9 Tips for Ranking in Google’s Featured Snippets - Part 2
- 4 years ago
One of the best ways to find snippets that you can optimize content for is to think like your audience.
What questions are people actually trying to find answers for?
For instance, put yourself in the shoes of someone who is new to marketing and may not understand some common terms.
There are a whole lot of terms and acronyms in the marketing world that can be intimidating and confusing to people who aren’t familiar with them.
Do a short search, such as “What is a CTA in marketing?”
For this search query, there’s a featured snippet in the form of a paragraph.
For the term you look for, the snippet might contain a list or a series of steps. And who knows — the featured content might already be yours.
If it isn’t, check out ideas under the “People also ask” section.
These are questions related to the search you already entered. To look at snippets for each search query, just expand the phrase by clicking the arrows on the right.
Then, you can read through the full snippet for each related question.
This is a quick way to identify competitors and content ideas in one easy step. Now, you can steal their snippet with a bit of time and effort.
You can also identify some questions by using a site like Answer the Public.
Tip #3: Find content ideas on Answer the Public
Since questions are most likely to bring up featured snippets, you’ve got to answer how, what, when, where, why, or who.
The best place to find out the types of questions people might be asking about a particular topic is Answer the Public.
Let’s say you want to learn more about apple pie.
Just type it in and you’ll receive tons of suggestions for questions related to the topic that you can answer with your content.
Then, pick which angle you want to take. If you want to answer questions that address the “what,” just focus on that section.
Then, pick a question to answer from that group. It’s that simple!
Keep in mind that you may want to do some keyword research before you do this to make sure the words you’re searching are SEO friendly.
Tip #4: Do keyword research
It’s time for some good old keyword research.
You should already be doing it. But you can optimize your keyword research to help you get featured snippets, too.
It’s a good idea to use a tool or two to find out if a search query will bring up featured results or not.
I like Serpstat because it allows me to easily see which keywords bring up featured snippets on the results page.
Now that’s pretty neat, right?
Just type in a domain, keyword, or link, and hover over each result to see if featured snippets come up for each.
This is awesome for uncovering which featured snippets your competitors are currently ranking for.
Plus, if you already rank high for a particular keyword, it’s worth finding out if Google currently brings up featured snippets for those keywords.
If they do, try to rank for it by identifying (and answering) the questions that people have about that topic.
What questions are people actually trying to find answers for?
For instance, put yourself in the shoes of someone who is new to marketing and may not understand some common terms.
There are a whole lot of terms and acronyms in the marketing world that can be intimidating and confusing to people who aren’t familiar with them.
Do a short search, such as “What is a CTA in marketing?”
For this search query, there’s a featured snippet in the form of a paragraph.
For the term you look for, the snippet might contain a list or a series of steps. And who knows — the featured content might already be yours.
If it isn’t, check out ideas under the “People also ask” section.
These are questions related to the search you already entered. To look at snippets for each search query, just expand the phrase by clicking the arrows on the right.
Then, you can read through the full snippet for each related question.
This is a quick way to identify competitors and content ideas in one easy step. Now, you can steal their snippet with a bit of time and effort.
You can also identify some questions by using a site like Answer the Public.
Tip #3: Find content ideas on Answer the Public
Since questions are most likely to bring up featured snippets, you’ve got to answer how, what, when, where, why, or who.
The best place to find out the types of questions people might be asking about a particular topic is Answer the Public.
Let’s say you want to learn more about apple pie.
Just type it in and you’ll receive tons of suggestions for questions related to the topic that you can answer with your content.
Then, pick which angle you want to take. If you want to answer questions that address the “what,” just focus on that section.
Then, pick a question to answer from that group. It’s that simple!
Keep in mind that you may want to do some keyword research before you do this to make sure the words you’re searching are SEO friendly.
Tip #4: Do keyword research
It’s time for some good old keyword research.
You should already be doing it. But you can optimize your keyword research to help you get featured snippets, too.
It’s a good idea to use a tool or two to find out if a search query will bring up featured results or not.
I like Serpstat because it allows me to easily see which keywords bring up featured snippets on the results page.
Now that’s pretty neat, right?
Just type in a domain, keyword, or link, and hover over each result to see if featured snippets come up for each.
This is awesome for uncovering which featured snippets your competitors are currently ranking for.
Plus, if you already rank high for a particular keyword, it’s worth finding out if Google currently brings up featured snippets for those keywords.
If they do, try to rank for it by identifying (and answering) the questions that people have about that topic.