In this week’s Tech News Tuesday #TNT, we’re talking about a case study on getting a featured snippet in Google search results.
Links in this episode: The Power of “Is”: A Featured Snippet Case Study Featured Snippets Cheat Sheet Featured Snippets Essentials: What to Know & How to Target
Transcript
Welcome to the Get Digital Marketing Results podcast where we give you information and actionable tips to grow your organization.
Bob: Hi, I’m Bob Clark.
Donna: And I’m Donna Botti. We’re with Delos Inc and we make the web work for you. Welcome to the St. Patty’s Day edition of Tech News Tuesday where you don’t need the Luck of the Irish just some common sense principles in order to get more visibility on the web. Today, we’re talking about a case study on getting a featured snippet in Google search results.
Bob: Featured Snippets in case you don’t know, are the little answers that appear in the web search results when you type or ask a question. We’ve talked previously about the prevalence of no-click searches, where people find the answers right in search.
Donna: Another reason featured snippets are important is that this information is often what is given in response to voice inquiries on your devices. Today, we’re taking a look at a Moz case study article on trying to get your content to show as a featured snippet.
Bob: There are some general guidelines in the article and we’ve talked about some of these before. The first would be to make sure that you’re answering the questions that people ask about your product or service and actually use the question in a heading and answer it as you would in person.
Donna: Having step by step instructions and bulleted list formats also work well today for getting shown in the featured snippet. Think concise answers to questions.
Using an F A Q or faq format that is marked up for structured data can also help. This requires some coding or the use of a plug-in like Yoast SEO if you’re using WordPress.
But what I found so interesting about this case study, is that it talks about the power of the word “is” in your title. For example the authors had a snippet for the question “What is Employee Orientation?” They found that having definition questions and answers like that with the proper heading tag seem to be something that triggered featured snippets.
Updating old content to rephrase the questions didn’t seem to help, but new content that included the questions and the word “is” did seem to trigger the snippet.
One thing to note is a recent change by Google if your page appears as the featured snippet, it’s not also going to appear as an organic search result on the first page as well. Previously, you would get a snippet and a top organic search result too. But, there still is benefit in structuring your content this way, it can make it easier for your audience to learn about you.
Bob: That’s it for today’s episode. You can find the link to the case study article and a transcript of today’s podcast at DelosInc.com/125. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our actionable digital marketing tips to grow your organization.
