2. Shelly Fagin
17+ Years in Digital Marketing
SEO Consultant & Developer
Specializes in Technical SEO
Site Auditing, Corporate Strategy, Training & Consulting
SEMrush Brand Ambassador
Former Community Manager
President of SearchHou
Owner of Highly Searched, Digital Marketing Agency
14. @shellyfagin
Why Care about Featured Snippets
Google told us it’s not going anywhere
Trust Signals for your Brand
Voice Search Pulls the Answers from Featured Snippe
50% of all Searches will be Voice Searches by 2020
15. @shellyfagin
Why Care about Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets Queries Drive Lots of Traffic
Building Brand Awareness in your Field
Showcasing your Authority & Expertise
Featured Snippets can Convert!! $$$
27. @shellyfagin
Which Format Should you Use
Questions: Paragraph Content
How-to & Instructions: Ordered Lists
Comparisons: Paragraph (with a few exceptions)
“Priced” - List Form
“Price” or “Pricing” - Table Form
28. Which Format Should you Use
Analyze the content of the site that currently owns the snippet
@shellyfagin
34. <h2>1. Living in Houston is more affordable than other large
metropolitans.</h2>
Life Storage
@shellyfagin
35. <ol>
<li>Living in Houston is more affordable than other large
metropolitans.</li>
<li>Figuring out where to live in Houston is simple</li>
</ol>
Life Storage
@shellyfagin
SERP Features is basically any result in the SERP that is not a Organic Result or a Paid Advertisement. They’re special elements to enrich basic organic searches to help provide quick answers. When SERP features started to appear, our Organic traffic started to shrink. Achieving the #1 position in Google won’t drive same volume the traffic you use to get 5 years ago. We can either sit around and be sad about this, or we can start optimizing for SERP features and snag what is referred to as Position Zero.
First we have Knowledge Panels which is very similar to the Knowledge Graph. The main difference is a KP is about a Business and Google pulls in the information from places like Google My Business & Google Maps, where a KG is usually about a place or person and Google pulls info from places like Wikipedia
First we have Knowledge Panels which is very similar to the Knowledge Graph. The main difference is a KP is about a Business and Google pulls in the information from places like Google My Business & Google Maps, where a KG is usually about a place or person and Google pulls info from places like Wikipedia
First we have Knowledge Panels which is very similar to the Knowledge Graph. The main difference is a KP is about a Business and Google pulls in the information from places like Google My Business & Google Maps, where a KG is usually about a place or person and Google pulls info from places like Wikipedia
Instant answers AKA Answer Boxes tend to answer the users query instantly without a link to a source
Instant answers AKA Answer Boxes tend to answer the users query instantly without a link to a source
I have two favorite SERP Features that I love to help my clients optimize for. Both are extremely powerful snippets that with some good strategies and content, can be easily obtained and utilized by pretty much any industry or vertical.
A features snippet is a summary of an answer to a user’s query that Google displays at the top of their results. The summary is extracted from from a website along with a link to the site and sometimes an image pulled from the content.
Next to Featured Snippet Optimization, Video Snippets come in a close second as we have been enjoying creating video content and YouTube SEO. But that’s a topic for another day.
In January, Danny Sullivan published a blog post letting us know Featured Snippets are around for the long-haul.
When a featured snippet is chosen by Google, Google considers you a reliable, trustworthy authority for that query and hopefully eventually that topic.
Questions, Prepositions, and Comparison queries dominate featured snippet results
We have discovered that in order to be a contender for the Featured Snippet, you must rank in the TOP 5 Organic Positions. Forget the top 10. 94% of snippets pull from one of the top 5 results.
So when you are beginning to optimize and win snippets, start first with your easy wins. Look for queries where you are already ranking in the Top 5 spots.
First you want to export all the keywords you rank in the Top 5 for Organically and I also further refined my list to remove all queries with less than 200 monthly search volume as well.
Setup a New Project, configure a Position Tracking Tool and Import your keyword list you just exported.
Questions, Prepositions, and Comparison queries dominate featured snippet results
To find queries that triggers a featured snippet but you do not currently own, try this filtering trick in SEMrush.
89% of Questions are formatted in paragraph form
Prepositions are meant for lists, though paragraph form does equally well it is believe that a well-optimized list will out-perform paragraph form
Remember that example above – Top Reasons People Move to Houston? Our Featured Snippet Winner holds the 3rd Position Organically.
The 1st Place Organic result goes to Life Storage for their article 11 Reasons Why People are Moving to Houston.
It’s a very nice & detailed article with a lot more content on the page compared to our Snippet winner.
When you compare the two, it’s no surprise that Life Storage holds the #1 spot organically but you’ve got to wonder how come 3 Men Movers won the Snippet.
When you compare the two, it’s no surprise that Life Storage holds the #1 spot organically but you’ve got to wonder how come 3 Men Movers won the Snippet.
Life Storage has a Top 11 List and has each item coded as an H2. They should be marked-up as an Ordered List
This should be marked-up as an Ordered List.
Long Form Content Must be Scannable, especially on mobile
Start off your formatted content with a heading tag that clearly states the query or answers the query
For example: If the query is “How to get rid of rats in your house, add a header that state “Best Types of Mouse Traps”
Don’t get overly descriptive with your headers and title tags ie. “How to Make The Most Yummiest Pizza you’ve ever Tasted” go simple with “How to Make the Best Pizza”
Don’t have walls of text. Break it up with Images. Closely match your Alt text to the matching header and place it either to the side of your content or immediately below to increase the chance it will be included in your snippet. We’ve seen a lot of examples where Google will use the image from a different result, mixing the images and content, if you don’t have one in your content.
When studying the content that’s been awarded the most snippets, we found an average of 33 citations within the content. Back up your claims!
Analyze your competitors content. Can your answer be better? More descriptive? Include more visuals?
When I am searching for a product and I want a list of the Best available, I’ll add 2018 to my query
Once you’ve finished your optimization, visit GSC and have Google fetch your newly optimized page. I’ve stolen the Featured Snippet in as fast as two days and bumped up from 5th to 3rd organically as well. If you don’t see changes after about a week, go in and optimize some more and keep at it until you’ve snagged it.
Once you’ve finished your optimization, visit GSC and have Google fetch your newly optimized page. I’ve stolen the Featured Snippet in as fast as two days and bumped up from 5th to 3rd organically as well. If you don’t see changes after about a week, go in and optimize some more and keep at it until you’ve snagged it.
After I’m done optimizing my existing content, I move on to next step is to find what featured snippets my clients competitors have. You have my permission to actually go after and steal your competitors Featured Snippets. It’s totally legal, unlike what this porch pirate is doing in this picture. Don’t stop there. Identify Similar Companies in other Cities and Analyze their Snippets too. You’ll find queries you never thought of and might not show up for general searches.
Don’t assume these queries won’t convert. We have a local client who’s snippet ranks for queries related to “Hot Water Heater” problems and we get a ton of local conversions. When you are working on a new content strategy, use a tool like SEMrush to discover all the queries and content that your competitors own a features snippet and use those as guidelines for creating new, better content and go steal some more snippets.
