The SEO value of Google’s featured snippets cannot be underestimated. Not only can a featured snippet drive a lot more traffic to your site, but it can also increase your brand awareness and boost your website authority. What is the purpose of a featured snippet? To enhance and draw user attention to the results page. These snippets sit at the top of the SERPs, making them a wonderful source of impressions and clicks. In order to get your content to appear in a featured snippet, it has to really shine. Here are some tips to help you polish your content to amp up your chance of getting it featured in a snippet.
Answer Specific Questions with In-Depth Answers
A featured snippet is very informational in nature. The bottom line is that if your content fails to answer questions, it will never get into the featured snippet box. Google’s algorithms pour over tons of sites to locate the content that best answers a user’s questions. Once the content is found, it’s displayed in a featured snippet, which makes it easy for people to find the information they’re looking for. You need to stay focused on providing in-depth answers to people’s specific questions.
Understand Your Audience
In order for you to know what type of content to produce that best answers people’s questions, you need to understand your targeted audience. When you understand how these people search online for the types of products you have, you’ll be able to choose the keywords for your content that they’re using. A quick way to see what people are searching for is to type your keyword into Google and see what other terms show up.
Another way to learn about your audience is to visit forums related to your industry where your targeted audience hangs out. Find out what they’re interested in and learn what questions they’re asking. Then you need to create true, high quality content containing some main keywords. Your content should be comprehensive, engaging to the readers, and very user-focused.
Don’t Skim the Surface, Go Deep
Instead of just barely delving into specifics about your topic, dive in deep and provide some depth to your content. Take the time to use visual content to back up your text and use visuals like infographics and screenshots. Try tailoring your content to meet the needs of beginners in your industry by taking the time to carefully explain things. When you provide lots of detail, you’ll be setting yourself up as an authority, and giving Google what it’s looking for in its featured snippets.
Make sure all your content is unique. Once you’ve created a piece of content, read it over and look at it to see how everything is structured. Your content should be easy to read and digest. So use those bullet points and great headlines to please your readers and the search engines.
Organize Your Content into Short Sentences & Paragraphs
The majority of featured snippets contain between 40 and 50 words. This means your content should be organized into short sentences and paragraphs. To help you do this, stay focused on providing specific answers to questions your readers may have about your topic. If your content is about giving step-by-step instructions, then use numbered or bulleted lists to help increase your chances of getting into a featured snippet.
Offer Question & Answer Pages
Websites with question & answer pages that are well-formatted and contain complete answers have a better chance of making it into featured snippets than websites without them. Plus, a Q&A page helps your users find complete answers to their questions, to provide your website with better value. If need be, drop links in the answers that provide your readers with even more details about the topic.
Finally, keep asking questions and looking for new tips, you can easily avoid most content marketing mistakes simply by asking an established SEO agency or professional for advice and guidance!