Featured Snippets

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Definition: What is a Featured Snippet?

The Featured Snippet is a recent search response format in France and other European countries. Indeed, it took until April 2016 to see this type of response proliferate in search results.

These Featured Snippets appear as blocks placed at the top of search results. It contains the summary of an answer provided by a page to a question frequently asked by Internet users, sometimes illustrated with a photo, and supplemented by a link to the site. This answer, displayed in position zero, generally appears when the search carried out was done in the form of a question. Featured Snippets are on average made up of 300 characters, an image, and a clickable title referring to the referring site.

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The different types of Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets come in different forms depending on the related search. Their objective is, in all cases, to respond clearly and concisely to the questions of Internet users.

Paragraph

This is the most common type of Featured Snippet. The result associated with the search is displayed in the form of a concise paragraph answering precisely the question asked. This is, for example, the type of Featured Snippet that is displayed when the search concerns the definition of a term.

Numbered lists

As its name suggests, this Featured Snippet comes in the form of a numbered list detailing the steps of an activity. This is, for example, the Featured Snippet format displayed in response to a question about the recipe for a dish, or another task requiring you to follow specific steps.

Bulleted lists

Featured Snippets in the form of bulleted lists allow you to give a clear and detailed answer to a search. They list a certain number of response elements to a question, such as, for example, the symptoms of a disease.

Painting

Finally, the last type of Featured Snippets is those displayed as a table. This type of Featured Snippet is composed of an illustrative table, accompanied by a bulleted list summarizing the table data.

Advantage of Features Snippets in SEO

Featured Snippets are search results displayed in position zero, i.e. above all other SERP results. Knowing that users tend to click on the first search results, it is therefore very interesting in terms of SEO to have pages positioned on Featured Snippets, especially since this type of search result comes in the form boxes, which catches the user’s eye and encourages them to click all the more. According to the Content Marketing Institute, they can capture up to 30% more natural traffic.

Furthermore, with the development of voice search, these Featured Snippets have become all the more strategic. Indeed, voice searches are generally carried out in the form of a question, which favours the display of Featured Snippets. However, in 80% of cases, the answer given by Google is that provided by the page placed in position zero. Thus, positioning yourself in a Featured Snippet allows you to reach a wider audience, and is therefore beneficial to the traffic captured by your site.

How to position yourself in Featured Snippets?

Analyse key queries associated with your content

In order to position yourself in Featured Snippets, it is necessary to analyze the key queries relating to the subjects covered by your pages in order to respond to them in the most relevant way possible. For this, use SEO tools such as SEM Rush to determine the ranking of your strategic keywords.

Provide relevant and structured content

Google ranks search results based on the relevance of page content to the search performed. Thus, your objective is therefore to provide the most relevant response possible to the key queries made by Internet users and analyzed beforehand. Getting straight to the point with a clear and concise answer to a question.

In addition, be sure to offer content structured around Hn tags to highlight your questions and the associated answers. Also, use HTML tags to build tables and bulleted lists.

Have a site with good SEO metrics

Finally, the last tip for positioning yourself in a Featured snippet is to have a site with good SEO metrics. Whether it is the Citation Flow, the Trust Flow, or the Domain Rating, it is important to optimize all of these metrics. Indeed, having good SEO metrics means that Google deems you trustworthy, and will be all the more likely to position your pages in the first search results. You can find this different data on SEO platforms such as Majestic, or Ahrefs.

How do I prevent content from appearing in Featured Snippets?

In some cases, you may want to prevent some of your pages from being displayed in a Featured Snippet. Indeed, the Featured Snippet is seen by some SEO experts as harmful to the traffic captured by a site, because, by displaying directly in the SERP the answer given by a page to a question, users may be less inclined to click on the page.

There are two ways to prevent Google from resuming your content in a Featured Snippet. The first is to use a robots meta tag :

Nosnippet: This tag prohibits all snippets, whether Featured Snippets or other more standard snippets such as Answer Boxes
Max-snippet:[number]: This tag allows you to establish a maximum number of characters that Google can use. You just have to reduce this number enough so that it is impossible for Google to use your content in a Featured Snippet.

The second method consists of inserting instructions directly into the HTML code of a site using the “ data-nosnippet ” tag. This tag prevents Google from using a specific part of the content that it might use in a Featured Snippet.

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