It’s easy to take some of Google’s features for granted. Try asking Google about a specific event in history, or for an explanation of a scientific phenomenon; for example, ask when the Apollo 11 moon landing was or what’s responsible for the appearance of rainbows.
Chances are, you’ll get a succinct answer to your query, located in a box above the typical search results. It may include dates, images, or just a paragraph or two of text that directly answers your question. These are featured snippets, and they’ve introduced a new world of convenience for search users everywhere. Now, instead of clicking through the top few sites to find the answer you’re looking for, you can get the answer without clicking anything.
But wait—doesn’t that mean fewer users will be clicking through to actual websites? Couldn’t that compromise the value of SEO campaigns?
What the Data Says
Ahrefs recently released a study that attempted to prove the effects that a featured snippet has on traditional organic search results. In an average search engine results page (SERP), where no featured snippet is present, the top organic search result will get about 26 percent of all click-throughs.
When a featured snippet is present, the top organic search result gets less than 20 percent of all click-throughs, while the featured snippet itself gets 8.6 percent of the clicks. To put it simply, featured snippets are leeching at least some traffic from the top organically ranked sites. Plus, featured snippets reduce the total amount of clicks on a given page—raising the percentage of non-clickers from about 25 percent to about 30 percent.
To make things even more interesting, approximately 12.29 percent of all search terms are accompanied by a featured snippet in search results. As Google gets better at understanding and delivering featured snippets, this rate is likely to grow even further in time.
So Are Featured Snippets Bad for SEO?
If featured snippets steal organic traffic, and they’re going to become even more prevalent over the next several years, does that mean they’ll have a negative impact on the overall ROI of SEO?
Not necessarily.
Despite the fact that featured snippets reduce clicks and steal some traffic, there are a few concepts mitigating their potential harm:
- Featured snippet readers aren’t your most valuable audience. This is a subjective claim, so bear with me. If a user is only looking for a fast answer to a simple question, they won’t be interested in reading extended pieces of content or making a purchase—so the traffic you stand to lose isn’t especially valuable.
- It’s possible to optimize for featured snippets. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. It’s possible to optimize your on-site content to be included in featured snippets (which I’ll explain in the next section).
- Brand visibility matters. Even if you aren’t getting traffic from being included in a featured snippet box, you might be underestimating the power of brand visibility. Your site will be named and listed as the contributor of that featured information, and even that small amount of exposure could result in an increase in brand familiarity and trust.
- Optimizing for the other 87.7 percent has no change in value. Right now, almost one in every eight queries has a featured snippet. That may seem like a lot, but it’s still a tiny minority; remember, 87.7 percent of queries still function as they always have, without the need to worry about poached traffic from featured snippets.
Preparing for More Featured Snippets
If you’re interested in optimizing one or more pages of your site to be cited in a featured snippet, there are a few simple techniques you’ll need to follow:
- Include microformatting. First, you’ll need to make sure your website is properly updated with microformatting. Microformatting standards, which you can find and use on Schema.org, help Google understand what types of information are on your site, and make it easier for its search bots to parse that information. Without this formatting, your content won’t be considered for featured snippets at all.
- Optimize your page for common user queries. Next, you’ll need to make sure your target pages are optimized for long-tail keyword queries, rather than shorter “root” keywords. These are extended semantic phrases like “why do rainbows appear after rain?” rather than something simple like “rainbows.” Include variations of these phrases in your title tags, meta descriptions, and in the body of your content.
- Answer queries succinctly and accurately. Once your page is optimized for a specific query, you can answer that query—as succinctly and accurately as possible. Google likes to answer questions with one or two sentences of information, so do your best to provide that amount.
- Attract lots of inbound links. Link building is just as important for being selected in a featured snippet as it is for getting a top organic ranking. Make sure your intended page gets plenty of inbound links.
Yes, it’s true that featured snippets can and will steal traffic from organically ranked sites, but that’s no cause to panic. If you keep this information in mind, you can optimize your site to be included in more featured snippets, or adjust your strategy to avoid featured snippets altogether.
Featured snippets aren’t going anywhere, so it’s on you to figure out how you want to handle them.
