How to land the top spot in Google search with featured snippets in 2021

Search is changing. Most search engines now don’t just bring up a page of 10 search results and two ads at the top when you type in a query. Instead, Google search queries can bring up a whole range of results, and sometimes answer your questions without you ever having to click through to a page.

Take, for example, a search like this: “how many days until halloween.”

Example of a featured snippet

A featured snippet counting down the days to Halloween. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

You can see that instead of displaying the top result right away, Google answers the question for you in a rich snippet. It also gives you related search queries featuring countdowns for other holidays. On the right is a knowledge panel from Wikipedia about Halloween, and below that, you’ll see the featured snippets section. These snippets will expand when clicked with answers for related questions.


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Finally, after these answers to your queries and any related questions, you get to the first result. At this point, do you even need to visit the website?

Google search is not what it used to be. We all want to be No. 1 on the search results page, but these days, getting to that position isn’t enough. It might be worth your while to instead go after the top featured snippet position.

What’s a featured snippet?

Featured snippets are collections of sentences or words that Google pulls directly from a webpage relevant to the search query. These snippets are displayed right below the search box and are meant to answer search queries quickly. The snippets can appear in the form of lists, how-to steps, tables, short paragraph boxes and other formats.

Earning a featured snippet is one of the best things you can do for your SEO. When you have the featured snippet for a popular search term, you’ll enjoy improved organic traffic from Google search results. According to Ahrefs, about 12% of search queries have featured snippets — that’s about 14 million opportunities for you to earn the top featured snippet position.

Average CTR of featured snippets

The average click-through rate for featured snippets. Image Credits: Ahrefs

On a page without a featured snippet, the top result will generally receive 26% of clicks. But when your content is included in a featured snippet, you will essentially usurp 8% of those clicks from the top result for your featured snippet.

It’s true that one blog post can rank for thousands of search keywords, and that holds true for featured snippets as well. If you work hard on a blog post and make it 10 times better than anything else out there, you will reap the benefits over and over. You can even become an authority on the topic because your site’s content or data table is featured. This brand authority allows you to generate passive links as other sites that discuss the topic reference your definition.

For example, for CollegeFinance.com, we created a pell grant guide that ranks for a variety of terms in featured snippet results, like “pell grant income limits.” CollegeFinance benefited from the traffic and also from the authority of the position. Other sites researching the topic have linked back to their explainers and guides, creating passive link generation for this page. For example, Good.IS (DA 80) linked to our guide as additional research on the topic.

Example of featured snippet created for CollegeFinance.com

Featured snippet created for CollegeFinance.com. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

Featured snippets, obviously, decrease the number of user clicks. If a question is already answered, like in my Halloween example above, there is no need to click through. Organic traffic, therefore, is less than it would be on a result from a search engine results page (SERP) without a featured snippet.

Rich snippets versus featured snippets

Rich snippets and featured snippets are both generated using text from your website. However, a rich snippet enhances a search result, while a featured snippet appears above the normal SERP. You can optimize for both, but in this article we will focus on how to obtain a featured snippet.

Types of rich snippets

You can help Google better understand your page by implementing schema structured data. A simple way to do so is using JSON-LD and a simple snippet code generator.

  • Events — displays data on dates, times, location and more.
  • Music — displays data related to the artist, album and release year.
  • Organization — displays data about an organization such as address, logo and contact.
  • Product markup — displays data around product stock, price and more.
  • Recipes — displays data like preparation time and rating.
  • Reviews — displays a star rating based on reviews from the page.
  • Top stories — displays your site in the top stories section (must be approved by Google News first).
  • Video — displays data about the video including title, publish date and more.

How to get a featured snippet

There is no way to guarantee a featured snippet, but you can take certain steps to improve your chances of getting one.

Step 1: Find featured snippet opportunities

I like to use a few tools to help me find existing opportunities as well as possible future opportunities.

If you’re using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer: Search your main keyword, then from the left column, select the “having same terms” report. From the toolbar, click on the “SERP features” filter drop-down box, select “Include,” check the “featured snippet box,” and then click “Apply.”

Ahref's Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer. Image credits: Ryan Sammy

KeywordsEverywhere allows you to see related keyword data directly from SERPs. This can help to inspire additional keywords, search questions and related topics. AnswerThePublic uses Google’s autocomplete data to produce possible questions around a keyword.

AnswerthePublic creates questions for keywords

AnswerThePublic creates questions for keywords. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

Step 2: Create content related to your chosen query

Once you have a target query, you should now create content on the page that directly answers the question. Research the question and understand how the current ranking page answers it. Also, look at the pages ranking in positions two through five. Featured snippets fluctuate, so you want to keep an eye on your search result competitors.

When creating a competing page that will be in the running for a featured snippet, you want to make sure you cover what’s already out there, but you should also consider adding something unique. For example, you could run a small survey to create a unique dataset or use HARO to get quotes from experts on the topic. Whatever you include should not only answer the users’ question, it should also add value. What are you bringing to light they didn’t know they wanted?

You can improve your chances of earning a featured snippet by using header tags and clean HTML code. For example, if it’s a list, make sure your HTML syntax does not include any unneeded code that could have been brought over from Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Finally, monitor your targets using a position tracking tool. You want to set a reminder to revisit the SERP on a monthly or bimonthly basis. You may need to make adjustments to your page based on changes you notice. For example, Google may have chosen a different definition for the term, which may make you want to update your definition.

Types of featured snippets

Which featured snippet type you should go for varies based on your goals. Some featured snippets reduce the click-through rate, because the user gets their answer in the SERP itself. Sometimes, they will click to learn more if the page has additional information related to the query. Your goal is to make your page click-worthy through title control, words used, steps shared, etc.

Lists

Lists usually appear on search results for data-based queries.

An example of featured list snippets

An example of a list featured snippet. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

It’s a good idea to use correct HTML code for lists, as below:

<ul>
<li>List item 1</li>
<li>List item 2</li>
<li>List item 3</li>
</ul>

You should also structure your content to target this type of snippet. It is best to use an “h3” header tag around the question, then use a sentence or two wrapped. Place your list below it.

How-to steps

This type of snippet is used to show a numbered list of how-to instructions that help answer the user’s search query.

An example of a how to featured snippet

An example of a how-to featured snippet. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

Google pulls the how-to steps from the header tags used throughout a page. If it determines the headers are part of a list, it will consider it for the featured snippet. Most of the time it’s best to wrap the titles in “h3” tags.

Tables

A table featured snippet pulls data from a table on your website and displays a sample with a link back to the page.

To maximize your chances of earning this kind of snippet, double-check that your table has no additional HTML code if you copied it from another source. You want to make it easy for Google to see the table and its contents. I use this tool to simulate what the Google crawler sees when it lands on a page, and it is a great way to make sure Google can see the table’s data inside.

Example of a table featured snippet

Example of a table featured snippet. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

Your header tags should be descriptive of the data being displayed in the table, and that applies to the titles of your tables, too.

Definitions

Paragraph definition is a popular type of featured snippet where simple queries, especially questions, are answered above the search results.

An example of a definition featured snippet

An example of a definition featured snippet. Image Credits: Ryan Sammy

You should aim to use header tags appropriately on the page. Your post title should be wrapped in an “h1,” your main title should be “h2” and the subsection below should have titles wrapped in “h3.”

Your question and answer should be structured as below:

<h3>What are the most popular cars?</h3>

A 40-60 word paragraph that answers the question directly. The first sentence should answer the question in clear and direct language.

Earning the top spot with a featured snippet

Maintaining your content in featured snippets can be difficult, depending on the competitiveness of the search query. In some cases, you will be continually updating your page and building internal links from other pages on the site as well as external links from other sites on the web.

You can use a tool like Ahrefs to find a keyword’s difficulty score. This will give you insight into how competitive a keyword is and how much work it will require to continually push your page back into the spot. The goal is to find featured snippets that have a solid monthly search volume and low keyword difficulty. Those will be easier to hold in the long run, but there is still no guarantee. Holding featured snippets requires active monitoring.

You can target multiple featured snippets with your content as long as they fall under the same topic and it makes sense on the page. A lot of the time you will find a few featured snippets that are low volume, but when combined with a page, you can target all information queries related to that topic.

To see if any of your pages have already earned a featured snippet for your target keywords, you can use tools like Ahrefs to search your domain. Then, click on “Organic keywords” and click the Features drop-down box and select “Featured snippets.”

Featured snippets are different from Google’s passage ranking. Google’s goal with passage ranking is to solve the issues of specific searches. Google says, “Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right, since sometimes the single sentence that answers your question might be buried deep in a web page. We’ve recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to better understand the relevancy of specific passages. By understanding passages in addition to the relevancy of the overall page, we can find that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for.”

Conclusion

You might still be wondering why you would want to optimize for a featured snippet, as click-through rates are often lower compared to a scenario where your page was ranking No. 1 organically. Why shouldn’t you make the user click-through to your page to find the answer?

The answer is simple: If you don’t optimize for a featured snippet, someone else will, and then you’ll be getting even fewer clicks than you would if you owned the featured snippet.

Google’s main objective, among others, is to serve its audience by providing the best possible answers for search queries. They will continue to innovate their user experience, and it’s up to us to change with them or face getting relegated to the second page of the SERP.