Featured Snippets – Rank in Position Zero – 2022 Guide

If you are into the SEO profession, you definitely would be struggling to appear in featured snippets as your bosses would have been pushing you hard for the same. Every SEO professional has the same story perhaps. Usually, people do not understand what it takes to appear in featured snippets, hence, fail in getting one.

Here I will guide you to the depth of featured snippets and everything you should know about it.

Let's get started.

First of all, one must be clear about the basics, so we will start with what featured snippets actually are.

What is a Featured Snippet?

A featured snippet is the informational content box that appears in a box right above the SERPs in Google search results. Most of the featured snippets appear on queries that have a short answer or the query is clearly for informational content. Here is an example of a featured snippet:

In the image above, the featured snippet that you can see for the query is clearly informational.

How you can make your content rank/appear in featured snippet - 2022 Guide

#1 Answer the Question Precisely

Whenever you write content, make sure that you are writing to serve a query that a user might be searching for. The content you write must exactly answer the question for which you are writing. Bear in mind that you are not writing content for bots, instead, a human will be reading your content.

If you write merely for search crawlers and bots and do not answer the question precisely, you are never going to appear in featured snippets.

#2 Use Sub-headings in Your Answer

Using sub-headings will greatly improve the readability of your content and will segregate the content into smaller pieces which also enables crawlers and readers both to understand the content in a better way.

#3 Choose the Right headings

It is important to choose the right heading levels while publishing the content. The most common mistake that people make is they try to stuff keywords in the headings thinking that this will land their content in featured snippets. In fact, the case is completely opposite. You do not need to add even a single keyword in the sub-headings. All you need to do is write content in a natural flow. If you read this article carefully, you will notice that the targeted keywords for this blog have not been included in the sub-headings. Pretty simple. Right?

#4 Pick Relevant Questions to Answer

One of the wisest things to do while writing a piece of content is to avoid headings that are irrelevant or a little off-topic from the main topic of the page. It simply doesn't make any sense to keep them. Also, they do not help in SEO in any way. Ensuring the headings are closely related to the topic of the page will boost the probability of your content appearing in featured snippets.

#5 Have a look at your competitor already in featured Snippet

One of the easiest ways to appear in a featured snippet is to copy the format of the featured snippet that is already appearing in the featured snippet. Pay attention closely to how many characters the competitors have placed in a paragraph that is appearing in the featured snippet. Watch out for the number of list items in case you want to steal a position zero for a query that has a list appearing in the featured snippet.

#6 Keep the Content Simple

Always make a habit of keeping the sentences short. When you write long sentences, it becomes tough to understand the meaning as it may complicate the wordings. Also, you must avoid content with complex words that are not easy to understand. I advise using simple terms that are used in our normal lives for which we do not need to see the dictionary for its meaning.

You can always appear in a featured snippet using these tips. Though there is no guarantee that you will achieve the desired results, most likely you will be successful in 90% of the cases.

If you are not able to do so on your own, you can always hire an SEO agency just like ours.

#7 Using a table of Content

Using a table of content is a great way to increase the accessibility and visibility of the content. It is also good for SEO because it makes the page more user-friendly. Moreover, it also helps crawlers identify the content and categorize it.

#8 Use of Lists

Lists are one of the best methods to get into featured snippets. one can make use of lists on many queries that start from "how to", "tips for", "steps to", "benefits of", "advantages of", "disadvantages of", etc.

Importance of Featured Snippets (If you get it)

Featured snippets are usually not considered a way to get organic traffic to a website. Yet, it has great importance and we will talk about how it can help you. Have a look at some points which I think makes "featured snippets" super important.

Improved Brand Visibility

First of all, featured snippets enhance the visibility of your brand or website as it appears in a special box above all the results that appear in SERPs. It is human psychology that if something gets seen more than twice, it becomes recognizable. People seem to recognize the same thing even after they see it after quite a long time.

So, it definitely improves the visibility of the website.

Increases website traffic

In many cases, website traffic may seem to have a boost if a webpage appears in a featured snippet. This is simply because the featured snippets cannot always display the complete answer in the box. If the answer is long, Google tends to show a short summary of the answer which may be quite relevant to the query.

This makes the searchers curious and makes them click the link and land on the website. Now, this is how the website traffic spikes with a featured snippet.

Increases Revenue

If you are running a business, it's pretty obvious that all a business owner cares about is revenue. As mentioned above, featured snippets improve brand visibility and increase traffic which in turn is a pathway to bigger revenue. More the website visitors, the more the revenue will be.