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Resetting the goal – featured snippets are the new 1st position


W4 | W4 / January 31, 2019

If you aim to bring the SEO of your website to perfection, you usually want to reach the first position in the search results. However, that is what all companies are trying to achieve. This leads to a battle for the best spots in search-engine ranking. The new goal: featured snippets.

According to a study published by Internet Marketing Ninjas that looked into the click rate in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), the click trough rate (CTR) of the first position in the search results lies around 21,12 percent. The second position only offers half of the value, for it reaches only 10,65 percent. The tenth position with 1,64 percent is hardly worth mentioning. Usually, this is followed by page 2 of the search results – a true wasteland. If you don’t find what you are looking for within the first search results, you tend to rephrase your search terms instead of scrolling further down. With featured snippets, users and companies reach their goal more effectively. In the following you can read all about what featured snippets actually are and how to push your websites by making use of them.

What is a featured snippet?

A featured snippet is a relatively small and automatically generated text, which answers directly to a question and can be found above the actual organic search results. The snippets consequently appear at position 0 – the new goal of motivated SEOs. The text is taken from the page linked to the snippet. Google has introduced these short precise texts in order to quickly and easily give users direct answers to their questions – all in the sense of user-friendliness.

Why do I need a featured snippet?

What is the point of aiming at a featured snippet that makes clicking on the linked page unnecessary, one may think? The answer is really simple: snippets do create a high CTR. If a page delivers fast and high-quality answers, it speaks for the quality of the rest of the page. If you consider spending more time with the topic, you consequently click on the page linked to the snippet. With regards to voice search, short answers are also a plus: voice assistants usually make use of snippets in order to provide their users with fast and good replies.

How to create featured snippets?

It is not really possible to create featured snippets on your own, since these texts are generated automatically. However, it is possible to fulfill a few prerequisites in order to increase the chances for a snippet. As usual, keywords are of great importance. The catch: the keyword(s) should match the search query exactly. Moreover, certain questions (who, what, why etc.) as well as descriptive terms like “definition of term” or “explanation” can propel the chances of a paragraph being used as a snippet. A good structure of data on a page also improves the chance of your site forming as a base for a snippet.

Please note: The generation of featured snippets is solely based on Google algorithms. Even if you pay attention to all aforementioned points, there is no guarantee for your page to be turned into a snippet. Nevertheless, chances are good and position 0 should absolutely be aimed for, in particular when considering SEO.

Tags: SEO

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