Have you noticed the small descriptions that appear at the top of the search results on Google? This short part of a blog that appears at the top of the search results is called a snippet. An experienced search engine optimization company would feature snippets in your blog content and make them appear at the top of the search results. Well, do you know why featured snippets are important, especially for SEO? Why are featured snippets given importance? Let’s check it out in detail.
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets appear at the top of the search engine results page and provide a quick answer for the reader’s query. It appear as a small part of the blog or website that describe what the page is about. These may also appear in the ‘People also ask’ section. It would help people discover the information that they are looking for. Featured snippets appear in different formats such as definitions, tables, steps and lists.
Role of Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are considered an important part of SEO. It impacts SEO mainly in two ways.
- Can generate clicks from organic search results even without ranking higher.
- Might appear above the website that has higher rankings
According to certain studies, such snippets help the website get almost 8% clicks from organic search results. When the reader makes certain queries, Google’s automated system would analyze whether the page has a good answer for the visitor’s query as well as whether it is worth highlighting the query part in the blog.
Another advantage of featured snippets is that it increases no-click searches. In other words, the visitors don’t click any other link as they get the answer from the snippet. Thus, it is important to include featured snippets for increasing the click rate. In an alternative sense, having featured snippets is more important than including keywords in the website.
Types of Featured Snippets
There are mainly four types of featured snippets.
- Definition box: The snippet would answer directly with a concise description or definition for the query in the form of text.
- Table : In this the snippet appears in the form of a table that conveys the information the visitor wants.
- Order list: The items asked by users are listed in a specific order.
- Unordered list: Google presents a list of items that doesn’t need to have a particular order.
How to Optimize Featured Snippets
Optimizing featured snippets is very important for Google to locate the snippet and pull out the part when the searcher asks for a particular information. For optimizing featured snippets, you need to follow certain tips. Let’s discuss how we can optimize featured snippets.
- Identify the SERPs with featured snippets
The first tip for optimizing snippets is to find search engine result pages having featured snippets. Then analyze and find out the type of snippet Google promotes for a particular term or keywords. It eases the process of optimizing the snippet. - Have an idea about the keywords to use
You must have an idea about what your target audience is searching for though you are creating content for snippets. For this, using the right keywords is critical. Try to include long-tail keywords as the queries from your target audience might contain such keywords as well as question words like “how” and “what”. - Optimize for a particular snippet
When Google optimizes the content on your webpage, it chooses the content to be featured in the snippet as well. For instance, in the definition snippet, the writer needs to provide a small part with 40-60 words that Google can use directly on its SERP. At the same time, you must always make sure that the definition must be objective. Likewise, you need to follow the guidelines provided by Google for other forms as well. - Make sure that your snippet is SEO-friendly
If your webpage has authority over others, you can use your single page to generate dozens of snippets. For scaling up the process, you need to add definitions, ordered lists, and other features that Google prefers to put as snippets.
Advantages of Featured Snippets
Let’s take a look at the advantages of featured snippets.
- Improves the ranking of the website
- Improves website traffic
- Increases conversion rate
- Improves brand awareness
- Improves the authority of the website
- Improves the ranking of the keywords
- Increases click-through rate
- Increases visibility
- Boosts the credibility of the website
- Gives importance for mobile search results
- Friendly to voice searches
- Improves user experience
- Helps get more impressions than competitors
As technology is developing day by day, people leave no stone unturned to boost their online credibility and improve the business. Google has updated many of their features for pulling the websites to the front. Snippets are one among them. Google uses them as the answer for the queries made by the visitors or readers. Thus, it is important for SEO as well as the content writers to make the most of it for improving the credibility of their website and also helps to stand out from the crowd. An experienced content writing service would develop content based on the requirements that meet the guidelines provided by Google for featured snippets.
