How To Rank Our Featured Snippet - What Changes Are Needed On Our Page?
-
I've read a number of articles that have been helpful, but most of them are specifically still just trying to prove the value of the snippets and more recently show you how to find what search terms to rank for. What I'm really struggling with is exactly 'How do we rank for them, when we already have the #1 position and the featured snippet is going to another site'? Let me break this down a bit more:
1. We are measuring the 'SERP Features' within Moz Pro Tools and I've identified ~300 pages where there is a 'Featured Snippet' but I don't have the feature.
2. In a good portion of these, I'm outranking the site that has the 'Featured Snippet'. So I can compare my site, side by side to the 'Featured Snippet'.
Now that I have the question, my ranking and the competition all in front of me. What changes are recommended I implement on our page? Is there a recommended process to follow?
-
HI,
There are a couple of other articles worth having a look at that if you haven't already:
https://moz.com/blog/what-we-learned-analyzing-featured-snippets
https://moz.com/blog/game-of-featured-snippets-how-to-rank-in-position-0
Both mention what kind of content is likely to make itself 'snippable' for a variety of featured snippet 'types.
It depends to a large degree on what kind of results are showing for the queries you are looking at. I have found tabular and list structures to work well for some best/top type queries I have looked at in the past. In some instances google will interpret list type data from non html list structure so you could (for example) simply put numbers (1,2,3 etc) in front of your list of things without actually using an html list format. Your developer would be able to advise further on this, but most cms systems have lists and tables built in so if the content you have makes sense to be in a list or table format - try it out!There is a tip in one of those articles to try updating your page and then submit it through google search console for immediate results. I am not sure if it works all the time but I have seen some cases where we updated content and had a featured snippet result 5 minutes after submitting through search console. I am not saying to redo content again if you do not see results so fast, but in some cases it can give you an idea that you are on the right track and that the content is in a format that triggers the snippet.
Hope that helps!
-
Awesome, thank you Lynn! I did have a chance to review each of these post prior to posting my Q&A, but I didn't feel they answered the question directly. I guess I need to openly admit I'm not technical, so I guess I'm missing what isn't being spoken about. I wouldn't really know the different types of 'html formatting' per se. Is there a best practice resource that I should start to look through, where I can pass onto our developer and have him apply to the site? Thank you!
-
Hi,
In my (limited) experience with featured snippets I have found that an important step is analyzing what kind of html formatting is currently winning the snippet and try to recreate or better that in your own formatting. This can be tough depending on the snippet (I have seen some pretty crazy snippets that make you say 'huh?'), but often times tabular and list type formatting can work. If you are ranking well for the queries already then a refresh of your content/code might well bring the results you want. There have been some great articles on featured snippets recently on moz, check them out!
https://moz.com/blog/featured-snippets-from-start-to-finish
https://moz.com/blog/ranking-zero-seo-for-answers https://moz.com/blog/featured-snippets-a-deadsimple-tactic-for-making-them-stick
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I optimize the login page? Will it affect the website SEO ranking?
I'm trying to resolve the site crawl issues that we have on our website. One of the links that has different issue types together is our login page. Currently we have two login pages that have the same content but different sub domains. **However I'm wondering if optimizing SEO on our login pages affects our website SEO ranking and if it's something better to do or not. ** To point out the details of the issues, the issue types that the logins pages have are "duplicate title", "duplicate content", "missing H1", "missing description", "thin content", "missing canonical tag" I'd appreciate your help, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kaylie0 -
Help.. there was a html and php version of my home page on my server for about a week. Now lost all rankings!
Our home page has disappeared from the Google SERPS completely. It won't even show for a search of our business name although other internal pages appear. Site appears in bing for our keywords but not for our business name. When I republished the site I got a message saying there was a php and html version of the site on the home page. I deleted this immediately but was then advised by another staff member that they had also got that message the week before but not done anything about it - so I think it was out there for about a week. Could this be the cause of the ranking drop? We have also done the following: Checked GWM for robots issue, manual action, crawl errors, blocked URLs - all good. Some crawl errors on other pages relating to broken links. All sorted and marked as fixed. Checked for duplicate content - redirected non www version of site to www Checked back links Removed video from home page that was temporarily unavailable when we did fetch and render Added canonical tag Added H1 tag that was missing Coding checked - all looks good There has been no change to the content of the page. We have fetched and rendered and resubmitted for indexing but it's still not coming back in SERPS it did for a short time the other day and then after a couple of days disappeared again Prior to all this it had ranked really well for our most important keywords for years. It's not a new site. The page is indexed as it comes up when doing a site: search. Please can anyone help? Nobody seems to have the answer and we don't know what else to do. The site is NSFW NSFW https://goo.gl/dwA8YB Main keyword sex toy party
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GemmaApril0 -
Will more comprehensive content on product pages help improve ranking?
We're working to improve the ranking of one of our product landing pages. The page that currently ranks #1 has a very simple, short layout with the main keyword many times on the page with otherwise very little text. One thought we had was to make a more comprehensive page including more info on the features and benefits of the product. The thought being that a longer form page would be more valuable and potentially look better to Google if the other SEO pieces are on par. Does that make sense to do? Or would it be better to keep the product page simple and make some more related content on our blog linking back to that landing page? Thanks in advance to any help you can provide!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bob_Kastner0 -
How do I Enable Rich Snippets for an Events Page that is updated weekly?
Hello Moz World! I have a client that has an events page that they update every week. They conduct weekly demos with current customers and potential customers for their software. They post dates, times and topics for each demo. I'd like to enable event rich snippets for their website (see attached image for an example), but I am unsure exactly how to do that. A) Do I just need to setup Event Schema Tags? Does it need to be updated manually every week? Is their a software solution? Thanks ahead of time for all the great responses! Cheers Will H. 8Wsh3l8
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
Best tips for getting a video page to rank?
We have a video for our company, located here: http://www.imageworkscreative.com/imageworks-creative-video It's an overview of our company and the services we offer. We'd like to get this page ranking, but we haven't had much luck so far. Our Youtube account does better, but I'm looking for some things we can do on or offsite to get this page to rank. Any tips would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Changing your URL? Impact on rankings?
I have been thinking about changing our webadres for quite a while but I'm too afraid of the impact on my SERP. I understand I would need to use the Google Change of Address tool & 301 redirects. Am I missing something? What is your experience with changing the URL of a website? How has this impacted your SERP? In the past I heard someone say it will damage the linkjuice by 20%. Is that accurate? If you change the URL, is there a blank period of where your old site nor your new site are indexed? Or does Google handle this transition well?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
Deep Page is Ranking for Main Keyword, But I Want the Home Page to Rank
A deep page is ranking for a competitive and essential keyword, I'd like the home page to rank. The main reasons are probably: This specific page is optimized for just that keyword. Contains keyword in URL I've optimized the home page for this keyword as much as possible without sacrificing the integrity of the home page and the other keywords I need to maintain. My main question is: If I use a 301 redirect on this deep page to the home page, am I risking my current ranking, or will my home page replace it on the SERPs? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClarityVentures0