SERP features are increasingly overtaking the search landscape, stealing traffic from content providers. The featured snippet, however, is one that we still have a level of control over. Emily's SearchLeeds talk will show you exactly how much traffic you can expect to gain by acquiring featured snippets with data from case studies to justify their value, and also share tips on how to win them.

1. Featured Snippets: The
Achievable SERP Feature
Emily Potter

3. Today I’m going to cover 3 things...
Intro Existing Studies My Own Study

4. What is a featured snippet?

5. What is a featured snippet?

6. Why do we like featured snippets?

7. Winning Featured Snippets:
Attempt #1

8. Found keywords with featured snippets

9. Included keywords in headings

10. Included keywords in headings

11. Included keywords in headings

12. Included keywords in headings

13. Turned content into lists

14. Turned content into lists

15. Turned content into lists

16. Turned prices into tables

17. Turned prices into tables

18. I think this just might be my masterpiece

19. Is this just a talk about winning
featured snippets?

20. Did any of these tactics work?

22. Lesson #1:
Google is the enemy.

23. Winning Featured Snippets:
Attempt #2

24. Focus more on competitors.

25. Are they answering the query better?

26. Are they answering the query better?
What format are they using?

27. Are they answering the query better?
What format are they using?
Are they using headings and we’re not?

29. One more keyword.

32. 35 hours later...

33. Lesson #2:
Featured snippets are bullshit.

34. What’s not to like about
featured snippets?

35. Featured snippets steal clicks

36. ahrefs
Link here.

37. Featured snippets are reducing CTRs

38. Featured snippets increase no-click searches
29.8%
without clicks
Searches with
featured snippet
25.8%
without clicks
Searches without
featured snippets

39. Featured snippets create
confirmation bias

42. Featured snippets are
unsophisticated

45. I set out to prove
featured snippets are overrated.

46. Featured snippets increase CTR by over 114%
Link here.

47. Featured snippet increased sessions by 516%
Link here.

49. Luckily, these studies suck.

50. Issues with these studies
1. Misleading wording

51. Issues with these studies
1. Misleading wording
○ Reporting relative instead of absolute increase

52. “The CTR for high volume
keywords increased by over 114%”

53. Issues with these studies
1. Misleading wording
○ Reporting relative instead of absolute increase
○ Misleading headlines

55. Issues with these studies
1. Misleading wording
2. No experiment control

60. I decide to create my own study.

61. My research method

62. Research method - Hypothesis
Owning a featured snippet does not have a significant impact
on click-through-rates.

63. Research method - Data sources
Data sources - STAT
● When featured snippet appeared and if we owned it
● Base rank of our page

64. Research method - Data sources
Data sources - Google Search Console
● Click-through-rate (CTR)
● Only included queries with impressions > 60

65. 3,834 data points

66. My findings

67. Featured snippets improve CTRs

68. For every organic position

69. Position 4 and up most likely to own them

71. “For the top 5 results, backlinks and
other authority signals matter much
less for winning a featured snippet.”

72. Average rank with featured snippet
2.1

73. Average rank without featured snippet
3.3

74. Pages below rank 10 unlikely to own them

76. CTR increase lower than existing studies

77. CTR increase lower than existing studies

78. Featured snippets work.

80. I still hate featured snippets.

81. Monday morning actions

82. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets

83. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
○ Avoid keywords with commercial intent

84. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
○ Avoid keywords with commercial intent
○ Flag where you rank higher than the current owner

85. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
2. Look for low hanging fruit

86. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
2. Look for low hanging fruit
○ Steal headings (especially when you rank higher)

87. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
2. Look for low hanging fruit
○ Steal headings (especially when you rank higher)
○ Join two points together with “However”

88. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
2. Look for low hanging fruit
3. Add on-page content for well performing pages

89. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
2. Look for low hanging fruit
3. Add on-page content for well performing pages
4. Re-format your content to match that of current owner

90. Monday morning actions
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
2. Look for low hanging fruit
3. Add on-page content for well performing pages
4. Re-format your content to match that of current owner
○ Turn paragraphs into lists, lists into tables, etc.

91. Bonus Tool: Natural Language Processing
Question And Answer Demo Using BERT NLP
● Verify Google can extract answers from your content
● https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/open-sourcing-bert-
state-of-art-pre.html

93. Emily Potter
@e_mpotter
www.slideshare.net/EmilyPotter7/emily-potter-brighton-seo-2019-slideshare