The most important location on a search engine result ranking page is the number one position. At least it used to be. After Google increased the number of queries with a featured snippet, called position zero by marketers, it became the most coveted spot on the page. Some verticals will even benefit if the query is a question that Google Assistant would answer.
How does it work? The featured snippet appears in almost 10% of Google search engine queries. Considering the millions of queries, that’s a lot of potential traffic. There is no human involvement in the selection of the content and Google extracts the snippet programmatically. Webmasters find that click through rates increase dramatically when their site has a featured a snippet. Here is how to increase your chances of getting one of your pages into position zero:
Market
Your site has to fall into a market where featured snippets appear. Most verticals like local businesses, products have no snippets. However, if your site has recipes, how-to’s or any type of instructional content, then there is a high likelihood that there will be a snippet for a search query that is relevant to your site.
Keywords
Identify the type of keywords that get featured snippets for which you rank well. Typically questions and answers, higher volume content have the most snippets.
Selection
There is no one-size fits all solution to getting the snippet. Ensure that you maximize your chances with content that clearly answers the question and that your code is clean and conforms to the tagging standard that Google expects.
