How Creating Snippets Can Be Optimized For Site Ranking?

Recently updated: January 5th, 2019

Today, I shall take your insight into the little pieces of information that are contained in boxes just below the search toolbar, displayed at the top of search engine results, giving to the point and precise answer to the question that you have asked Google.

Ever thought where does Google produce that specialized answer to your question? And how quickly it flashes in your search results?

Google Snippets

Well, Google might show a search result in a special featured snippet block at the top of the search results page if it finds that any of the websites in its directory have a direct answer to the question. In simple words, Google snippet has a summary of the answer extracted (in case you don’t have much time) from a web page along with a link to the page (in case you want to read more). Often, Google Displays one-word answers to questions, if possible. And mostly websites like Wikipedia, Investopedia, Quora, Dictionary etc. occupy the slot in the snippets.

Snippets Draw Attention

It is true that anything that is highlighted by a shape (such as a rectangle in the case of a snippet), gains a lot of attention. It is also true that anything that appears at the top of search results is psychologically the most relevant search result for the user. Even if the user hasn’t read it all, the user will prefer to click on the link and find the answer. Thus, snippets are enhanced search results to draw the user’s attention on the results page.

Site Featuring In Snippets

There is no trick to get your published content featured in the snippet. The answer is a summary programmatically extracted from a web page, catering to the question. If the content has exactly the same matching question or a somewhat close question, the answer automatically features in the snippet. Although there is an option for you to opt out of the featured snippets by inserting a tag on your page, there is no possibility to get featured by the tags. The catch here is creating snippets on your website that match the search interests of the users.

Rich Snippets

Google introduced ‘rich snippets’ in the year 2009, in order to give in a liking for structured data embedded in web pages. All Google Algorithms were optimized so as to search for markup data (XML or HTML) whenever the user asks a question in the search toolbar. This was to enhance the user’s browsing experience as well as to promote the use of clean site architecture in web pages.

Benefits of Site Ranking In Snippets

The traffic, conversions, and conversion rate increase in enormous accounts when the site begins to feature in the snippets. There are two evident reasons. The first one is that the users trust the top results only for finding relevant results to their queries and the second on is that they want a quick answer pertaining to what they intend to know. Snippets are displayed on the top and contain only the answer to the question, thereby creating wider possibilities on increased click through rate for the web page. In short, snippets are the small bio to the web pages, attracting the users to the web page.

Optimizing Sites for Featured Snippets

As snippets are displayed at the top of the search result, websites have begun to aim for featuring in snippets. However, cracking the program that automatically generates snippet is not the cup of the tea. The only available way out to meet out this aim is to create rich snippets on your web pages, that focus on the answer, not the website answering them. Once they become optimised, the crawler detects and displays them in the concerned search results.

• Provide Structured Data

This is a part of having a clean site architecture which the crawler is easily able to read and understand. You should be aware that when the custom search is indexing your web pages, it reads and saves the metadata. Having structured data makes the meta tags more visible.

• Answers to Questions

This is yet another way to pave your way to featuring more often in snippets. Is any of your web pages contain answers to question, it is very likely that they match the searched question and appear at the top of the search results.

• Link Building

In the world of SEO, backlinks are still a very important ranking factor. However, having too many backlinks to a web page makes it fall into the spam category. The most efficient link building for featured snippets content occurs on websites like Quora and Reddit where the users are already seeking answers to their questions.

If the three things are practiced regularly, the site can easily be ranked for a featured snippet and the traffic to the web page from where the snippet has been extracted can also be grown. The content should be easily consumable, written in a simple language so as to make it easy for the readers to engage with it.

It is very important to understand what your users are looking for and what is the perfect answer to it. Once you’re able to answer their questions with simple, to-the-point content, it is half done. And as voice-based commands for the searches are on the rise, featured snippets that can be read out are more likely to gain popularity.