One of the most impactful developments to the Google SERP has been the introduction of the featured snippet optimization.
But what exactly is it?
You’ve seen them plenty of times before – most likely whenever you’ve asked a “how to” question to Google.
As search features are becoming increasingly important, featured snippet, also known as the quick answer or knowledge graph, is essentially an area at the top of the first page where the searcher’s query is answered right then and there.
With years of experience in SEO and a deep understanding of Google’s search algorithms, I am here to help.
And by the time you finish this article, you’ll not only know all about these coveted SERP positions, but you’ll know how to steal them from your competitors as well.
Quick Summary
Types of Featured Snippets
Snippets come in various forms.
Most commonly…
Answers to how-to Questions
Recipes
Weather
Branding Queries
Videos
Are Featured Snippets Actually Good for us SEOs?
In short, both yes and no.
Let me explain…
No – because snippets essentially try to answer the question without the user having to leave the SERP result by clicking on your page.
If people aren’t coming to your page, then they’re not useful to your clients, they’re not generating leads, and they’re not clicking on your affiliate links.
Yes – because if you do manage to take over this critical spot on the first page, you now take up the biggest chunk of real estate on the first page.
I mean, look at the size of these things. It’s hard not to click them.
The greatest aspect of the snippet is that you don’t have to seize the #1 position in order to get the snippet’s coveted “position #0” in the SERP.
Simply being somewhere on the first page is enough.
(Courtesy of Moz)
While the debate may continue on whether or not featured snippets are a good thing for us SEOs, the fact of the matter is that they’re here to stay. So it’s better that we take it over, rather than our competitors.
This guide will show you how to do exactly that.
I’ve spent hours testing various techniques for snippet snatchery and have laid them all out here for you.
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By following these 3 steps, you’ll not only learn how to a create web page that will attract snippets, but also how to steal featured snippets when they’re not already yours.
Step 1 – Set the Baseline
Featured snippets are highly attracted to structured markup.
There are essentially three different types of structured markup that are especially effective to trigger featured snippets.
Structured Markup that Featured Snippets ****
Unordered Lists
Unordered lists are basically bullet point lists that can be used to clarify different points that aren’t sequentially related to each other.
These types of lists are great for answering questions that might have multiple answers.
For example…
Query: “What are the signs of aging skin?”
As can be seen here, when you steal featured snippet for this query, you will quite easily draw buyers for affiliate products in the anti-aging skin care niche.
Ordered Lists
Ordered lists are similar to unordered lists but the list items follow a sequence. They’re especially useful for specifying steps in a series, such as following a recipe for cooking.
Or…
Query: “How do I unclog a drain?”
Capture this featured snippet for your plumbing lead generation site and you’ll end up with more leads than you can deal with.
Tables
Tables attract different types of featured snippet and this trend is increasing over time.
Tables are useful for displaying a matrix of data, such as “who played in the last five Super Bowls?”
Or…
Query: “Best Treadmill?”
(Note: there’s something special about this table featured snippet which we’ll visit later)
Needless to say, your Amazon Associates account would **** the clicks that this featured snippet attracts.
Headings
Many times you’ll notice that the featured snippet is preceded by an H2 or H3 heading that actually includes the keywords that you’re searching for.
Let me explain in an example: “Who are the premier league winners?”
Make it a rule-of-thumb to “kick off” your lists and tables with headings. Although you’ll mostly be using H2s and H3s for your featured snippets if you have questions on writing killer headers check out what is an h1 tag.
Where to Insert Structured Markup onto Your Pages
Take an hour to look at every web page on your website that you’re actually trying to rank. You can ignore your supporting pages for topical relevance.
Get a notepad and write down every section of your content that answers a question.
Selectively choose a handful of these sections and display their content with the particular type of structured markup that best gets the job done.
For example, if I were to have a page called “What is Garcinia Cambogia?”, then I might have the following subsections:
- Introduction to Garcinia
- Benefits of Garcinia Cambogia
- Ingredients of Garcinia Cambogia
- How to take Garcinia
- Where to Buy It
Sections 2, 3, and 4 are great candidates for structured markup.
Unordered List Example
<h2>Benefits of Garcinia Cambogia</h2>
The benefits of garcinia include the following:
- Increased Metabolism
- Reduction of Body Fat
- Lessens Cravings for Sugar and Dense Carbohydrates
- Easy to Digest
Table Example
<h2>Ingredients of Garcinia Cambogia</h2>
| Ingredient | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Hydrocitric Acid (HCA) | Reduces appetite and accelerates fat burn |
| Chromium | Can reduce insulin levels |
| Potassium | Improves blood pressure |
| Calcium | Can increase body temperature |
To create my tables, I use the WordPress plug-in TablePress, which in my opinion is the best and easiest to use, with most themes.
Protip: When implementing tables and you’re reviewing a list of products, always list your products from top-to-bottom in the rows, while the specifications and score information are listed from left-to-right in the columns. In my experience, tables which follow this format (like the treadmill snippet you saw before) are highly more likely to capture the featured snippet than the opposite. In fact, I’ve only seen one instance of it captured the other way.
Ordered List Example
<h2>How to Take Garcinia</h2>
- Consult with your doctor before taking the supplement
- Ensure that you’ve had a decently portioned meal
- Drink with plenty of water
- Avoid using heavy machinery or participating in S&M for 24 hours
Insert structured markup where it fits in the content, but don’t overdo it.
Keep your sections moderately small (around 50-150 words), as lengthy sections tend to not be snippet-friendly.
In terms of markup frequency, I try to make sure that there’s no more than one visible piece of marked-up content on a given vertical snapshot of the page.
Now what?
Now that you’ve set the baseline, it’s time to wait.
If your site is new then you need to wait until you have some ranking pages to get to the first page and become eligible for the snippet.
If your site has pages already ranking on the first page, force a re-crawl and wait a few weeks to see if the Google search console liked your changes enough to trigger featured snippets.
How do you figure out which types of featured snippets you obtained?
How do you figure out which types of featured snippets you didn’t obtain?
Onto the next step.
Step 2 – Snippet Discovery Phase
In this phase you’ll be using SEMRush to reverse engineer which of your niche’s search queries have featured snippets. You’ll be able to see which featured snippets you’ve already obtained and which snippets are not yet yours.
First, open SEMRush and perform “Organic Research” to give organic search results on your website. Make sure this is a site explorer that has at least some page 1 rankings of the search volume.
Click on “Positions” in the left hand column to bring up the following view.
Notice on the right hand side, you’ll see “Featured Snippet”. Go ahead and click on it.
(No, this is not my website.)
Here you’ll find a list of keywords that are featuring a snippet.
Some of these you might already own, some you won’t. But essentially these are the keywords you’re going to optimize for.
Start to manually check each keyword and mark down if you have the snippet or you don’t:
Do note that this tool isn’t entirely accurate, but it’s not the tool’s fault.
Featured snippets results are very dynamic. Sometimes the result disappears entirely for a few days and then pops back with a new winner.
For now, you’re just looking for a general list of keywords where you can steal google featured snippets from your competition.
Step 3 – Steal Featured Snippet
Now that you know which keywords to target, it’s time to snatch these bad boys up.
This process is simple in nature.
You’re essentially going to mimic what your competition has already done – but you’re going to do it better.
And why will you beat them?
Because I’m about to share some snippet-stealing ninja tactics with you that they don’t know about.
Step 3a: What is form of the answer?
For each of your keywords that you plan to steal the snippet, manually search for them in your browser.
Look at the question that the query is asking, and more importantly, the answer that the snippet is offering.
Let me elaborate…
The snippet algorithm isn’t perfect. Very often you will find that the answer is answering a specific part of the query.
What you want to do is find the identical section of your content and optimize the markup in that section. Even though it might not be the full answer to the query, we want to give Google search console what Google wants to see.
For example:
Q: How do dance popping?
A: Popping Your Arms
In the above example, the snippet is specifically talking about how to “pop your arms.” Not your legs. Not your chest. Just your arms… which is the section of content that you would need to optimize as well.
(This one was for you, Jason Duke)
One more example:
If you’re trying to steal featured snippets for “how to get rid of rats”, you need to first talk about the different types of rats, before you get into the actual how-to.
Step 3b: Dress up your Equivalent Content
Go to the section of your content that addresses the same answer as found in 3a.
Structure your content in the same format as your competition did.
If they used an unordered list, you use an unordered list. If they used a table you, use a table. You get the idea.
If your competition controls the snippet without having any structured markup, then simply find your equivalent section and implement whichever formatted content you think is most applicable for answering the question.
Now that you’re all setup, it’s time for you to kick their ass.
Step 3c – Be Better
From extensive testing, I’ve uncovered these simple tactics that can give you an edge over your competition when it comes to the snippet.
They are as follows:
Tactic #1 – Precede your formatted content with a heading tag
As mentioned above, start off your section of formatted content with a heading that clearly states the answer of the query.
For example, if the query was “How to get rid of rats in your cellar?” and the competitor’s snippet talked about the “best types of mouse traps”, then consider creating an H2 called “2017’s Best Types of Mouse Traps” and placing it right above your formatted content.
Follow this up with a table, discussing the effectiveness and price of each product and you’re half way there to stealing the snippet.
Tactic #2 – Use heavy synonyms for the keywords in the query
Your formatted content is indeed going to contain content. Make sure that this content contains the keywords in the query, but even more importantly, synonyms of the keywords you’re trying to rank for.
You’ll even notice that Google will bold these keywords in order to ensure the searcher that they’re indeed seeing what they’re looking for.
(Seriously, laughed out loud while I was writing this section)
In the above example, here is a list of synonyms for the keywords in the query.
- Is it possible
- Can someone
- Light
- Kindle
- Flame
- Stinker
- Butt trumpet
- Air biscuit
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Bonus Tip from Steve Toth from SEO Notebook: Use the SEO Ruler Chrome extension. It lets you export all the bold words for a given query (be sure to set the SERP to 100 results).
Then copy the unique bold keywords, paste them into a spreadsheet, and use as many of those bolded words as possible when writing the snippet. This increases relevance and improves your **** of winning the snippet.
Tactic #3 – Use heavy synonyms for the solution that the answer offers
As mentioned before, the answer doesn’t always match the query.
One might find that the answer to “Does garcinia cambogia really work” actually gives a list of its ingredients.
In this case, do the same, but also offer synonyms of the ingredients, such as scientific names (more on this below).
Tactic #4 – Use scientific words as much as possible
This technique is my secret ******. I uncovered it after many iterations of experimentation and testing.
If there’s ever an opportunity to replace one of your question’s keywords (or the answer’s words) with its scientific equivalent, do so ASAP.
Keep the original keywords in there a few times, but sprinkle some scientific/medical/technical words in there.
For example:
- lower back = lumbar spine = quadratus lumborum
- warts = verruca vulgaris
- garcinia = Garcinia mangostana = gummi-gutta = HCA = hydrocitric acid
You’ll notice that when you do indeed take over the Google search console, these words are bolded. It’s as if the algorithm wants to highlight the validity of the Google search results.
It’s almost too easy.
Tactic #5 – Get an image placed into your snippet
Credit goes to James Dooley from FatRank for this one.
You might have noticed how many paragraph featured snippets have an image. Images also increase your featured snippet opportunities taking over position 0.
The easiest way to get an image in your Google search snippets is to:
- Add an image either to the side or directly after your table or list
- For the image alt tag, have a variation of the same text use used to title your snippet in the H2 or H3 preceding your table.
And that’s it.
FAQs
How do I get my pictures into a featured snippet?
You can get your pictures into a featured snippet by adding relevant images with optimized alt text and filenames in your content. Google tends to favor images that are closely tied to the text content of the featured snippet.
How do I get a featured snippet on Google?
You can get a featured snippet on Google by providing clear, concise answers to commonly asked questions in your content. This content should be well-structured using HTML tags and should closely match the searcher’s query.
How do you find and win featured snippets?
To find and trigger featured snippets, identify the keywords for which Google already provides featured snippets. Then, optimize your content around these keywords with clear, structured information and use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to track your progress.
What next?
At this point, you simply need to wait for your improvements to kick in.
Be patient. That said, I’ve had students from coaching calls (read more) get results in less than 2 days.
You can force a re-crawl or just sit back and wait to see if your adjustments hit the mark. Typical wait times are 1-4 weeks, depending on the niche because, as you know, different niches are crawled at different rates.
Your ability to steal the snippet depends highly on your position the SERP. However, with this technique, I’ve been able to hit from as far as position #9 which supposedly has less than 2% change of stealing it.
If you don’t grab it on the first try, make some adjustments and try again. Don’t give up. Put it this way, I’ve never not been able to steal it.
Update: Featured Snippet Images
As you might have noticed, Google is now pulling featured snippet images from Google Images. Learn how to rank in Google images here.
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