Have you noticed it's getting harder and harder to build referral traffic from Google?
And it's not just that the competition has got tougher (which it certainly has!).
It's also that Google has moved past its ten blue links and its organic search results are no longer generating as much traffic they used to.
How do you adapt? This article teaches you to optimize your content to one of Google's more recent changes: featured snippets.
What are featured snippets?
Featured snippets are selected search results that are featured on top of Google's organic results below the ads in a box.
Featured snippets aim at answering the user's question right away (hence their other well-known name, "answer boxes"). Being featured means getting additional brand exposure in search results.
Here are two studies confirming the claim:
- Ben Goodsell reports that the click-through rate (CTR) on a featured page increased from two percent to eight percent once it's placed in an answer box, with revenue from organic traffic increasing by 677%.
- Eric Enge highlights a 20–30% increase in traffic for ConfluentForms.com while they held the featured snippet for the query.
Types of featured snippets
There are three major types of featured snippets:
- Paragraph (an answer is given in text). It can be a box with text inside or a box with both text and an image inside.
- List (an answer is given in a form of a list)
- Table (an answer is given in a table)
Here’s an example of paragraph snippet with an image:
According to Getstat, the most popular featured snippet is "paragraph" type:
Featured snippets or answer boxes?
Since we're dealing with a pretty new phenomenon, the terminology is pretty loose. Many people (including myself) are inclined to refer to featured snippets as "answer boxes," obviously because there's an answer presented in a box.
While there's nothing wrong with this terminology, it creates a certain confusion because Google often gives a "quick answer" (a definition, an estimate, etc.) on top without linking to the source:
To avoid confusion, let's stick to the "featured snippet" term whenever there's a URL featured in the box, because these present an extra exposure to the linked site (hence they're important for content publishers):
Do I have a chance to get featured?
According to research by Ahrefs, 99.58% of featured pages already rank in top 10 of Google. So if you are already ranking high for related search queries, you have very good chances to get featured.
On the other hand, Getstat claims that 70% of snippets came from sites outside of the first organic position. So it's required that the page is ranked in top 10, but it's not required to be #1 to be featured.
Unsurprisingly, the most featured site is Wikipedia.org. If there's Wikipedia featured for your search query, it may be extremely hard to beat that — but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
Finally, according to the analysis performed in a study, the following types of search queries get featured results most often:
- DIY processes
- Health
- Financial
- Mathematical
- Requirements
- Status
- Transitional
Ahrefs' study expands the list of popular topics with their most frequently words that appear in featured snippets:
The following types of search queries usually don't have answer boxes:
- Images and videos
- Local
- Shopping
To sum up the above studies:
- You have chances to get featured for the terms your pages are already ranking in top 10. Thus, a big part of being featured is to improve your overall rankings (especially for long-tail informational queries, which are your lower-hanging fruit)
- If your niche is DIY, health or finance, you have the highest probability of getting featured
Identify all kinds of opportunities to be featured
Start with good old keyword research
Multiple studies confirm that the majority of featured snippets are triggered by long-tail keywords. In fact, the more words that are typed into a search box, the higher the probability there will be a featured snippet.
It's always a good idea to start with researching your keywords. This case study gives a good step by step keyword research strategy for a blogger, and this one lists major keyword research tools as suggested by experts.
When performing keyword research with featured snippets in mind, note that:
- Start with question-type search queries (those containing question words, like “what,” “why,” “how,” etc.) because these are the easiest to identify, but don’t stop there...
- Target informational intent, not just questions. While featured snippets aim at answering the user’s question immediately, question-type queries are not the only types that trigger those featured results. According to the aforementioned Ahrefs study, the vast majority of keywords that trigger featured snippets were long-tail queries with no question words in them.
It helps if you use a keyword research tool that shows immediately whether a query triggers featured results. I use Serpstat for my keyword research because it combines keyword research with featured snippet research and lets me see which of my keywords trigger answer boxes:
You can run your competitor in Serpstat and then filter their best-performing queries by the presence of answer boxes:
This is a great overview of your future competition, enabling you to see your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.
Browse Google for more questions
To further explore the topic, be sure to browse Google's own "People also ask" sections whenever you see one in the search results. It provides a huge insight into which questions Google deems related to each topic.
Once you start expanding the questions to see the answers, more and more questions will be added to the bottom of the box:
Identify search queries where you already rank high
Your lowest-hanging fruit is to identify which phrases you already rank highly for. These will be the easiest to get featured for after you optimize for answer boxes (more on this below).
Google Search Console shows which search queries send you clicks. To find that report, click "Search Traffic" and then "Search Analytics."
Check the box to show the position your pages hold for each one and you'll have the ability to see which queries are your top-performing ones:
You can then use the filters to find some question-type queries among those:
Go beyond traditional keyword research tools: Ask people
All the above methods (albeit great) tackle already discovered opportunities: those for which you or your competitors are already ranking high. But how about venturing beyond that? Ask your readers, customers, and followers how they search and which questions they ask.
MyBlogU: Ask people outside your immediate reach
Move away from your target audience and ask random people what questions they have on a specific topic and what would be their concerns. Looking out of the box can always give a fresh perspective.
MyBlogU (disclaimer: I am the founder) is a great way to do that. Just post a new project in the "Brainstorm" section and ask members to contribute their thoughts.
Seed Keywords: Ask your friends and followers
Seed Keywords is a simple tool that allows you to discover related keywords with help from your friends and followers. Simply create a search scenario, share it on social media, and ask your followers to type in the keywords they would use to solve it.
Try not to be too leading with your search scenario. Avoid guiding people to the search phrase you think they should be using.
Here's an example of a scenario:
And here are the suggestions from real people:
Obviously, you can create similar surveys with SurveyMonkey or Google Forms, too.
Monitor questions people ask on Twitter
Another way to discover untapped opportunities is to monitor questions on Twitter. Its search supports the ? search operator that will filter results to those containing a question. Just make sure to put a space between your search term and ?.
I use Cyfe to monitor and archive Twitter results because it provides a minimal dashboard which I can use to monitor an unlimited number of Twitter searches.
Once you lack article ideas, simply log in to Cyfe to view the archive and then proceed to the above keyword research tools to expand on any idea.
I use spreadsheets to organize questions and keyword phrases I discover (see more on this below). Some of these questions may become a whole piece of content, while others will be subsections of broader articles:
- I don’t try to analyze search volume to decide whether any of those questions deserve to be covered in a separate article or a subsection. (Based on the Ahrefs research and my own observations, there is no direct correlation between the popularity of the term and whether it will trigger a featured snippet).
- Instead, I use my best judgement (based on my niche knowledge and research) as to how much I will be able to tell to answer each particular question. If it’s a lot, I’ll probably turn into a separate article and use keyword research to identify subsections of the future piece.
Optimizing for featured snippets
Start with on-page SEO
There is no magic button or special markup which will make sure your site gets featured. Of course, it's a good idea to start with non-specific SEO best practices, simply because being featured is only possible when you rank high for the query.
Randy Milanovic did a good overview of tactics of making your content findable. Eric Brantner over at Coschedule has put together a very useful SEO checklist, and of course never forget to go through Moz’s SEO guide.
How about structured markup?
Many people would suggest using Schema.org (simply because it's been a "thing" to recommend adding schema for anything and everything) but the aforementioned Ahrefs study shows that there's no correlation between featured results and structured markup.
That being said, the best way to get featured is to provide a better answer. Here are a few actionable tips:
1. Aim at answering each question concisely
My own observation of answer boxes has led me to think that Google prefers to feature an answer which was given within one paragraph.
The study by AJ Ghergich cites that the average length of a paragraph snippet is 45 words (the maximum is 97 words), so let it be your guideline as to how long each answer should be in order to get featured:
This doesn't mean your articles need to be one paragraph long. On the contrary, these days Google seems to give preference to long-form content (also known as "cornerstone content," which is obviously a better way to describe it because it's not just about length) that's broken into logical subsections and features attention-grabbing images. Even if you don’t believe that cornerstone content receives any special treatment in SERPs, focusing on long articles will help you to cover more related questions within one piece (more on that below).
All you need to do is to adjust your blogging style just a bit:
- Ask the question in your article (that may be a subheading)
- Immediately follow the question with a one-paragraph answer
- Elaborate further in the article
This tactic may also result in higher user retention because it makes any article better structured and thus a much easier read. To quote AJ Ghergich,
When you use data to fuel topic ideation, content creation becomes more about resources and less about brainstorming.
2. Be factual and organize well
Google loves numbers, steps and lists. We've seen this again and again: More often than not, answer boxes will list the actual ingredients, number of steps, time to cook, year and city of birth, etc.
In your paragraph introducing the answer to the question, make sure to list useful numbers and names. Get very factual.
In fact, the aforementioned study by AJ Ghergich concluded that comparison charts and lists are an easier way to get featured because Google loves structured content. In fact, even for branded queries (where a user is obviously researching a particular brand), Google would pick up a table from another site (not the answer from the brand itself) if that other site has a table:
This only shows how much Google loves well-structured, factual, and number-driven content.
There's no specific markup to structure your content. Google seems to pick up <table>, <ol>, and <ul> well and doesn't need any other pointers.
3. Make sure one article answers many similar questions
In their research of featured snippets, Ahrefs found that once a page gets featured, it's likely to get featured in lots of similar queries. This means it should be structured and worded the way it addresses a lot of related questions.
Google is very good at determining synonymic and closely related questions, so should be you. There's no point in creating a separate page answering each specific question.
Creating one solid article addressing many related questions is a much smarter strategy if you aim at getting featured in answer boxes. This leads us to the next tactic:
4. Organize your questions properly
To combine many closely related questions in one article, you need to organize your queries properly. This will also help you structure your content well.
I have a multi-level keyword organization strategy that can be applied here as well:
- A generic keyword makes a section or a category of the blog
- A more specific search query becomes the title of the article
- Even more specific queries determine the subheadings of the article and thus define its structure
- There will be multiple queries that are so closely related that they will all go under a single subheading
For example:
Serpstat helps me a lot when it comes to both discovering an article idea and then breaking it into subtopics. Check out its "Questions" section. It will provide hundreds of questions containing your core term and then generate a tag cloud of other popular terms that come up in those questions:
Clicking any word in the tag cloud will filter results down to those questions that only have that word in them. These are subsections for your article:
Here's a good example of how related questions can help you structure the article:
5. Make sure to use eye-grabbing images
Paragraph featured snippets with images are ridiculously eye-catching, even more so than regular featured featured snippets. Honestly, I wasn't able to identify how to add an image so that it's featured. I tried naming it differently and I tried marking it as "featured" in the Wordpress editor. Google seems to pick up a random image from the page without me being able to point it to a better version.
That being said, the only way to influence that is to make sure ALL your in-article images are eye-catching, branded, and annotated well, so that no matter which one Google ends up featuring, it will look nice. Here’s a great selection of Wordpress plugins that will allow you to easily visualize your content (put together graphs, tables, charts, etc.) while working on a piece.
You can use Bannersnack to create eye-catching branded images; I love their image editing functionality. You can quickly create graphics there, then resize them to reuse as banners and social media images and organize all your creatives in folders:
6. Update and re-upload the images (Wordpress)
Wordpress adds dates to image URLs, so even if you update an article with newer information the images can be considered kind of old. I managed to snatch a couple of paragraph featured snippets with images once I started updating my images, too:
7. Monitor how you are doing
Ahrefs lets you monitor which queries your domain is featured for, so keep an eye on these as they grow and new ones appear:
Conclusion
It takes a lot of research and planning and you cannot be sure when you'll see the results (especially if you don't have too many top 10 rankings just yet) but think about this way: Being featured in Google search results is your incentive to work harder on your content. You'll achieve other important goals on your way there:
- You'll discover hundreds of new content ideas (and thus will rank for a wider variety of various long-tail keywords)
- You'll learn to research each topic more thoroughly (and thus will build more incoming links because people tend to link to indepth articles)
- You'll learn to structure your articles better (and thus achieve a lower bounce rate because it will be easier to read your articles)
Have you been featured in Google search results yet? Please share your tips and tricks in the comments below!
I am speaking on featured snippets at Pubcon this year, so your comments would help A LOT! Please share:
Thanks so much for reading the article!
Well informative post, Ann!
Thanks
I definitely think that snippets improved the user experience. They give strait answers, it has many advantages but some disadvantages as well, it doesn't help blogger since many users don't need to go to a blog and it's like one article takes a first and secund position.
Hi Ann,
It always very beneficial for me to read Moz blogs because it does not only give me great information about SEO but also it provides many useful links through which my work become more easier. Just like in this post I was reading featured snippets but with all that I knew about Serpstat, SurveyMonkey, and cyfe. I was totally unaware with these websites and it's benefits too. Now it all going to help me a lot. Thanks for this awesome post.
This is hands-down the best post/guide about featured snippets out there. Invaluable insights and actionable tips, amazing work!
There seems to be an ongoing debate whether structured data affect the chances of capturing the 'zero position' but as we can see all evidence advocates that there's no correlation. That said, it's always advisable to add Schema markup if your piece of content allows it. Featured snippet or not, it can help in other ways.
I've also found out that one factor that comes into play is the way the content is laid out (maybe much more than others). When writing and adding headings, subheadings, bolding phrases, try to visualize a featured snippet frame and if what you're writing can comfortably be showcased in there. Some featured snippets are somewhat all over the place trying to merge sentences from different sections of the page in the efforts of providing a simple and concise answer (although Google seems to be finding better entries everyday and replacing them, but you must have stumbled upon nonsensical featured snippets). Help Google achieve that by structuring your content accordingly.
As an 'unofficial' test you can always type in Google the phrase/query you're after, and then the name of your brand. For example, let's say that you're after the query "how can i make scrambled eggs" - Just go ahead and type "how can I make scrambled eggs xxx brand name" and Google will return with an 'unofficial' featured snippet of your post so you can get an idea of what it looks in that format and make any necessary amendments to make it even more visually appealing.
As shown in the graphic, one of the most shown snippets are related with ‘best’ searches. I am raked in the first, second and third position for the search “best + my business +my city” … then another local business and 5th position a great international company. But the riched snippet doesn’t show.
Is there any study or information about the ctr of these kind of featured snippets, as the shown above about the nurse midwife or the metric unit of mass? The first positions were getting all the traffic a few years ago, but nowadays there are many options above the top webs: ads, google shopping, maps, snippets…
Let’s work. Thank you very much for this post Ann.
I did this, made everything step by step answering the question and it works. mine was to do with painting blinds and we have done many articles since and it is still working!
Hi Cory, did it make any difference in terms of quantity and quality of traffic?
Yes it did, it brought in a little more traffic, i think you need to keep doing for a mass scale so in the end to have a total of around 100 posts then you will see a massive change.
Thanks for the insight Cory, I've had a project that I have been meaning to test this out with, but keep finding something else to work on. You're feedback will help me get focused on it again. Cheers
Thank you Brendon! Glad to help
Ann,
This discussion was very valuable and I appreciate the thorough coverage. You provided actionable suggestions that can be put in place right away.. Hats off to you!!!
Best breakdown on Featured Snippets and how to optimize for them that I've read! Awesome post Ann and it's very interesting to me that a snippet is not usually the 1st Google result, but does usually come from a result that is on the 1st page. Thanks for sharing your insight and stats on this!
Good for you
I have been struggling for months in the process to understand how to implement rich snippets on my blogs, there is so many information available on the web, but is very hard to found a really good sources, even worst is much harder to find some useful guide.
And this post is one those useful resource
This is a good overview Ann.
However, I'd suggest being more forceful in saying that schema/structured data has NOTHING to do with Featured Snippets.
This is a settled point:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en
"How can I mark my page as a featured snippet?
You can't. Google programmatically determines that a page contains a likely answer to the user's question, and displays the result as a featured snippet."
And both Gary Illyes and John Mueller have tweets on this from the last couple of years. Let me know if you need the citations. I believe I shared the tweet from John on Facebook with you already.
Thank you for pointing those quotes out to me! I obviously missed those!
Hi Ann,
Nice article!
I wrote a guide earlier this year on how to find easy featured snippet opportunities - https://seorave.com/find-featured-snippet-opportunities/ - I think you might find it interesting and it might be something that you could add to your process :)
I've been doing a lot of featured snippet optimization over the last 18 months and have seen good increases in organic traffic as featured snippets increased. I haven't seen the decreased traffic that some people complain about when they're page gets the snippet.
I think featured snippets are here to stay and I'am a little obsessed with trying to get them!
Cheers,
David
Awesome guide, thanks!
Was surprised to find out there's no correlation between markup and featured results. Gotta go look at that research.
Kinda feel bad about not having a project where I could try this immediately. Extra thumbs up for Serpstat. :)
How long take time to give site search bar in search engine through schema.org code ?
Because, I already tried to many time but i am not able to get it till yet.
Google has both "general page quality guidelines" and specific "sitelinks quality guidelines" that sites looking to generate a Google Searchbox must meet. It's not a sure thing by any extent of the imagination.
I'd advise you to review the guidelines one more time to make sure you have crossed all the "t's" and dotted all your "i's".
Good luck!
Thank you very much for the article, there are several points have been clarified. There were tools that I did not know, which are a great help today!
Hi Ann,
Thanks for sharing your deep hard work, before reading this blog, I did not aware of anything about featured snippets. I have seen featured snippets in google search result page many times, but I did not know the exact name for this result. At that time I thought maybe this result is for a specific website or they are using some things which I don't know. Now I have enough information on featured snippets I will try to implement this for my project.
Once again thanks a lot for sharing article !!
Content is King! But doesnt this only apply to the major, gargantuan websites like wikipedia and zillow? i would be shocked if a small, local company was indexed in an answer box.
Quite the contrary. Every site, regardless of size, can generate a featured snippet. Featured Snippets and Answer Boxes have absolutely nothing to do with domain authority, site size, link equity or structured data. This is entirely generated by on-site content. This is Google deciding in their finite wisdom that YOU have the best answer. Size doesn't matter.
Hi Ann,
First of all, thank you very much sharing with us such a goog post.
In my opinion, from an user point of view featured snipets really improve the user experience, so I wouldn't be surprised if Google decides to keep implementing this kind of snipets.
Still something new about the featured snippets here. I really like the section "ask people" because there's nothing more valuable than the constructive feedback from the right audience.
Great insights into such a new concept. I am lucky enough to have a couple of my posts in rich snippet boxes and had some trouble trying to work out how they had got there! Neither post was #1 for the search query; I wondered whether it was based on a combination of Google Rankbrain and the ability of the Google algorithm to squeeze a coherent answer into a box.
Hi Ann! I really liked the article, mostly because the little tricks, tools and advices you give here and there.
Optimizing for featured snippets in my case is a bit harder, because I'm Spanish and a) I haven't found a solid keyword tool in Spanish yet, and b) All the studies until now are for English Snippets (for example, the "Top 30 most frequently met words in queries with Featured Snippets" is so interesting but not that useful for me).
Most of the English Featured Snippets logic applies to Spanish too (like appearing for recipe or definition queries). However, do you alredy know of any Spanish study?
Thank you very much again for the article!
Thanks for the kind words! No I am not aware of Spanish studies but I'll look out for them!
It's not just about get the star snippets but whether your visitor will like your content or not.
Very nice post learn a lot from it.Actually today i understand how to get featured snippet.Its a detailed procedure for any one like me.I never used this before.Thanks
Am I the only one who doesn't like featured snippets? I mean I like it as a searcher, but as a webmaster I hate it.
Featured snippets can reduce your CTR. The logic I guess is that featured snippets are mostly used when people have a query and are not seeking detailed explanation. If the user already got their answer in the snippet, they don't have a strong reason to click on the article.
Google put one of my blog post in the featured snippet. But it was getting 15-17% CTR. A very similar keyword for the same blog post was getting 30-40% CTR even though it was ranked at 2nd to 3rd position.
And guess what? After some time, Google removed the post from Featured snippet and it then started getting 50-60% CTR.
Hi Aquif,
You can easily opt out of getting featured snippets by adding the following tag to your pages:
<meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet">
But I wouldn't recommend doing this.
Would you rather one of your competitors get the snippet? I wouldn't.
But I guess it really depends on your site and the types of queries it ranks for.
If it's a query that has a simple, definitive answer (like the CelebrityNetWorth example) I have no doubt that your CTR and traffic will be smashed.
But for sites that provide more valuable information, I think featured snippets are a big positive.
Cheers,
David
Exactly. Love them or hate them, either you or your competitors will be featured, so it'd better be you!
Great article and extremely detailed procedure on how to get a featured snippet. I will certainly try out some of the methods in future. However if the keywords are not competitive and your web page answers the query, you sometimes get it without even trying. I have got one for "configuring linksys modem for bsnl broadband"
Is there a way to get the star snippets in the home? i mean not only in the articles.
Getting "Aggregate Ratings" (Star Snippets) for your home page would not really be appropriate.
Google states: “Review and rating markup should be used to provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items. For example, “hotels in Madrid”, “summer dresses”, or “cake recipes” are not specific items.”
A home page is not specific enough and way, way too general. Marking up your home page is the fastest way to trigger a Spammy Structured Markup penalty actually.
Don't do it.
Whitespark has a great article covering what you need to know to implement star ratings, correctly.
Good luck!
Thanks for good article dude,
I use plugin in my site that we can customoze the snippet. (Squirrly)
Thanks,
Titangelasli.co.id
I do some freelance writing for a travel site. They emphasis snippets as a core element to their writing guide so it is something that I have worked with. In my own work, I have a hard time with the mechanics of writing a snippet into the article. I'll try your suggestion of Ask question and answer with a snippet and see how it goes.
I love how organized and annotated this article was. I ended up clicking on two or three different links from the text and setting it aside to read later.
We must take advantage of the moment of the novelties of Google and now we must take advantage of the highlighted fragments. It is also true that the vast majority will not go from reading the fragment and will no longer enter our website which is what interests us, but it is a good way to increase our traffic.
Interesting articles, I thought they had to see the microdata but I see no, as you say in the post. The recommendations you give are very good and I will implement them to see how they work and to be able to improve CTR and organic traffic.
Thanks for the help.
Seu artigo sobre f research and planning deveria incluir mais palavras para aparecer na serp?