featured snippets just as you would organic rankings.
You can try out some question research in Keyword Explorer for free (even if you're not a Moz Pro customer), so give it a spin and start thinking about how you can provide better answers for search users.
Bonus Tip: The other day, I was doing research about cheesemongers (like any normal day). I was playing with Keyword Explorer and landed on a combo of searching "cheesemonger" with the filter [based on closely related topics]. What I got back was a list of old-timey jobs. Here are a few of my favorites:
What I love about this is that it goes well beyond SEO. Good, in-depth keyword research is useful for anyone who needs to brainstorm, from marketers to writers. Let me know what tricks you discover.
Similarly, I've noticed that if you use the keywords with low volume but high relevancy in your content, you can not only rank higher for that main term, but also (often) rank for the variations themselves. Even with only a few searches/month, they can add up, and often they're high intent traffic, too.
Hi Rand,
I notice exactly the same, last 2-3 months I saw that good content ranking well for a keyword starts ranking for another one (mostly long tail, but not always) and, weeks after, this content rank for hundreds of keywords, it's a little bit crazy...
Hey Rand
i was actually thinking to write about low volume keywords with high user intentions. Currently testing is in process and i am getting very good results in fact. :)
Afraz
Hi Peter,
Great read! I wanted to share the technique that I find useful:
If you rank high (ideally 1-5) for many keywords related to a given topic, Google Search Console will allow you to get extremely useful data. Here are the steps:
1.Try using the "+what" and "+how" filters in your query report.
2.Sort them according to impressions.
3.Generate a csv report
4.Check manually who has secured an answer box for a given query (you or the competitor)
5.If it is the competitor, consider rewriting / adding some content
Great post as always Peter - I've always been quite confused when it comes to rich snippets, this post was very useful. Cheers.
Hi Dr. Meyers,
Thanks a lot for this valuable post. My question is a bit off topic, but still have you seen cases when Google picks up a featured snippet from 6-10 search results, and not from top 5? Or you have to get to those top 5 to have a chance of becoming a featured snippet?
Thanks,
Stacey.
We and others (GetSTAT has some good research) have definitely seen featured snippets drawn from across all of page one, but the likelihood decreases with ranking. We're not sure if this is a factor of higher-ranking sites just being naturally more relevant, or if Google is factoring in authority. The vast majority are coming from the top five, so we decided to focus the "Insights" tab on those and consider them the highest opportunity.
Also, I'd consider that question very much on-topic :)
Will try to get to those top 5 then! Thanks for the answer.
Hey Stacey
I have also observed a few from 6 to 10. It is probably the case when other 9 competitors don't have an answer that can fit to be a featured snippet. While i am experimenting for a few keywords, and hoping for positive results.
Afraz
Hi Dr. Peter,
I own a local business (cleaning service). I was thinking about how getting the featured snippets for related questions such as "how to clean my kitchen" would provide value to my business. I'm certainly a lot of work away from ranking for rich snippets, but once I accomplish this, are there techniques to convert the searcher who clicks through to other areas of the website?
I guess what I'm asking is really: What should you do to turn featured snippets into conversions?
That's a really interesting question that I think extends well beyond Featured Snippets. We face it a lot as a company who pushes the education side of content marketing -- we want to educate prospects and provide good resources, but what if we're getting traffic but it's not converting?
I think you have to strike a balance. Educational content and being a good answer can create useful traffic, help build brand awareness, and be a touch-point that contributes to conversion. You don't want to push the sales angle too hard ("How is Product X better than Product Y?" -- by the maker of Product X), but try to keep the questions you answer relevant.
I do think it's ok to provide a conversion path. If you wrote a great article on cleaning your own kitchen, but at the end had kind of a funny call-to-action, like "Sound like a lot of work? Let us do it for you!" I don't think that would be a turn-off for me if the article provided real value.
We have a problem with a featured snippet.
We have a page that includes short bios of current and past presidents of our organization. Each bio has about a paragraph of text plus and associated image of the individual. For certain search terms Google returns a featured snippet with the "correct" answer plus a photo. But, sometimes the photo is of the wrong person. e.g. one of the past presidents. This even though it is returning the text for the (correct) current president. Also, all the images have correct ALT text (e.g. "Current president Joe Schmo", "Past president Bill Smith") that matches the page text in the bios. So, in theory Google should be smart enough to associate the correct text with the correct image.
I've sent "Feedback" to Google numerous times to correct this, to no avail. Any advice on how to correct? Simply removing the "wrong" image from the page is not really an option politically... Any help appreciated.
Is it pulling the images of past presidents from an outside source or the same page? Unfortunately, Google doesn't have a good mechanism for corrections on information they parse badly. If you want to DM me the page/query in question (sounds like their might be more than one), I can pass it along to the search team. No guarantees, but it'll at least go to a person, and not just the feedback void.
I predict this page will be highly referenced in 2017 :) Thanks Dr Pete for the list. Who came up with the #0 reference? It's brilliant.
Hi Dr. Peter,
Thank you for these great tips. A little sad that "are questions" only return results in english but it's a good starting to have ideas. :)
Sorry - We really hope to improve that with a bigger corpus over time, but yeah, still a weak point at the moment.
Thank you for this useful post, Dr. Meyers. Rich snippets are pretty useful for SEO, if used properly.
I've noticed that sometimes Google shows Featured Snippets for non-question queries (e.g. "coupon codes"). Any thoughts on why these get picked up, and how to discover + optimize against these? (it doesn't seem like it's always because the "answer" is in a table / list form either)
In some cases, these seem to be implied "What is...?" questions. For example, a query like "CRM" could easily be intepreted as "What is CRM?" In other cases, though, especially commercial ones, we have no idea, honestly. Those are still pretty rare, but I'd definitely put "coupon codes" in that group.
For better distribution of content to search users, rich snippets are very handy and Google better understands its context for display in search results. It doesn't work well when you don't implement it properly.
It helped me more to understand more clearly. Thank you!
If google search with more clics, up in ranking and search with snippets win clic, we must work with snippet for best results in google search.
GREAT!
Great post on how to find keywords that have the potential to be featured but can you talk more perhaps in another post about how best to structure the post to increase the odds of being chosen for the Featured Snippet?
Are there known "tricks" or "hacks" being used to optimize the web page to increase the odds of being chosen for the coveted Google Featured Snippet?
What part does having Schema or Microformats play if any? I would love to hear feed back on this.
What I'm mainly interested in is knowing if anyone has identiefed a pattern emerging from studying the content listed in the Featured Snippet.
Thanks,
Mike
There seems to be very little relationship between featured snippets and schema/microformats - Google is using all available text. There are three things that seem to help:
(1) Craft the page more around the question/answer (in an obvious way), and provide a succinct answer near the top. I recommend a "reverse pyramid" style. Start with the a solid, short answer and then expand on it. This is generally good for web visitors, too (who may skim or want to get a quick answer before they dive in).
(2) Match the format Google is using - which, for now, are paragraphs, lists, and tables. If Google seems to want a list-style answer, then do consider using one (with basic HTML <ul> or <ol> mark-up).
Hi Dr. Peter
Thanks for given valuable Information by this post.Very good article.
Thanks,
Dnyaneshwar
So it looks like Google will consider multiple factors before they choose a website for the answer box considering things like word count and SEO optimization. Before a site can even think about ranking for these types of terms you must do some serious keyword research because you wouldn't want to rank for a low volume search term. Thanks for all of this great information in a single post.
Hi Patel, check Rand's comment in this thread, going for the lower volumes can be a good strategy.
Hi Brendon
i think it should be low search volume but:
1. increasing trends
2. good commercial intent
3. close relation with multiple keywords of low search volume
And backed by strong content marketing. That's how i am actually getting three thousand plus views (per month) for a keyword with search volume like 150 per month.
Afraz
I've always been quite confused when it comes to rich snippets, this post was very useful.
Nice post Pete. I am always looking for more content for featured snippets. The getSTAT team has done some nice work in this area too.
For the 16 featured snippets at the top, you show what different categories they are related too. Do you think a brand should try to own one of those categories or is it better to pick a few different categories to own (if traffic data is pretty similar)?
Sorry, I'm not sure which categories you're referring to.
Sorry Pete I wasn't clear. About half way down the article it says "In this case, I've selected 20 keyphrases of the 38 I filtered out. ..." the image just below this has the graph of different featured snippets with a little image above each bar. I was thinking these were based on categories.
Oh, got it... that's actually a graph of which features appeared in the keyword list. It matches the feature graph in SERP feature tracking in Moz PRO.
oh! Thank you for the reply Pete. Good to know. Looks like I should play around with Moz Pro.