In the field of technology, we are here with one of Google's endless innovations. Google featured snippet is a Google feature we've been following for a long time, but its importance has increased so much that we wanted to write about it and inform our users about featured snippets.

First of all, our article will be long and very detailed. We'll go into lengthy detail about what featured snippets are and how we can earn them. Most importantly, we will talk about increasing website traffic with snippets. First of all, let's look at what is a Google-featured snippet.

Featured snippets are important in appearing on the first page of Google's search results. In this period of competition, there are many techniques you can use to increase your chances of getting to the top.

First of all, what is a featured snippet? Featured snippets are short descriptions that appear at the top of Google search results to provide faster answers to searchers. The content that appears in the featured snippet is automatically pulled from web pages in Google's index. While Google focuses on fulfilling the user's search intent, it shows what it considers high-quality content in this area.

Why are Featured Snippets Important?

Here are some of the main reasons why featured snippets are important:

Link to Voice Search: Often, featured snippets are also the answer to related voice searches. In fact, 80% of Google Home responses come from snippets. About 40% of overall voice search results also come from featured snippets.

Brand Awareness: Being at the top of search results provides serious visibility. Having your page appear as a featured snippet has a higher click-through rate than other organic results, which gives you high brand awareness.

How Featured Snippets Work?

Google decides whether a page can generate a good featured snippet to respond to a particular search request. Google's algorithms scan many websites to determine the best content answers searchers' queries. When Google bots find it, they display the content in featured snippet format, making it easy for users to find the information they're looking for. Featured snippets have a better chance of appearing when your search is in the form of a question.

Featured snippets are in a special box above the search results and with a text description above the link. These snippets can also be read aloud if you search using Google Assistant. Most of the featured tracks contain only one introduction.

Featured snippets have three basic elements:

Information from a 3rd party site

Page title

URL of the page

Featured Snippet Types

There are four types of snippets, and all of them are very effective in their own fields. But only one of them is used the most by Google.

Paragraph

With paragraph snippets, Google takes the 42-word part of the relevant section in the relevant article. This information tells us how long the most crucial points in our content should be. For example, when the user makes a query, it is very important that the paragraph to be taken as an answer is of a reasonable length so that the featured snippet and the response on your website can be retrieved.

List

Google can show information up to about six items in lists. So this means: The first six items in the lists you include in your content are very important. If these articles are displayed with a featured snippet, the chances of users coming to your site increase as a result of their quality.

Table

Tables are the decoration of our contents. Every item in the tables in our content provides information to the users. Here, Google shows these important sections in the first place on Serp with prominent snippets.

Video

Featured snippets and videos are also shown. The relevant part of the videos in your content is taken by Google and presented to users in response to queries. Google is shown to users in videos for approximately 6 minutes and 35 seconds.

Industry Breakdown of Featured Snippets

The industries where featured snippets are most common are actually the industries that do business most widely on the internet. The leading sectors are as follows;

Travel

Computer & Electronics

Arts & Entertainment

Science

The travel industry, which has the most prominent snippet in Google searches, leads in this ranking with 62%. In fact, all website administrators should understand from these statistics that; Every industry has its own competition, and the internet is still a place where everyone can work, create projects, and be successful.

Despite the fact that there are so many sectors and huge shares are made, it is fixed with statistics that many sectors are very, very lacking in terms of prominent snippets. So there is still a gap, and those who fill this gap can increase their website visits, thus increasing their sales.

Features of Featured Snippets

Snippets are shown to users as a result of a query. As soon as they receive this query, Google algorithms find the relevant answer within a few seconds and present it to users. But the important thing here is the words that users add to their queries in the search engine. The rate of showing the prominent snippets to the user in queries made with charms such as "Why" - "What is it" is very high. This rate is 77.6%, which includes every word string where the words "what-how" occurs.

In other words, creating topics and sub-paragraphs as if answering your users' questions will ensure that your website is always ahead in terms of featured snippets.

How to get a featured snippet on Google?

 Of course, quality content and original articles are very important for winning snippets. But there are some more details that should be taken into account.

For example, in the use of featured snippets, single-word keywords only cover as little as 4.5%. So in featured snippets, long-tail keywords have more advantages. A 5-word, long-tail keyword has an extremely high 17% chance of getting a featured snippet. And by following, the chance of showing up as a featured snippet result for a 10-word keyword goes up to 55%. Isn't it incredible?

One- or two-word keywords always get a lot of traffic. These words are more competitive because of the excess traffic. All websites, SEO experts, and website owners strive to be successful with these short keywords. But this taboo seems to be broken with the featured snippet.

The SEO benefit of featured snippets is unquestionably great. Who wouldn't want to be at the top of Google SERP and show some of its content to users?

With the featured snippet, the gap in the tail keywords has been understood. Because all the SEO studies done so far were for the most popular and single keywords. Let's give an example;

The fact that a company working in the textile industry appears on the first page with the word "textile" shows how popular that company is, right? In the past, this was indeed the case. But unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. Being popular in tens, maybe hundreds of words instead of popularity in a few words, being able to appear on the first page of Google makes more sense than the popularity of a single word.

In fact, this is what lies beneath the prominent snippet logic. The more keywords or even long-tail keywords your website or e-commerce site can have on Google SERP, the more its popularity will increase.

1-Use Long-Tail Keywords

The length and quality of your content and the long-tail keywords you use in your content related to your focus keyword are also very important.

Before starting any content production, you should make a preliminary study with tools such as a keyword planner based on your focus keyword and note other long-tail keywords that are closest to your focus keyword, and through these, you should write topics, explanations, and questions in your content. You have to produce answer parts.

Using long-tail keywords in your content will increase your SEO presence in the Google search engine, increase your traffic, and, most importantly, make you successful in the featured snippet.

2-Answer the Questions

It's hard to target questions that will come after creating your content. Being able to do this actually means content production. Anyone can produce content, but producing pinpoint content is difficult.

You may have produced very detailed content related to your industry. You may have written very high-quality articles, topics, and images. However, your content may have no value in the eyes of featured snippets. In your content, you should anticipate your users' questions and develop answers to them.

The fact that these answers are original, high quality, and short will make your website very successful in getting featured snippets.

In particular, using question tags such as "why," "how," "for what," and "what" in the subject headings will warn Google bots that you have answered a question. Especially the development of mobile devices and the increase in the use of voice search technology have shown us that longer-tail keywords will be at the forefront in the future. The same goes for the featured snippet.

In order to prepare answers that will enable users to find your content, you need to know beforehand what they type into the search engine and how they query what they are looking for. For example, let's say you have an e-commerce site that sells spare parts. You are trying to generate content on the blog page and drive traffic to your website, and you want to earn a featured snippet.

3-You must be constantly updated

You should make sure that the website content you produce includes the date, author, and other information. Users pay great attention to such features. The date is very important in the featured snippet. Because Google chooses snippets that are out of date for a maximum of 3 years. Older content is unfortunately not eligible for this feature.

For this reason, you should not leave your old content idle and update it according to the innovations of the day. It is not possible for content about health, travel, or science not to change or become obsolete after three years. Especially if you write in the fields of technology, computers, and software and want to drive traffic to your website, you should add to your posts and update them instead of deleting them after a certain period of time.

These actions will both increase your freshness in the search engine and increase the quality perception of your readers about your content.

What % of Google users click the featured snippet SEO

According to Search Engine Land, a Featured Snippet gets roughly 8% of all clicks. So in case you're able to induce your content within the Featured Snippet, you'll be able to deliver your natural click-through rate a genuine boost. Agreeing with Google Look Support, our natural CTR for that page is 13.7%.