Would you like to know how to get featured snippets on Google?
The featured snippet is a much-coveted search engine results page (SERP) feature that can help you boost your organic clickthrough rates (CTRs) and drive traffic to your site. Therefore, featured snippets are invaluable assets that can help boost business growth.
In this article, we’ll show you how to get featured snippets on Google, even if you’re not a WordPress expert.
In This Article
What is a Google Featured Snippet?
A featured snippet, also called position zero, is the search listing that appears after ads and sponsored posts (depending on current SERP features) but above the first organic result. They are designed to give users a quick answer to their search query by providing more information than traditional search snippets.
An important point to note is that search engines pull information from websites to generate featured snippets. This is why you should know the SEO best practices that give you better chances of getting featured snippets on Google.
And that’s exactly what we’ll show you in a moment.
Note: It’s up to Google’s discretion whether you land the featured snippet or not. The tips presented in this article are a guide to help optimize for the featured snippet and are not a guarantee you’ll get it.
Why are Google Featured Snippets Important to SEO?
Getting featured snippets is crucial to your SEO for several reasons, the main ones being:
Greater Visibility for Your Content
By virtue of their position and size, featured snippets are very prominent SERP features that can’t be missed. They are prime real estate on SERPs that can help boost your brand awareness.
Improve Your Organic CTRs and Boost Your Traffic
Another advantage of getting the featured snippet for your keyword is that it leads to improved organic CTRs. Research shows that featured snippets get about 35.1% of clicks on the first page.
Thanks to this improvement in CTRs, you also get a boost in traffic to your site.
Getting the featured snippet, as you can see, is critical to business growth.
How to Get Featured Snippets on Google
Ready to optimize your content for featured snippets?
Let’s dive right in.
1. Install All In One SEO (AIOSEO)
The first step to optimizing your content for featured snippets is to install a powerful SEO plugin like All In One SEO (AIOSEO).
AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and is trusted by over 3 million savvy website owners and marketers to help them dominate the SERPs and drive relevant traffic to their sites. This is because the plugin has many powerful SEO features and modules to help you optimize your website for search engines and users.
Some of the plugin's most popular features are designed to help you rank your content easily and get the featured snippet. These are features like:
- Next-gen Schema Generator
- FAQ and table of contents blocks
- SEO Analysis module
- TrueSEO on-page analysis tool
- And more
For step-by-step instructions on how to install AIOSEO, check out our installation guide.
2. Implement Schema Markup
Schema markup, also called structured data, helps search engines better understand your content and its context. As a result, they can generate better search snippets.
More importantly, schema markup helps you get the featured snippet. This is especially if you use the following schema types:
- FAQ schema
- How-to schema
- Recipe schema
- Product schema
Adding these schema types is super easy with AIOSEO’s next-gen Schema Generator, even if you have no technical or coding knowledge.
To get started, open your target page or post in editor mode and scroll down to the AIOSEO Settings section. Next, click Schema » Generate Schema.
Clicking the Generate Schema button will open our Schema Catalog, from which you can choose the schema you want to implement.
For step-by-step instructions on how to add schema markup in WordPress, check out this detailed guide.
3. Optimize Content Structure for Featured Snippets
Another way to increase your chances of getting the featured snippet is to optimize your content for the featured snippet. Doing so includes simple elements like using question-based heading tags immediately followed by an answer containing the keyword in the question.
Structuring your content this way gives search engines fantastic passages to pull into the featured snippet box.
Other ways to optimize your content for search snippets include:
- Using short paragraphs to provide direct answers to searchers' questions
- Breaking down tutorials into steps and labeling them as such
- Compressing large amounts of data into tables
Most featured snippets contain short, succinct, and concise answers to questions. Therefore, optimizing content structure makes it easier for search engines to pull information from your site when generating a featured snippet.
4. Use a Table of Contents
Another way to optimize your content for featured snippets is to add a table of contents to your posts. This is because a table of contents provides search engines with bullet points they can easily pull from to present in a list-style featured snippet.
Adding a table of contents manually in WordPress can be laborious and time-consuming. But with AIOSEO, it’s simply a matter of adding our Table of Contents block where you want to place your table of contents.
To do so, simply add a block as you normally would and select the AIOSEO Table of Contents block option:
Once you add the Table of Contents block, AIOSEO will automatically create your table of contents from your heading tags. Plus, the table of contents will be hyperlinked so users can jump to the section they want right from the table of contents.
Most importantly, regarding SEO, the table of contents also helps you stand a better chance of landing the featured snippet for your keyword.
5. Create the Best Piece of Content on the Subject
Search engines want to show users the best possible results for a search query. This is why you just invest time and resources to ensure you create the best possible piece of content on your subject. This is a piece of content that addresses all the questions searchers may have. It also means creating an article that follows SEO best practices to help it rank better. Examples include:
- Adding internal links for topical authority
- Craft optimized Google search snippets
- Optimize for readability
For more tips, check out our guide to SEO best practices.
6. Check Out Your Competitors
Conducting a competitor analysis is another excellent way to help you determine how to land the featured snippet. An easy way to do this is to use a tool like Ahrefs. Simply go to Site Explorer (enter competitors domain) » Organic keywords » SERP Features » Featured snippets.
Doing so will show you all the keywords your competitor has the featured snippet for.
Next, use AIOSEO’s SEO Analysis tool to analyze your competitor’s SEO to see what they’re doing to enhance their chances of landing featured snippets.
For step-by-step instructions on conducting a competitor analysis in WordPress, check out this detailed guide.
Competitor analysis will give you insight into what works for your competitors and help you replicate their winning SEO strategies.
Now You Know How to Get Featured Snippets on Google
We hope this post helped you learn how to get featured snippets on Google. You may also want to check out other articles on our blog, like how to set up SEO for different languages and our tutorial on how to easily find and fix orphan pages in WordPress.
If you found this article helpful, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You’ll find many more helpful tutorials there. You can also follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook to stay in the loop.
Want to Try AIOSEO for Free?
Enter the URL of your WordPress website to install AIOSEO Lite.
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.
