Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.
Despite the fact that featured snippets are a vital part of contemporary marketing and SEO success, however, many still struggle when it comes to properly leveraging featured snippets to the greatest extent possible, with some unlucky few having no idea where to begin at all.
Just how important are featured snippets, and how can you go about getting them?
Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of featured snippets and how you can bolster your SEO.
Today’s searchers are dominated by featured snippets
If you’re familiar with just about any popular search engine, from Google to Bing, you’ve likely already encountered featured snippets many times, even if you’re unsure of what they are.
To put it simply, featured snippets are those tidbits of information and links to websites that appear the highest in search results. When customers plug a question into Google, the first link and answer that comes up is known as the “zero position.”
It’s this option that gets the most clicks and pageviews.
It’s thus naturally desirable to have featured snippets in as much search queries as possible, as it necessarily directs customers towards your page and information rather than that of your competitors.
So how do I get a featured snippet?
The easiest way for you to ensure that your business or website can cash in on featured snippets? Make your content search engine optimized. This helps the algorithms which power sites like Google direct curious web-surfers towards your content.
There are many ways to make your content SEO, though some dated methods are still in use when they’ve long-since grown out of fashion.
Focusing your content on a single word or search term, for instance, used to be a staple strategy for getting featured snippets. However, it’s no longer ideal as the way algorithms operate has changed with time.
To avoid relying on these outdated methods of getting featured snippets, you should take some time and study up on the common SEO mistakes that too many small businesses make when trying to stand out in the digital realm.
You need more than digital expertise to make your content stand out – sometimes, you just have to make sure it’s not ladled with common errors and simple mistakes that a little homework ahead of time could have prevented.
As brutal as it may sound, the next step is scouting out your competition to steal their techniques and swipe away their snippets to make them your own.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and your business needs to do whatever’s necessary in order to stand out from the crowd. Finding and stealing major snippets that drive traffic to your rival sites is thus an imperative part of success in the 21st century economy.
The exception being, of course, that you have zero intention of cashing in on the ongoing digital boom.
By targeting the snippets your competitors rely upon the most, you’re building your market share by swiping away their consumers and luring them to your superior products or services.
Stealing snippets from your competitors
Don’t be uncomfortable with the notion of “stealing snippets” from your competitors. First of all, you’re not actually “stealing” anything in the illegal sense.
Furthermore it’s a necessary part of success in today’s market that everyone is aware of. You should rather view this as a natural consequence of the cut-throat nature of modern marketing, where only those on the top get any page views at all.
The first thing you should do is head to a service like SEMrush and type in the URL of your competitors so that you can get a glimpse at their site analytics.
By heading into the “organic research” tab and clicking on “position,” you’ll be able to view the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their site.
Be sure to mirror this language as closely as possible if you’re trying to mimic the success of a thriving competitor.
Other low-hanging fruit that you can focus on includes the social media posts of others in your industry. These are likely jam-packed with viral content which you can study so as to embrace the better parts of their ad campaigns.
Recovering snippets that have been stolen from you
You should also take some time to learn about how to recover snippets which have been stolen from you. After all, your competitors aren’t going to stand idly by as you swipe their customer base out from under them.
Mastering the art of tracking down and reclaiming your lost featured snippets can seriously bolster the traffic you enjoy on a monthly basis, and it can even become a sense of pride for entrepreneurs when they reclaim their lost mantle at the top of the search results in their economic niche.
Take a deep dive into the art of recovering stolen snippets and don’t be afraid to run an audit to see if your competitors have been sniping away at your customer base.
This brutal aspect of running a business should serve as a constant reminder of how fierce competition can be, which is why it’s so important to distinguish yourself from the crowd and establish your links as credible and click-worthy.
Making your featured snippets last
Many small business owners are enthused when they get their first featured snippet, as they rightfully recognize this moment as the turning point in their digital careers. Sustaining the momentum you’ve started to develop is easier said than done, however, and making your featured snippets last once you have them should be at the top of your to-do list.
By tapping into ever-spirited nature of social media, you can guarantee that your brand and links are always generating a buzz.
Making your featured snippets last isn’t always possible; sooner rather than later, someone may kick you out of your spot, or worse yet your content might just become dated and thus unable to attract viewers at all because it’s simply stale. Producing engaging content on a regular basis is thus an essential part of staying at the top of the featured snippet scoreboard, and to do that you should be mastering today’s leading social media platforms.
SEO-content and social media boards go together hand in hand, so you need to integrate your strategies for the two if you want your digital brand to endure. Content promotion and link-building aren’t easy and investing in advertisements and SEO-content that helps you bolster the potential of securing a featured snipped doesn’t always come cheap. Getting a featured snippet to prominently display your brand or services online can be a godsend, however, and generate tons of business for even the smallest of companies.
Consider enlisting the help of some social media talent to help you generate a digital buzz, and never stop on your quest to produce engaging, SEO content that will cut through the noise and reach out directly to users when they search.
Chris Porteous is the CEO of Framestr / My SEO Sucks, building high performing sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.
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