Yes. The title isn’t clickbait. It spits out facts. Securing snippet features can tremendously transform the way your website gains visibility, drives traffic, and sidelines your rivals. 📈

Why? That’s because getting featured in snippet positions is like being under the spotlight of search engines that showcase you on top of other search results. Period.

And here’s the list of things you will be taking away from this blog:

• Featured Snippets 101
• Why it is highly important for the growth of businesses
• Sneak peek at our secret steps to secure snippet positions for Atlan’s blogs
• Results: before and after screenshots of snippet positions that we secured
• Caveats to be cautious
• And bonus tips to back you up in the journey of securing snippet positions for your targeted keywords. ✨🚀

Sounds exciting? Without any further ado, let’s look at how you can leverage the power of snippet features by learning how we helped Atlan secure several snippet positions. 📊

🎯 Mission:

Optimize a set of blogs in order to obtain snippet positions.

📃 Client profile:

Atlan is one of the best-in-class SaaS-based collaborative platforms for data professionals to manage and work with data more effectively by providing tools for data management, collaboration, automation, analysis, and visualization.

📝 Problem statement:

The client already liked our previous work (SEO optimizations for several cohorts of blogs with the intent of securing higher ranks in the SERP).

And then we were assigned a new mission: securing featured snippet positions for a set of keywords. The blogs for those keywords were already ranking in the top 10 positions in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Wait. What is the featured snippet? 🤔

• A featured snippet is a special type of search result that appears at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) to a user query.

• It is like a highlight that concisely summarizes the answer to the user’s query.
• For example,

• The purpose of featured snippets is to act as a tool that search engines use to help users get quick answers to their queries without having to navigate through websites.
• By providing a summary of relevant content, snippets give users a sneak peek into what they can expect from the source, and encourage them to click through for more information.
• And by securing snippet features, businesses can potentially increase the chances of driving more traffic to the website.

FYI: Virtual assistants (Google Assistant, Siri & Alexa are like modern-day geniuses, answering your vocal search queries using “featured snippets” as their secret ingredient.

🌈 Types of snippet features

Based on the intent of the search query, search engines generally show six different types of featured snippets:

• • Paragraph – a concise response to a query presented in paragraph form.
  • Bullet list – a list of items that answers a user’s query
  • Numbered list – a numbered list of items that answers a user’s query
  • Table – a table that answers a question concisely by listing data in rows and columns.
  • Video – a video that answers a user’s question and is shown at the top of the search results page.
  • Location-oriented – a featured snippet that shows contact details and a location map for a nearby store or service.

And each of them enhances the level of business in endless ways. Yet, let’s take a look at five reasons why they should aim for featured snippet positions.

🖐️ 5 Key Reasons Why Your Business Should Aim for the Featured Snippets

1) Enhanced visibility 👀

Get your business seen by a larger audience! Featured snippets appear at the very top of the SERP, giving you maximum visibility and a better chance of getting clicks.

2) Authority building 🗿

Establish yourself as a trusted authority in your industry. Winning a featured snippet shows that Google recognizes your expertise, which can help build credibility with potential customers.

3) More clicks, more traffic 🖱️✨

Since featured snippets provide a quick answer to a user’s question, they tend to have a higher click-through rate. By aiming for a featured snippet, businesses can increase their chances of getting clicks and driving more traffic to their website.

4) Competitive edge 🤜🤛

Stand out from the crowd and leave your competitors in the dust! Winning a featured snippet is a powerful way to differentiate yourself and showcase your industry knowledge.

5) Exceptional user experience 😃🙌

Delight your customers with valuable, high-quality content! By aiming for a featured snippet, you can ensure that you’re providing the best possible answer to your audience’s questions, which leads to a better user experience and increased customer loyalty.

With that being said, let’s understand the qualifying factors for getting featured snippet positions.

How do search engines choose content to showcase as featured snippets? 🤔

• Before choosing specific content for featured snippets, search engines will qualify the contending content based on several factors. Such as relevance, quality, format, and how well it matches the user’s intent.
• In order to increase the chances of getting your content featured, make sure it’s clear, concise, and optimized for the keywords and phrases people are using to search. It would be great if you can provide a direct answer to a common question.

Pro tip: Put yourselves in the shoes of search engines while analyzing existing snippets and crafting your own.

Unraveling the Solution aka Our Snippet Securing Process: 🔓

✅ Step 1: Googled the targeted keywords and thoroughly studied the existing snippets.

✅ Step 2: Paid close attention to the qualifying factors (snippet structure, number of characters, target keywords, bolded keywords, text positioning, and the way they answered the user’s queries).

FYI: 30 to 50 words, or up to 300 characters, is the ideal length for featured snippets.

✅ Step 3: Unshakable observation yielded an in-depth understanding of how Google qualifies specific content for featuring as snippets. I clicked through the snippets to see the positions of the chosen content on the web pages (they are usually highlighted in purple color).

✅ Step 4: Step 3 revealed where the snippets were positioned. I.e., right below H1, under H2, or positioned under H3.

✅ Step 5: Based on the qualifying factors found during observation, we started refining our content to secure the snippet positions.

✅ Step 6: Implemented the changes. After that, we submitted the web pages’ URLs for indexing via the URL inspection tool in the Google Search Console.

✅ Step 7: Waited 1-4 weeks, and witnessed the wonderful results our refinements reaped.

Results: 📈📊

By following those steps, here’s what we have achieved. This is a testament that you too can reap such results.

#1 Targeted keyword:  Data catalog vs. data dictionary 🎖️

Before:

After:

#2 Targeted keyword:  Data lineage benefits🎖️

Before:

After:

#3 Targeted keyword:  Automated data lineage 🎖️

Before: No featured snippet for the targeted keyword. Still, Atlan’s respective blog secured another feature “People also ask”.

After:

#4 Targeted keyword:  Enterprise data dictionary 🎖️

Before: no snippet.

After:

#5 Targeted keyword:  Examples of a data dictionary 🎖️

Before:

After:

If Atlan can do, and so can you!

Caveats: 🚸

• To qualify for a featured snippet on Google, your content needs to appear on the first page (or at least the second page) of search results. The vast majority of featured snippets are sourced from the top 10 ranked web pages.
• Did you know that featured snippets can change frequently? That’s right! They’re highly volatile and can fluctuate quite a bit. But don’t let that discourage you! With a little bit of know-how, you can stay on top of these changes and come out on top.
• Keep track of changes in the search engine results page (SERP) to stay ahead of the game and adjust your strategy as needed. So, don’t let changes in the SERP catch you off guard!
• Sometimes you succeed at the first shot itself. Other times, you have to try 2-4 times by continuous experimentation.

By providing the best and most relevant content for your audience, you increase your chances of earning that coveted featured snippet spot. So, practice the steps above and aim for greatness.

Digital Toolkit: 🧰

✅ SEO keyword selection: SEMRush

✅ Decoding framework: Google’s SERP

✅ Drafting: Google docs

✅ Project management: Google Drive

🎁 Bonus tips:

#1 Discover the Perfect Keywords for Featured Snippets with These Expert Tips!

• With the right SEO tools, discovering the perfect keywords for featured snippets is a cakewalk.
• For instance, here is how you can discover them using SEMRush:

👣 Footsteps:

• Log in to SEMRush. In the SEO dashboard, click on projects and then select the project name.

• In the position tracking page, select the featured snippets tab in the top right corner as shown in the picture above.

• As you can see, SEMRush shows the number of snippets featured already and the number of potential opportunities to secure more snippets.
• Besides, you can discover the perfect keyword for securing featured snippets by analyzing the keywords in your blogs ranking in the top 10 positions of SERP and your competitors’ featured snippets.

#2 Here’s how you can view the keywords and relevant content that have already secured snippet positions:

👣 Footsteps:

• Enter your domain name in the search bar of SEMRush. And then select the organic research tab in the SEO dashboard.

• Then, scroll down below and click on the featured snippet in the SERP features section. After that, you can see the organic search positions.

• Organic search positions aka list of featured keywords that have secured snippet positions.
• And that’s all it is.

Loved it? Once again scroll up and skim through the blogs. Then you are ready to hunt down the positions you want your target keywords to conquer.

And if you have any queries or need our assistance to reap all the benefits of securing featured snippet positions effortlessly, connect with us :