How to Write Content For Google Featured Snippets

Brands get excited when they realize the potential of Google’s featured snippet blocks. They should. These little boxes at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) offer a great opportunity for brands. We’ll start by defining Google Featured snippets because, as an agency, we’ve heard a lot of misconceptions.

What are Google’s Featured Snippets Blocks?

Google’s featured snippet blocks (also known as Google answer boxes, Google quick answers, or Google answer boxes) feature relevant, concise, and specific content that is directly related to the user’s query. Here is an example of Power Digital’s featured snippet on the search term “top SEM Tools.”

Are featured snippets the same as Google Knowledge Graph results?

No. A featured snippet is the answer that someone searching for a reply to a topic or question receives. The featured snippet results block includes the extracted answer from a website, as well as a link, title, and URL of the web page. Does this sound familiar? It’s the same organic search result, but it has a different layout.

Knowledge Graph results are often the best answer for those searching for a specific definition, math result, capital city, language of a particular country, etc. It is different from standard organic search results and featured snippets because it does not link to a specific web page or URL.

Where Do You Begin to Formulate a Specific Strategy for Featured Snippets?

It’s important to choose a topic that is based on SEO keyword research. This is a good place to begin. Google Trends can help you determine if your topic is trending upwards or downwards in terms of search interest. From there, find specific long-tail search queries by using tools such as Google Keyword Planner Tool or Keyword Tool (https://keywordtool.io/).

When formulating a strategy for a featured snippet, there are many other important considerations. When you want to rank your content in a featured excerpt, the structure of your content is crucial. According to Moz, 63% of Google’s featured snippets come from paragraphs, 19% from lists, and 16% from tables.

Listicle-style content is a good choice (e.g., if you’re creating a listicle-style piece of content (e.g., best five brands for fair trade coffee or top 10 reasons to invest SEO); make sure to number your “answers” so Google can quickly find them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you should launch tons of pages with bulleted lists. Moz recommends that you write long-form articles when writing for featured excerpts. You probably already know if you are familiar with SEO that Google favors longer content, as long as the content is unique and of high quality. You would have to write at least 200+ words about each of the five brands on your list in order to reach that long-form range. Consider making your title the H1 and each brand of coffee you write about the H2.

If you are not writing a “listicle” and want to rank for a featured snippet in paragraph format, then long-form content will still be important. However, you should also include your “answer” clearly and concisely somewhere in your content. To be safe, you can also restate your question or query, followed by a straightforward answer. You can do this in the introductory paragraph or a summary at the end.

What else is important to know about a featured snippet strategy?

Featured snippets do not last forever. It’s not possible to set and forget SEO. Your featured snippet ranking could last for a few days or even a few months if your optimization strategies are successful. Even if your website never ranks for the featured snippets you target, or even if it doesn’t rank for very long, you can still optimize your content by optimizing for these snippets. Featured snippets can help increase your brand awareness, digital authority, and a chance to rank for voice searches, but if that doesn’t work, your thorough keyword research and long-form, well-structured content will still be a great asset to your site.