How to get Google featured snippets: 9 optimization guidelines - Search Engine Land

Here's a set of guidelines to follow when optimizing for the featured snippet – like using an “is” statement and defining the topic concisely.

The featured snippet is still one of the SERPs’ most coveted pieces of real estate. They allow your site to quickly jump to the top of the search results, even if the “traditional rankings” would place your site at the bottom of the first page.

My team and I have had a lot of success optimizing for featured snippets over the years. Eventually, we developed our internal frameworks for what performs best in claiming these yearned-for positions.

Below are the strategies we use to optimize for featured snippet results.

What is a featured snippet?

A featured snippet is a two- to three-sentence summary of text that appears at the top of Google. Featured snippets directly answer a user’s query in the search results. Receiving a featured snippet can result in more traffic for a given page.

Featured snippet optimization

Follow these steps to optimize for featured snippets::

• Add a “What is” heading.
• Use an “is” sentence structure.
• Fully define the topic.
• Match the featured snippet format.
• Don’t use your brand name.
• Don’t use first-person language.
• Scale featured snippets.
• Prioritize when you rank in the top five.
• Iterate your optimizations.

The featured snippet appears to work on a more simplistic algorithm than Google’s “primary” one. The featured snippet is much more influenced by simple on-page adjustments that clearly define the topic...

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.