Studying Featured Snippets to See What Google Wants
So, as you may be aware, gaining the featured snippet for a search term puts you at the top of Google's results.
But how do you know what Google is looking for?
You can actually work your way through several snippets relating to your keyword, not just the one that appears at the top of the page.
This can give you an idea of what Google is looking for, and why it thinks these particular posts deserve to be at the top.
Let's see this in action.
I am using the keyword "how to lose weight fast"
And no, I wouldn't recommend this keyword if you are in the dieting niche, way too competitive!
Here we can see the initial results.
(Yours may be different, as I am in the UK, and didn't go incognito.)
As we can see, the featured snippet is a numbered list, and it's from healthline.com
Now, let's try removing Healthline from the results.
To do that, repeat the search but add a minus sign and the name of the website.
So, your search would be as follows.
And now, the featured snippet is from nhs.uk
But note - it's another numbered list.
Let's try it one more time, removing both of these results.
Now, the featured snippet position is held by Forbes.
Oh, and look - it's a numbered list...
Can you see where I am going with this?
If you were hoping to get the featured snippet position for "how to lose weight fast", then Google is clearly looking for a numbered list.
I hope this helps!
Recent Comments
30
Great Info, Diane!
Curiously enough, I have had articles on my guitar website where Google actually took some H3 headings or a bulleted list in the post and numbered them to make the featured snippet.
It seems like sometimes their bot gathers info it likes and puts it in a numbered format, even if there isn't any particular order to it.
See more comments
Very interesting as always Diane... it is always worth checking out what Google deems to be a featured snippet for our chosen keywords.
I never knew that one could add a minus sign in front of a particular website to remove it from the search though! The learning here is indeed never ending!
Have you had much success in achieving the featured snippet when using bullet points or numbered lists yourself??
Hi - I have some featured snippets, but not through using lists.
I guess what I am trying to say, is that using the method I describe above, then you can see what format Google is looking for, for that particular keyword.
For some keywords, a list may not be appropriate.