Attracting visitors to your website is like refusing pizza. It’s very difficult. It’s not easy to be noticed among the hundreds of results that search for vague keywords.
This is where the “Featured Scribble” comes in. It was introduced in 2014, and we don’t think it’s going to leave anytime soon. Google’s featured snippets receive more clicks that normal search links. This is a well-known fact. You can increase conversions, and user engagement by using featured snippets.
In the following article you will learn all you need about Google Featured Snippets and why you don’t have to be ranked #1 in order to receive a featured snippet from Google.
What are Google Featured Shortcuts?
You already know the meaning of Google featured snippets. It may be that you are not aware it’s called a feature snippet. Google usually answers your query with several rich snippets results if you search for something particular. They will contain all relevant information, including the keyword or question you have searched. However, there will be one top result. The featured snippet (also known as Position #0) is different from other results. It is usually formatted differently in order to stand out. If you are looking to improve your website visibility and increase engagement, position #0 is the best option.
This has many benefits. They take up so little space, and give a user the quick answer they are looking for. This will make it more attractive to them clicking on your link. They are the top SERP results. They give your business so much visibility and keep you ahead in the crowd. This can lead to a tenfold increase in reputation.
But it is important to remember that you will not magically get position #0. Your content must be good enough to keep Google happy. Content quality is and will always be the king. To improve your ranking and get more clicks on SERPs, you should also consider WordPress SEO.
A Ahrefs study found that the following words are more likely to be featured in snippets.
- Recipe
- Best
- Vs
- Make
- Definition
Types Of Featured Snippets
While most Google search results display a collection of links and headings, the featured snippet stands out. This snippet stands out and it is shown in one of the four formats.
According to Getstat, 82% of the featured snippets are in paragraph form.
They mainly respond to questions such as
- Who are?
- What is?
- How does it work?
- How do you?
- Is it?
The length of a typical paragraph snippet is 40 to 60 words. This snippet is preferable to other types.
Numbered List
If you need to explain a process step-by-step, recipe or any other instructions, you may create a number list.
This order has shown a step-by-step method. This should result in more people clicking on your website. There is also potential to have a lower bouncerate as the audience won’t need to visit any other sites to find the answer.
You will see an order list of.
- Step by step tutorials
- Ranked
Bulleted List
A list should be in an order, and each step must be followed. Instead of creating a stepwise list, you can create a bulleted one.
You will find a bulleted listing for:
- Best
- Lists
- Ranked
- Unranked lists
- Featured Lists
Table
If you’re comparing more than one thing, a table-formatted feature will be displayed. Google is proud to display all information that they have available. You can find data such as rates, years and prices. It also includes numbers, percentages, numbers, and even percentages. Google pulls information from tables snippets and it is static. This means that you don’t need to come up with a lot of creative ideas.
Benefits from Featured Snippets
Securing featured snippet positions has many advantages. These are:
- Better CTR: According to Search Engine Land, Featured Snippet gets 8% of all clicks, so if you land on the featured snippet, your organic click-through rate will get a boost.
- Visibility: If your snippet is eye-catching, more people will see your featured snippet. People will assume that Google chose your answer and therefore your website is trustworthy. This is a sign that you are an authority in a subject and users will click your link.
- Improved Odds: After implementing schema markup, Google will be able to understand the content of your site more clearly. This will increase your chances of being found in search engines as well as increasing the number of organic results.
- Boosted Conversions: If visitors get what they want after just looking at your featured snippet, the conversion will also increase. You will get more clicks, downloads and inquiries.
- Voice Search: Day after day, due to enhancement in technology, the number of voice searches is also increasing. These feature snippets were specifically created for voice searches and other on-the-go search. By 2020 the percentage of voice searches has increased, so it is necessary to stay prepared. Google reports that voice searches for “Near me”, have been steadily increasing.
WordPress Plugins to Schema Markup & Rich Scribbles
To secure featured snippet positions, it is important to ensure that all your pages and posts are displayed as rich snippets in search results. This means you must make sure that the schema markup on your website is correct. Search engines use this code to determine the content of your site and your page.
All In One Schema Rich Snippets
All in One Schema Rich snippet is a WordPress plugin that’s free. This plugin is easy to use and solves your Schema rich Snippet problem. It’s highly recommended. Let’s take a look at All In One Schema Rich Snippets.
It can support 9 types of schema:
- Review
- Events
- People
- Products
- Recipes
- Software Application
- Video
- Article
- Services
- No coding is required
- Customize the Plugin
- Easy setup and configuration
Unfortunately it will not automatically assign the Schema to your site. You have to manually do this with the meta box that it adds in the WordPress editor.
Yoast
They make a bold statement that since 2008 they have helped millions of websites to rank higher in the search engines. Their plugin’s work supports this bold claim.
Let’s take a look at some of the functionality.
- It can support multiple types of schema
- No coding required
- Multiple Rating System
- Code optimised for Google
- Preview Snippet for Search & Social Media
- Full control over your Breadcrumbs
- No duplicate content
Schema App Structured Data
Install this free plugin to get basic functionality like marking up for authors, posts, categories, tags and breadcrumbs. You can purchase the premium version if you need more features.
Functionality includes the Premium Version:
- Generate Schema Markup for Basic Data.
- Wiki data integration
- Review Widget
- Video Snippet for Youtube
- Custom Post and Field mapping
- WooCommerce Integration
- Supports advanced Schema types
How To Add Schema to Rich Snippets With Yoast
Search engine crawlers make use of schema markup in order to properly understand your website, while rich-snippets can be used by humans. You can either add schema markup using JSON-LD codes or one of these plugins. The three most popular plugins can be used in a simple way. However, this guide will focus on the Yoast plugin as it is what uses.
Configure Search Appearance and Social Settings
Using Yoast, you can find the search appearance settings. You can choose whether you want your website to be a business or a personal site. Yoast SEO can then output the correct structured data using this information. You should also add your social media info (which can be done through Yoast). Search engines will be able to identify other pages that are related to your site by this.
Set defaults and use Schema tab in the Yoast Search SEO Meta Box
After you install Yoast’s SEO plugin, the plugin will automatically describe your pages using Webpage Schema. It also includes all posts that you published with Article Schema. You can change the default settings in Search Appearance > Article Schema.
You can also decide how Yoast describes each post or page by using the Schema tab in Yoast’s SEO meta box. This is usually located under the Gutenberg Yoast sidebar or below the classic editor.
- Web: The most basic web page result, default setting for all the Pages.
- Item Page: A page that is specifically dedicated to a single item or thing, such as a product or a hotel.
- About: Your website’s “About” page.
- FAQ: This is the page that contains a list of all questions and answers.
- QA: This page contains a single question with multiple possible answers.
- Profile: A page representing a person or user.
- Contact: A page that has a contact form.
- Medical: In this page, you will find medical information, diagnostic advice, or similar.
- Collection: If you want to find pages like a post archive or blog overview, this page has a list of all the other pages.
- Checkout: This page is part of an e-commerce checkout process.
- Real Estate: Includes information about a property for sale/rental or similar, you will find it in this page.
- Search Result: A page that lists search results.
There are many types of Schema Markup. Google recognizes these types the most:
- product
- recipe
- event
- local business
- FAQs
- How do you
- website
- video
- speakable
- site navigation
You can add schema to your website using JSON-LD, or with the aid of a plugin. Yoast, an SEO plugin that uses JSON-LD to insert Schema.org Markup onto your website is one example.
Breadcrumb Navigation to Search Results
Breadcrumbs navigation tells the customer where and on what page they are. You can find it as a trailing hyperlink in search results. You can display this navigation trail on the website if you wish. Breadcrumbs allow users to browse different categories easily and discover additional products and content.
I can write the entire JSON-LD code for how to manually add breadcrumbs to your website, but that will make it very tedious. It’s better to take the easier route unless you have a lot of experience with programming. Yoast is a plugin that makes the tedious process of adding breadcrumbs much more manageable and less time-consuming.
Yoast automatically adds breadcrumbs to the site by generating the JSON-LD codes in the source code. This is the best method, and it will give you rich snippets. Although most WordPress themes are Yoast-compatible, it is a good idea to verify that the theme you’re using has Yoast support before starting.
How to Add Breadcrumbs through Yoast
- Login to your WordPress website, once you have logged in you’ll be on the Dashboard.
- On your left side you’ll see a menu. Click on that menu to see the “SEO” menu. Now click the “SEO” button.
- After you click on the SEO you will see some more options click on the “Search Appearance.”
- Now, click the Breadcrumbs tab.
- Scroll down to the bottom and click the “enable” button.
- After enabling breadcrumbs, you can adjust the settings to suit your needs.
- Save all changes made after you have completed the configuration.
How to Add Breadcrumbs with the Yoast Shortcode
If your theme supports Yoast breadcrumbs, they might show up by default. Many premium themes like Total are programmed to display Yoast’s breadcrumbs when the plugin is activated. Even if Yoast is not integrated into your theme, you can easily add breadcrumbs to any page or taxonomy using a simple shortcode. You can use Gutenberg by inserting a shortcode and adding the following:
Home >> Google Featured Snippet Guide for WordPress Sites
If you’re using Gutenberg and the Classic Editor, click on the Text editor to copy the shortcode and place it in your main text area or page creation area.
This will allow you to see the breadcrumb path added to this section of the page. You can also delete the shortcode to remove the breadcrumb.
Optimize Rich Scripps By Analyzing Rankings Snippets
Now it is time to optimize rich snippets. To get an idea of where to begin, take a look at the current rankings snippets. You can see the results of your competitors if you’ve done all that you could to improve your website’s ranking and rank. It is a great way to find out what your strengths are so that you can determine what the next steps should be. Check to see if tables rank higher than lists. You can also look at specific phrases. A featured snippet can increase CTR and convert users into customers. You want the featured snippet.
How do you secure featured snippets for your website? The most fundamental step is called “competitor analyses”. This will allow you to determine what niche-related keywords your competitors rank for, and then how you could possibly outrank them. You have many options for competitor analysis, all of which work the same way. You can, for example, use the ahrefs Keyword Explorer in order to search terms you are interested (or have already) ranking for.
This report contains quick information about related keywords, queries, keyword difficulty and ranking urls. It also includes the featured snippet results (found under the SERP overview section). This information can be used to enhance your site’s content.
It’s a good idea to copy and paste content from your competition. Learn from their formatting and headings and use those skills to improve your posts and pages.
Appear in Section
Getting the featured snippet is not easy. However, you could instead concentrate on the section “People also ask”. These are often targeted for longer-tail keywords, making them easier to rank. These are some tips:
- People Also Ask boxes are available in most of the searches within their 1,000,000 keyword dataset and it’s not going to stop anytime soon.
- People The Ask strategy can be applied to any page.
- If you are a large brand, you will have high potential to dominate People. Also ask questions.
- Although it’s not a featured Snippet, there is a good chance that you will be ranked on Google’s first page.
- 75% of the time the People Also Ask result is taken from the top 3 results of Google.
- If you are having a question term then there is 86% of average possibility that it will generate People Also Ask.
- More than 40% of People Also Ask answers are in paragraph form.
- If you’re looking to get noticed in the People Also Ask Box, adding video content is a great way to do this. Google still finds suitable results.
- The average word count for the answer is 41 words, so brevity is the key.
How do you locate the most popular questions? What can you do to optimize them? These tips can help you identify opportunities:
- First, you need to find pages that rank high in the People Also Ask Box and then search for keywords.
- Check their keyword ranking.
- Examine all People Also Ask Results.
- Find out which questions are most popular.
- Make sure you’re not the original source.
- Check if your name appears in the top results. Also, check if it is possible to rank.
- Last but not least, optimize your webpage.
Wrapping up
Now you’re aware of how crucial it is to be featured in the Google featured snippet, there are some basic points you should keep in mind.
Optimize your website for mobile devices. Also, use HTML tags to improve results. If you find the featured snippet opportunity, take advantage of it. Also, target as many questions as you can and answer the question publicly. This will give you tons of ideas.