{"id":33766,"date":"2022-01-04T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-04T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/authorityhacker.com\/?p=33766"},"modified":"2024-04-10T15:53:49","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T15:53:49","slug":"featured-snippets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/featured-snippets\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Featured Snippets: The Data Backed Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Rich snippets are the most important thing happening in SEO today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may not feel any dramatic impacts yet, but slowly and surely, the way people use Google is changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is both good and bad news<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We looked at the articles already out there, we looked at all the credible studies and we researched new data ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of that to make this piece the only thing you need to read on the topic this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, let\u2019s not waste time – here is the table of contents:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re not new to the topic of rich snippets, feel free to skim through the charts or jump to the sections that you care about right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or read carefully and learn something new, that may impact your business this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, we crawled and analyzed over 1 million search results<\/a>. The study found that well over 40% of all top spots are taken by some sort of snippet placed there by Google.<\/p>\n\n\n When we repeated the analysis with high-volume keywords (over 1000 searches a month) and eliminated the likely branded queries, the result was astonishing – 65% of top spots were taken by the top featured rich snippets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For reference, when Ahrefs did a similar study<\/a> in 2017, they found figures that were much lower – about 12.3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One reason is that Ahrefs\u2019 definition of \u201cfeatured snippets\u201d is narrower than ours, referring to just one kind of a snippet. But more on that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we\u2019re talking about \u201crich snippets\u201d (also called SERP features) what we have in mind is any result that isn\u2019t a traditional search result, i.e. the page or a website that ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can be a summary extracted from a website that answers the question, a widget such as a calculator Google shows when querying for maths, tweet or news snippets, shopping results, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n As you can see on the pic above, Google now resembles a standalone content page with a bunch of widgets and a few search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, I\u2019m using ad blocker so ads are missing but imagine if there were ads above all these results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of today, there are many different kinds of snippets. For this article we\u2019ll go with the categories used by Ahrefs, as that\u2019s our main SEO tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a bunch of different types of rich snippets and a few of them can take up the top spot. Featured snippet and knowledge cards are usually on top, tweet box, top stories and some others may take up the top spot too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a couple of more examples:<\/p>\n\n\n Different rich snippets can take up the top spot, often pushing top organic results below the visible parts. Here is one more:<\/p>\n\n\n The \u2018shopping results\u2019 at the top of the page falls under the category of \u2018knowledge card\u2019 if you use Ahrefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like I said \u2018knowledge card\u2019 is rather a broad umbrella term that covers many different kinds of snippets that appear on top of the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally the featured snippet:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n I\u2019ll cut it short, you can read the definition yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is interesting about these is that Ahrefs found 12.3% of all non-branded search queries display this on top of the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As stated before, our study showed that 40% – 65% of top positions are taken by one of the snippet categories, including<\/strong> featured snippets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, these little extracts is what SEOs care about the most, as they steal the query, grab attention and provide instant answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s have a look at where we are now, two years after the Ahrefs study.<\/p>\n\n\n Roughly 50% growth, for featured snippets alone. The trend is clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google is an advertising company. That means, it gets paid for showing ads on its websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t get paid for driving traffic to your<\/strong> website, but for driving it to whoever pays for the featured ad on top of the search results page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means the search engine wants to make as many people stay on its pages as possible, to make money while keeping the user (not you, the content creator) happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s the controversy with featured snippets. You create content, Google gets the benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, Google still needs to keep publishers happy enough or they won\u2019t have good source material to scrape from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, the looming of some kind of EU law preventing them from using your content is always hanging over their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So they need to go slow with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many SEO gurus are selling these developments as some great thing that is an opportunity to steal the top spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many others, I\u2019m not buying it right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider this – like most people, thanks to this snippet, I haven\u2019t visited a single sports website in the last two years:<\/p>\n\n\n There is, however, more to it. The reason I used the words \u201c right away\u201d in the same sentence as \u201cI\u2019m not buying it\u201d is that gurus are also right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it all depends on the query.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As shown in our SERPs study<\/a>, the top position gets the vast majority of the traffic, while everyone else gets the scraps.<\/p>\n\n\n The Ahrefs study has established that featured snippets can steal over 30% of the click-through rates from the top result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So for the keywords that perform well for you, you might actually be able to get ahead, secure the snippet for you and benefit from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might even be able to steal it.<\/p>\n\n\n Our study of 500,000 search results shows that well over 60% of all featured snippets are \u201cstolen\u201d by other than the top ranked website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you add up the numbers, taking away 20% of CTR from the top ranked page can be quite a lucrative achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And many SEOs have reported a boost in their traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another interesting observation we noticed in our analysis was that different searches for the same keyword result in different rich features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Querying the same keyword from different browsers, with different language or locations settings will yield different snippets.<\/p>\n\n\n Here is a good example. I searched the same keyword from Safari, Chrome and Brave browser at the same time, all yielded different SERP features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think the browser type matters, rather it\u2019s the different default settings for search, location, privacy and so on that Google adjusts its search engine to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, our study has confirmed different geographies yield different results too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We took 50,000 random long-tail English language keywords, that had a minimum of 1000 searches a month and looked at the results from the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is what we\u2019ve got:<\/p>\n\n\n We\u2019ve also established in the SERPs study that the volume makes a difference i.e. higher volume keywords show more snippets. To my knowledge, this has been observed in other studies too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, running queries for the same English language keywords in Canada will show lower volumes compared to the US. But we wanted to check anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we have different volumes per geography and different snippets too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what does all of that mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It means there is plenty of opportunities and a premium in CTR to be acquired, as long as you already rank in the top 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s get a bit more actionable now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best way to find featured snippets opportunities is to use Ahrefs<\/a> (review<\/a>). As our readers know, we use Ahrefs for most of our SEO work, so we are going to use it here once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a bunch of ways to go about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a healthy sense for strategy suggests, it\u2019s best to start with the low hanging-fruit. In other words, you want to find the opportunities you already qualify for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For that, you\u2019ll need input your URL in site explorer -> organic keywords<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n As previously shown, you\u2019ll automatically qualify for featured snippets if you rank in the top 10. This has been confirmed by other studies as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So you look up your top keywords where you rank <= 10 and head over to SERP Features to filter out what you already own, and what\u2019s left to be taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result you get is a list of queries that already have featured snippets and where you stand a chance to take it over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s nice to note that Ahrefs tells you which snippets you already own by putting the icon on the line of the query:<\/p>\n\n\n I suppose it\u2019s a good idea to put all of these in a spreadsheet. You can use the Export<\/strong> feature in the top right corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having seen many featured snippets while doing the studies for this article, it appears to me that any non-branded query has a capacity to become a featured snippet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the most common ones contain these words according to our research:<\/p>\n\n\n\n So pay attention to any queries that are structured around these. However, any plain keyword that can yield a definition such as \u201caffiliate programs\u201d will yield a featured snippet too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another thing you don\u2019t want to miss is doing this search for multiple geographies. As shown in our study, different location settings yield different rich snippet variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should know what markets are relevant for you. If you\u2019re only marketing to let\u2019s say Canadians then it won\u2019t make much business sense for you, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rich Snippets Are Taking Over …<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Rich Snippets, Featured Snippets. What\u2019s the Difference.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Featured Snippets: Good or Bad News?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to Find Featured Snippet Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to<\/th> What (is)<\/th> Best<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Can<\/td> vs.<\/td> Make<\/td><\/tr> Top<\/td> Get<\/td> List<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n