Changes are coming to Google, making how to optimize for featured snippets a little harder. And that’s saying something because they were already hard to attain.
First of all, you cannot guarantee the featured snippet. But you can try to organize content in various ways to boost your page’s position to the first page, the only page that counts toward snippets. Arranging your content in multiple ways is also a trademark of many featured snippet holders.
Improve your odds of a featured snippet with these content additions:
- Paragraph answering a who/what/why/how question
- Numbered or bulleted list
- Table, chart, or infographic
- YouTube video or its detailed description
But now there’s something different. A new layer recently added to Google’s framework combines material used in snippets to highlight broad-based information. For example, three sites on the first page may have similar answers to your query, but instead of promoting one source, Google is now combining multiple publishers into one packaged response.
Sort of.
What’s suitable for mobile devices is not the same for the desktop. Not only are new combo snippets dissimilar on mobile in style, but content as well. While it’s more than likely to have one of the two, three, or four snippet answers in the new format, you won’t be able to see the publisher’s link until you read more into each response.
What does this mean for new sites trying to get Google to notice their content? The chances are good that new content if it’s pertinent to the query, will enter the featured snippet. Remember, the goal is how to best answer the search query, not to promote one page over another.
And what if your content was already holding onto the coveted position? The name recognition will decrease. Your position on Google’s front page will remain. The exact ranking, however, may no longer be No. 0, and instead fall somewhere between Nos. 1 and 9. But don’t worry. There’s no reason to abandoned lists, details, graphics, and tables anytime soon.
In short, the best way to optimize for a featured snippet is the same as it was before featured snippets existed – write good content.
