How to Land a Google Featured Snippet

May 2021 marks the 2nd Blog Anniversary of my blog – Thrifty Hustler and one of the highlights that I mentioned in my blog anniversary post is the growth of my search engine traffic specifically Google Search. One of the reasons for the 100x growth in traffic (1st Year vs 2nd Year) is that some of my posts were ranking high in SERP even without external backlinks and some have landed a Google Featured Snippet.

I’ll be sharing with you today some tips on How to Land a Google Featured Snippet.

Before we continue, I’d like to let you know that I also write a quarterly blog report to share the ups and downs, successes and failures, and lessons I’ve learned in building this blog. If you’re a new blogger and in case you’re interested to see the past blog reports, you can check it out here.

Anyway, let’s continue with the topic…

Photo by Edho Pratama on Unsplash

What is Google Featured Snippet?

Google Featured Snippet is a special box that you usually see on top of the Google Search pages. If you have noticed, in the past, when you search for something on Google, you will immediately see the #1 ranking article on Google for almost all searches. But now, I am noticing that every time I search, I often see Google Featured Snippet on top or sometimes a Google Ad and on rare occasions, just the #1 ranking website/blog.

Google Featured Snippet is sometimes referred to by some people as Rank 0/Position 0 because it usually precedes the number #1 ranking page on the Google Search result page.

How Does Google Featured Snippet Works?

We all know that Google Search’s business is well, ‘search’ the internet for the most relevant answer to the user’s question.

For example, if I am a person who wants to know – How to Start a Profitable WordPress Blog, I will type those words in the search bar and Google will search for the most informative and relevant answer to the question. Google will then display it in a format that they think will be most helpful to the Google search users. Thus, you might see varying formats in Google Featured Snippets.

Technically, if you think about it, it’s still similar to being the top-ranking page for that specific question but… in a different format.

Types of Google Featured Snippets

There are different Google Featured Snippets types or formats and I will enumerate them here. I’m sure that you have noticed them already every time you use Google.

List

Here’s an example of the List Type Google Featured Snippet:

It basically lists the things that it thinks will be helpful to the Google search user. By the way, if you’re not familiar with Carousell, it’s basically a buy and sell platform similar to eBay, and listing items to sell is the way to make money on Carousell. You can check the article here if you want to compare what was included in the Snippet and what’s the full content.

I actually have written waaay more than what was in the snippet, but of course, it will just pick the most relevant information to the Google search user’s question.

Table

Here’s an example of the Table Google Featured Snippet:

You can check the article here if you want to compare what was included in the Google Featured Snippet and what was in the article.

Again, I have written waaay more information than what was included in the Google Featured Snippet but it just picked up what it thinks is the most relevant information to the user.

Paragraph

Here’s an example of the Paragraph Google Featured Snippet:

You can also check the original article here if you wish to compare what’s in the article versus what is shown in the snippet.

BTW, I actually gave two points of view regarding the question – Are Designer Bags Good Investments? LOL!

There’s also a video snippet that I often see when I search for music or How To’s video tutorial.

By the way, please bear in mind that search results may vary due to a lot of factors. The search results screenshots that I have shared might not be applicable to you especially if you’re in other countries unless of course, there’s not much competition in your countries for those keywords.

And also, Google Featured Snippets change from time to time.

 

Impact of Google Search Snippet on Your Traffic

Personally, I can see that it’s helping me generate some traffic on my blog. However, I can also say that it’s really not that much because the keywords that I have landed some Google Featured Snippets do not really have that much traffic demand, to begin with.

Maybe that’s also another reason why a relatively new blog such as mine landed in those snippets. There’s not much traffic and there’s not much competition.

There are various case studies available online regarding the impact of Google Featured Snippet and I highly suggest that you check them out. Some websites don’t find it useful for them that’s why they opt out (Yes! You can opt-out.), on the other side of the coin, some people find it very helpful for their websites/blogs.

If you ask me, I think it’s very useful because regardless if it generates traffic or not, because your blog/website or brand is gaining a lot of exposure to Google search users.

As a Google Search user, I always see Google Featured Snippets whenever I search online but I don’t often click on them primarily because I always look for the most recent blog/website. So sometimes, the most recent ones are below the snippet and sometimes even below the top-ranking websites. That’s just me though.

But if you think about it, people who are searching for information will want to see not only the most relevant answer to their question but also the most updated one (which reminds me to update my old articles LOL!).

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

How to Land a Google Featured Snippet

Create Contents that Answer Questions

Most Google Search users are searching for an answer, solution, etc, that’s why they’re using Google Search. And one of the best ways to land a Google Featured Snippet is to create content that answers a question.

In my case, most of my article headlines were written in a question format primarily not to land a Google Featured Snippet but because the entire article is written to answer that particular question. I wrote my posts in this format because I believe that it’s one of the best ways to rank higher in SERPs. Luckily, it’s also helping me land Google Featured Snippets.

Write High-Quality Content

High-quality content has always been the key to ranking high in Google. It’s also the same key in landing a Google Featured Snippet. That’s why sometimes, even relatively new blogs can outrank some blogs/websites with a lot of backlinks.

If there’s one thing that you should put your attention and focus on when it comes to blogging especially if you’re a newbie – it is to consistently create high-quality content.

If I’m being honest with myself, I feel that I’m failing in doing this because I’m not consistent in writing high-quality content. I have a lot of idle months in blogging mainly because as of the time being, I’m just a part-time blogger and I spend most of my time with my full-time gig which is online selling and I’m still struggling in managing both projects.

Hopefully, my experiments with scheduling will help me produce more high-quality content in the future.

Anyway, going back to the topic…

 

Outrank Your Competition 

If you’re thinking of writing an article that could land the top spot in Google SERP and has the potential to land a Google Featured Snippet, then you also have to outrank your competition. Producing a high-quality article may be enough if the keyword that you’re targetting has low competition (my current blogging strategy).

But if you want to outrank very competitive keywords, then you will also have to level up your game. This is when backlinks and tons of social media interactions come in.

Just imagine this, if two articles are both very high in quality, how will Google decide which one to rank higher? It will of course look for other ways to determine the most relevant and useful website right? And some of these may include (but are not limited to): speed of your website, backlinks, social media interactions (shares, likes, etc), and more.

Keep Your Posts Updated

I have recently started updating my old post and I still have a looong way to go.

Why do you have to update old posts?

Well, there are certain articles wherein information gets changed and these are the ones that need to be updated constantly. Unfortunately, I realized that I have a lot of these kinds of articles LOL! That means I have to constantly update them to remain relevant in the eyes of Google and in the eyes of my audience.

One of my realization to make things more manageable is to write evergreen articles which do not need to be updated regularly. To be honest, I also have some of these but they are not ranking well in Google.

I will probably take some time in the future to study how to rank in Google with evergreen articles.

Optimized Your Article

To land a Google Featured Snippet you will also have to optimize your article. Organize your posts using H2 and H3 header tags so it will be easy for Google to identify the importance of your content.

If you want to land a table on Google Featured Snippet then create a post that will have a table in it. This should be very common in comparison-type of articles, etc.

Always Keep Your Readers in Mind

Your readers are basically your blog traffic and they’re also Google’s customers because basically, they used Google Search (most of them probably) when they first came to your website.

When writing an article put yourself into your readers’ shoes and write the best content that answers their questions and organize your blog post in such a way that makes it very easy for them to find what they’re looking for.

Keep Learning and Keep on Improving

Let’s face it, blogging especially blogging for profit is a tough industry to break into especially when you’re just starting. There’s so much to learn, to understand and there’s so much to do. On top of that, new competition (new blogs) are being created on a daily basis.

If you want to earn a decent income from your blog (I do LOL!) then we all have to be on top of our game and we have to keep on learning and improving our craft.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Final Thoughts

If you’re a new blogger then landing a Google Featured Snippet should not be your main priority. Your main priority should be – to train yourself how to write high-quality contents that people are searching for… consistently. I can’t say what these contents are because they will vary depending on your target audience and your chosen niche.

But regardless of who you want to write for and what niche you’d like to be a part of, just try your best to write the best possible article… consistently (Note to Self LOL!). This is one of the reasons why I try to write as much as I can because I know that I still have so much to learn and to improve when it comes to writing.

Practice makes perfect, right? Or at least near-perfect LOL!

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