In an attempt to improve the user-friendliness and convenience of their results pages, Google uses what are known as “featured snippets” to distil content down for readers upon the completion of a search. Due to their high profile and up-front visibility at the top of the organic search rankings, featured snippets have become one of the top priorities for SEO experts around the globe. Today, we’re going to look at this feature in greater detail as well as provide some best-practice tips for obtaining a featured snippet of your very own.

Snippets 101

Traditionally, search engines worked as follows—upon the submission of a search, the algorithms scoured through all of the indexed pages to present a structured list of content that it considered to be relevant. However, it was ultimately up to the consumer to laboriously click through each of the links to find the websites that best addressed their initial query.

Featured snippets were implemented as a way to streamline this entire process. Essentially, instead of simply aggregating content into a clear, hierarchical list, search engine algorithms now actually try to directly respond to the question posed right from the SERP page, above any organic search results—curious individuals can get an immediate response without having to click through any links whatsoever.

This development has acted as a double-edged sword for businesses. On one hand, it has limited the number of clicks obtained by the links populating the SERPs. On the other, however, it has enabled sites that successfully acquire one of these coveted featured snippets to dominate the competition when it comes to the ranking, viewership, and accessibility of their content. Moreover, it has also broadened the SEO field to accommodate a much greater variety of materials. Rather than focusing solely on the presentation of long-form text, featured snippets can answer a question through lists, videos, and even tables, levelling the playing field for a wide variety of content creators.

With all of that being said, it should come as no surprise that every business is looking to find ways to optimise their content in order to acquire a prestigious featured snippet pertaining to their niche. So, let’s figure out how you can accomplish precisely that.

Offer Value to Readers

Modern SEO has come a long way from the days of keyword stuffing and black hat link-building techniques. Today, search engines try to focus on the curation of high-quality content that strives to inform readers rather than exploit their browsing habits to generate the maximum number of clicks. In order to get a featured snippet pertaining to the subject matter at hand, your content needs to embody these values by actively attempting to respond to any relevant questions your readers may have. One way to accomplish this is by creating a comprehensive FAQ page for your website containing both questions and answers that algorithms can pull from. Alternatively, you can succinctly summarise lengthy paragraphs with a bulleted list, enabling search engines to clearly present even dense amounts of information in just one snippet. Ultimately, featured snippets are all about catering the interests of readers—the more your content mirrors these values, the higher the likelihood of getting one of your very own.

Understand and Implement the Criteria

Featured snippets aren’t awarded haphazardly. In fact, the sites dominating the top spot are often already those employing best-practice SEO principles, and the numbers back this up—the consensus is that more than 70% of all featured snippets are from sites who already occupy high SERP rankings. It may seem that the rich are getting richer, but this fact actually presents a sizeable window of opportunity for your business. Rather than overhauling your entire SEO strategy to try and attain a featured snippet of your own, you can simply employ one set of mutually reinforcing optimisation practices. Even in a worst-case scenario, you’ll shoot up in the page rankings and improve the discoverability of your content, making it truly a win-win situation regardless of whether you’re lucky enough to grab the featured snippet slot or not.

Think Outside the Desktop Space

Despite everything that we’ve already covered, it may seem like battling against huge amounts of competition to get a featured snippet spot isn’t worth the effort. After all, they only appear one spot above the organic results, so it couldn’t make that much of a difference, right? Wrong, as it turns out. While this line of thinking may work in a traditional computing context where laptops and desktops alike offer individuals large amounts of screen real estate, the prevalence of mobile devices complicate matters for two reasons. First, phone screen sizes are too small to present more than a few results at a time. Second, individuals interact on their phones differently than a traditional computer, particularly due to the convenience of voice-activated searches. In a hands-free setting, users don’t have the luxury of scrolling through multiple pages of content, which means that the top result—the featured snippet itself—is going to receive a disproportionate amount of attention and clicks. Factor the mobile ecosystem in your SEO efforts through the implementation of long-tail keywords and responsive web design, and you’ll be much more likely to earn that prestigious top spot.

Featured snippets are a convenient, user-friendly way to present content upon the completion of a search, but they do increase the number of considerations that you’ll be forced to make when creating content. By approaching the challenge in accordance with the principles outlined in this article, however, your business can maximise the odds of landing a coveted spot above every other organic search result.