Marketers across the globe believe that your brand getting verified can be the ultimate compliment in the digital world. We often hear people from all walks of life using words such as “Googling” or “Googled” when it comes to searching for something on the internet. This is because Google made its search engine the best, due to which it stays ahead in the tech world. Try searching something from a historical fact, scientific process, or even as cutting-edge AI-based tools, the Google search engine won’t disappoint you.
Google attempts to understand a searcher’s objectives based on their searches and is, therefore, aiming at reducing the role of syntax in searching. Semantics has now become more critical than ever for the Google search engine, and one of the steps it has taken in this direction is using featured snippets.
What is a Google featured snippet?
For some searches, Google may show you a paragraph or list regarding your query. This is a featured snippet. This is followed by a series of subsequent related questions which other people have followed up on Google. The featured snippet is considered rank #0 when it comes to search engine results page (SERP) as it appears above the page ranking #1. While some people believe that the information on featured snippet is fetched from the top link on the SERP, it is not the case.
Google considers the link out of rank #1 through #10 on the SERP; which answers the query best in a simple and concise manner. This gives the links other than rank #1 answer an opportunity to secure a position at the top, at rank #0. This makes a featured snippet a game changer. It is critical to understand its full role to optimize it to the fullest.
Recommended for you: How to Use Google Rich Snippets With Your On-Site SEO Campaign?
How is the featured snippet helpful?
With new and cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence, voice assistants, etc., it has become even more critical that the content stays updated and in sync with the technology. Google featured snippets have seen exponential growth in the recent years.
Here is why you must pay attention to Google featured snippets and how you can use them to optimize your website:
1. Building website credibility
2. Improved search ranking
3. Voice Search
4. Increasing more traffic
Consider the above example, although all the links belong to the same website, dealing with logo design and creating your own logo, Google found one of them to be best suitable for the featured snippet. What if this had been a SERP with different company links? In that case, the link on Rank #3 would have gained some of the Rank #1 website’s traffic.
You may also like: Developing a Content Strategy for SEO Success in 2018.
How can you improve or increase the chances of getting a featured snippet?
AdWords and Keywords
Q&A format
In the above illustration, all the links on the SERP are for a tool used to design logos. But the link which was considered by Google for a featured snippet has a title in a question form.
Content rich web pages
The bottom lines
Continuous technological innovation and advancement have paved the way for some exciting tools. Now you can search for anything using voice commands and much more. The SEO landscape is changing and evolving with the new technological developments. Featured snippets can give a boost to the website’s click-through rate (CTR) and provide an alternative route to achieve the ranking goals.
This article is written by Alice Jackson. She is a Blogger and Digital Marketing Consultant at a crowdsourcing company, Designhill. Alice is a social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer, and an avid author. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, online logo maker tool, content marketing, designing trends, startup strategies, and e-commerce.