Featured snippets
Featured Snippets are short snippets from websites that appear at the top of Google search results. These snippets can help you achieve high visibility on the web and attract more visitors to your site. But how do featured snippets affect your SEO strategy? And how do you get Google's algorithms to choose your website for a featured snippet? You can learn a lot more about that right here.
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What are featured snippets?
Featured Snippets, also known as Featured Snippets, are snippets taken from a webpage and displayed at the top of Google search results. They are designed to give the user a quick answer to their question. These snippets can be a direct path to greater visibility on the web because the snippets are placed at the very top of organic search results.
By building your content around these snippets, you have a greater chance of achieving high visibility on the web and attracting more visitors to your site.
Featured snippets should not be confused with rich snippets.
Below you can see an example of a highlighted excerpt.
How do featured snippets affect SEO?
Featured snippets play a big role in search engine optimization (SEO) because they can drive significant traffic to your website. If Google uses a text from your website for a Featured Snippet, your page will appear at the top of the search results, which can generate many clicks.
However, featured snippets also potentially create many zero click searches because a user with a simple search can get a direct answer at the top of the search results without having to click on anything. For example, if a user searches for a simple question like: "When is Midsummer's Eve", there's no need to click through to the website to read more when the search results say "Friday, June 23" at the top.
Zero click searches notwithstanding, it's to your advantage to try to get Google to select a snippet from your website as a featured snippet. It demonstrates credibility on Google and can potentially create more brand awareness in the minds of potential customers.
What kind of featured snippets are there?
There are mainly four types of featured snippets: paragraph, list, table and video snippets.
Paragraph snippets are the most common type of snippets that display a text snippet from a website. This type of snippet is popularly known as "the Definition Box" and can also contain images. As the term indicates, paragraph snippets attempt to provide a concrete definition.
List snippets show step-by-step instructions or information in bullet points. There are ordered and unordered list snippets.
Ordered list snippets are often used in procedures where the items require a specific order. For example, the search "how to bake a sand cake". Here it's important that the batter is made before the cake goes into the oven, so ordered list snippets are the way to go.
Unordered list snippets are used when the order of the items does not have significant relevance. For example, if the search is "the best parks in Copenhagen", it's not important whether Kongens Have or Kalvebod Fælled comes first.
Table snippets display data organized in rows and columns and are often used to show comparisons of prices, exchange rates or other numerical values.
Video snippets are also known as featured clips and are used when Google's algorithm determines that a video is the most complete answer to a search. These are often "how to" searches where a video tutorial is the best search result.
Your content can be selected for any type of snippet depending on how it meets the user's needs.
How can featured snippets drive traffic to your website?
Having your content featured as a featured snippet can significantly increase your site's visibility and traffic. To achieve this, you need to understand user search behavior and optimize your content accordingly. You should strive to provide clear, concrete answers to common questions in your field and present these answers in an easy-to-understand format, such as lists, step-by-step guides or tables.
It's also beneficial to do a keyword analysis so you don't have to rely on your gut feeling when deciding which keywords to use in your web texts. You can also use long tail keywords, which are over three words long and will typically be included in questions. It's also always a good idea to look at which results Google already highlights as featured snippets so you know what to go for. In other words, you need to understand the search intent behind a given search.
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