Featured Snippets in Search: An Overview

Volume Nine

By now you’ve likely encountered what’s called a “featured snippet” in Google. The featured snippet is when a portion of a page that appears in results is pulled out onto the search engine results page itself. It looks like this:

what is a featured snippet

A featured snippet is aimed at answering a searcher’s query, without having to click through to a different webpage. Google tries to make the user experience easier by pulling content to directly answer the searcher’s question.

In addition to the relevant content to answer the user’s query, a feature snippet includes the title and URL from the webpage the snippet is pulled from.

Types of Featured Snippets

There are three different types of feature snippet: a paragraph, a list, or a table. The paragraph feature snippet is by far the most common. Like the answer above, a paragraph snippet is just some text that answers a question, and is sometimes accompanied by a thumbnail picture. Lists are often used to provide a list of steps in a process (as in a recipe). Lastly, a table is often used when the search query is looking for a comparison.

The Benefits of Having Your Business in a Featured Snippet

There’s no debate that holding the primary spot on a search engine results page helps drive a ton of traffic. But it takes a long, disciplined approach to climb to the top of an organic search result. The featured snippet provides a bit of a shortcut.

The featured snippet is an opportunity for any page ranked in the top ten of results to jump straight to the top with less effort compared to building a page’s search rank from, for example, from eighth to first. Having a featured snippet effectively puts you at search result zero and allows your business to earn traffic as the top search result.

How To Get My Site in a Featured Snippet

So now that you know the benefit of featured snippets, you’re probably wondering how to get your site in one. The great thing is you really just need to rank somewhere in the top ten to have a shot at getting the featured snippet. Unfortunately, there is no simple formula to ensure your site earns a featured snippet, but there are steps you can take to better your chances.

Write to the Question

Take a look at your keywords and see which of them are question-based queries. The key here is to have a specific answer to these questions within your content. You may want to write so that the question is one of the headers in your content and the answer is directly below that snippet. Just remember to write naturally – if you have to force it, you’re better off focusing on quality content instead.

Go For High Quality

Just because your page doesn’t need to be number one to get the featured snippet doesn’t mean the quality is not important. The higher your page rank, the more likely you are to score a featured snippet.

Try Question and Answer Format

Question and answer pages are a great way to try to get more featured snippets. Since the page will be formatted in much the same way users ask questions, you will increase your chances of being chosen for a feature snippet. Just make sure you have high-quality answers to the questions.

Need More Tips?

If you’re sick of getting passed over for the featured snippet, reach out to the SEO team here at Volume Nine – we’re here to help get your site to page one!