How to get your business mentioned as a featured snippet on Google (That’s position zero!)

Google’s featured snippets are placed above all of Google’s organic results. This means that ranking in position 1 is good, but ranking in position zero is even better for capturing customers.

In this article, we will discuss how to structure your content marketing best to secure more clients.

 

Within this article, we will discuss:

• What are Google’s Featured Snippets are and why are they so important in terms of helping to gain more sales?
• Why content structure and the formatting of the page are important to gaining a featured snippet
• Why technical optimisation is important, including page speed, crawlability and depth of answer
• We discuss why the quality of the content marketing is very important.
  Google EEAT needs to be correctly implemented on the page, plus a clear understanding of what this means in terms of offering a detailed, helpful a solid answer to the query.
• Why the optimised page must be as helpful as possible (Google Helpful Content Update)
• How featured snippets can improve click-through rates by citing the company.

In the world of search engine optimisation, various marketing businesses often claim they can skyrocket rankings to position 1 in a short period of time. However, organic optimisation is often a slow, hard process.

Yet, aiming and achieving position 1 is great; it can draw in healthy amounts of new leads and customers when implemented correctly. Yet do you know what can be even better than ranking in position 1 on Google?

That’s where Google Featured Snippets can help; they can help transform your business’s visibility and click-through rates. This post will explain what Featured Snippets are, why they matter, and how to improve your chances of achieving featured snippet results.

 

Here are some key takeaways:

Featured snippets can capture 35 to 45% of all page clicks, and that’s massive. Imagine all the businesses ranked organically; if they are lower down Google’s organic results, say in positions 7, 8, 9, and 10. These businesses may only get far fewer clicks than the prestigious “Google

Featured snippet result or AI generated answer”.

 

Page Structure and On-page optimisation

Page structure matters; use ordered lists and bullet points to summarise information. The GEO models and Googlebot can then better understand the page.

Voice searches now account for around 20% of mobile queries, and here’s the important part: Google often reads directly from its own featured snippets when offering an answer. Imagine how valuable that is when you think about voice searches made on the move on smartphones and in the car, if your brand is mentioned as offering a solution or answer.

SEMrush has published comprehensive data showing that 99.58% of all featured snippets come from the top 10 organic results.

 

Tell me more about what Google’s Featured Snippets are and why they are so valuable to businesses?

Google’s Featured Snippets are nothing new; Google actually introduced this feature back in 2014. However, because Featured Snippets look so different from other Google results and stand out above Google’s organic results, they gobble up much of a shopper’s attention and also clicks.

Google’s Featured Snippets typically obtain 35-45% of all clicks on a Google search results page. Featured Snippets also help improve brand awareness; even if you don’t get a click, your brand can be cited in a prominent spot within Google’s results.

What this basically means is, for example, someone might have a very exact question; let’s say that they are replacing a car part and need advice. If your brand offers a direct answer and stocks that product, the customer may remember brand name and return later to make the purchase from you, if you are cited as an AI answer or as a featured snippet.

 

What are the different types of featured snippets?

Paragraph snippets

These typically contain 40-60 words of text that directly answer a question.

List snippets

These typically display a numbered list or bullet points, such as guidance on how to cook something.

Table snippets

These typically show comparative data or organised information in rows

 

AEO strategies

AEO strategies, where content marketing is optimised to provide a direct answer, are closely related to optimising content marketing to appear in a Google Featured Snippet.

 

Optimising for ChatGPT, Google’s Bard

Both of these AI tools prefer clear, concise answers. So don’t waffle with long answers; keep them short. This doesn’t mean the page needs a low word count, as that could be considered a “content thin page” which is negative for SEO. Instead, make the content comprehensive, but split the page into sections with crisp, clear answers in each one and use H1-H6 tags.

 

Google Search Console

Use Google Search Console to see where your business currently ranks on page one of Google organically. This creates “low-hanging fruit” you can then improve the on-page optimisation further and increase the chances of being cited as an AI or Featured Snippet answer.

If you are not on page one, work on that first to improve organic rankings before focusing on getting the answer mentioned in a featured snippet. The reason is simple: you need to have a high Google EEAT score for that page, for the answer to deemed eligible to be cited as a featured snippet. The page needs to rank high organically first; that way, Google builds an understanding of the page’s dwell time, bounce rate, and CTR.

Google’s algorithms then look for authoritative answers and are therefore more likely to cite quality answers from an authoritative source within the featured snippets.

 

Start with a very clear answer.

Although the rest of the page might be quite wordy, make sure you provide a clear answer right within the first paragraph of the page. This means that when Googlebot crawls and indexes the page, you’ve already provided a clear answer within the opening paragraph that can be cited and used.

SEO experts know Google provides each business with a limited crawl budget.

So, do make sure each page you add is high quality in terms of offering quality advice. Also, write a clear opening paragraph to answer the question within the first lines of text, so Googlebot can quickly understand what the whole page is about.

Use technical optimisation to increase your chances of being cited as a featured snippet.

 

Schema mark-up

Schema markup helps Google to better understand the page’s purpose, in terms of what its selling or the advice that its offering. For example, with product Schema, Googlebot can better understand what the page is selling.

 

Page loading speed

Good SEO means prioritising user experience (U.X). This means making the website as fast as possible, especially on mobile devices. Studies suggest that if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, shoppers will leave the page (increasing the bounce rate); we consider this a bounce if the shopper doesn’t visit another page on the website.

A high, especially sustained, bounce rate is not good for a business’s search engine optimisation.

 

Google favours Authoritative Content.

It stands to reason that the answers that Google presents within Featured Snippets or AI answers come from pages or businesses Google has deemed as an expert on that subject. For example, if you’re asking about diamond wedding rings, the answer will likely come from a business that Google considers as the absolute expert in offering that product or service.

Therefore, any business, regardless of niche, needs to publish authoritative, comprehensive, detailed content. This means showing you’re an expert in your area and demonstrating strong Google EEAT on every page where your business offers advice.

 

Keep pages up to date.

A common misconception is that Google “crawls and indexes” a page just once. This is not the case; Googlebot revisits pages (recrawls) to see whether the author or business has updated them.

Google therefore tracks when pages were last updated.

Google also prioritises pages that are kept up to date, and therefore these pages will often offer more accurate information. For example, if you want to buy an e-bike and find some of the very best bikes available right now, you don’t want to read a guide that was first published in 2021 and hasn’t been updated since.

 

Relevant links (backlinks)

A sure-fire way to increase your business’s chances of appearing in more featured snippets is to earn more quality links. Backlinks need to be relevant to your business, and the more quality links you obtain, the stronger your business’s backlink profile becomes.

With a strong backlink profile, your website and its linked pages become more authoritative.

This means Google will deem those pages more important if they have many quality inbound links. Then the information on those pages is much more likely to be cited in Google AI answers and more likely to appear as a Featured Snippet.

 

Why U.X and monitoring user experience signals matter so much

We recommend monitoring bounce rates, page dwell times, and aiming to achieve higher click-through rates from Google SERPs.

These signals, such as a reduced bounce rate, higher dwell times, are always clear signs to Google that you’re publishing quality content.
A good SEO strategist will therefore create highly engaging, authoritative content.

 

Google Search Console

In Google Search Console, you can generate a “Performance Report” that shows which queries have created a featured snippet. In Google Search Console, you can monitor impressions, clicks, and average position for specific keywords.

 

Google Analytics

Another useful tool is Google Analytics. You can use it, for example, to monitor session duration on a page and how much traffic a page or blog post gets.

 

Frequently asked questions:

How long does it take to secure a featured snippet?

If your business is considered an expert in that sector, your content marketing is more likely to be cited.

For example, let’s say you’re an established brand in luxury watches. Your business has built a reputation as being an expert in that area, by publishing guides and articles on say Swiss watches for many years.

This means Google already understands your business and content marketing, and that its high quality, this will likely earn a high Google

EEAT score. Because of this, new guides and pages are likely to rank higher organically because the SEO work has already been implemented.

Therefore, a new page is likely to rank higher on Google and also be more likely to be cited as a featured snippet.

 

Can your business be cited as a featured snippet without being ranked on page one of Google’s organic results?

Data shows a very strong correlation between ranking on page one of Google’s organic results and the page generating a featured snippet.

Therefore, our advice is twofold: first, focus on improving the Google EEAT score across all pages.

If you don’t know what Google EEAT stands for, we recommend reading this page. Then focus on generating and earning higher organic rankings.

This way, when the page ranks high organically, you can greatly increase your chances of the business appearing as a featured snippet.

 

How we can help

If you would like further help to improve your businesses SEO, then give us a ring.