How to WIN the Featured Answer Snippet

byEncourager1

5.5K followers

4 years ago

The featured snippets that you see at the top of the search engine results pages are becoming more and more important as Google is making these more prevalent. The featured snippets are bold and stand out driving a ton of traffic to the sites that win these coveted spots.

So I decided since these spots are so important there must be things you can do to make your chances of winning the featured snippets better.

How to WIN the Featured Snippet

There are four types of featured snippets.

1. Answer
2. List
3. Table
4. Video

In this article, I’m going to focus on winning the ANSWER SNIPPET.

Of course, the first thing you need to do is have a concise answer to the question posed. It needs to be right to the point only a few sentences long.

You should have one paragraph leading up to the question and answer paragraph to let the search bots know that you will be answering the question. You will also want to state the question in the title of the article.

Snippet Winning Formula

• State the question in the title
• State the question in the meta description
• First paragraph: should be a signal to the search bots that an answer is coming.
• Second paragraph: Restate the question and give the answer
• The answer should be in BOLD type
• Use Formal language. Don’t use casual slang type wording as you would in the rest of your article. The answer should be a straight forward well worded serious answer to the question posed.

Question in Meta Title

Always have the question in the title of the article this is a big signal to search bots that this question is the main target of the article and that the article will more than likely contain the answer to that question.

Question in the Meta Description

Same goes for having the question in the meta description. Search bots see this as a signal that there will be an answer in this article.

First Paragraph

In the first paragraph you should use to lead up to the answer. This paragraph should explain the situation or problem that leads to the question.

Second Paragraph

The second paragraph is where the question and answer come together and it's this paragraph that will be the featured snippet for the question. Simply restate the question and right after include your answer.

BOLD Type

The answer to the question should be in bold face type. This lets the search bots know that this section of the article is important and needs to stand out.

Use Formal Writing Tone

The last but one of the most important parts is to use a formal form of tone in the answer to the question. The search engines want precise to the point answers with no casual slang like you would in the rest of your article. So write it formally and to the point with all the correct grammar and punctuation.

You WIN!

If you follow the above formula and have the best answer to whatever question that you are posing in the article you will have a leg up on the competition and have a better chance at winning the featured answer snippet.

And winning the snippet could bring you even more traffic than if you got the #1 position. Keep in mind if you get the featured snippet your article will not rank anywhere else in the search results but who cares as long as you have the coveted featured snippet!

The featured snippet stands out big on TOP of the first page. If you have noticed the other rankings on Google especially are getting smaller with smaller fonts even the URL is becoming smaller in size on Google making the featured snippet a very important piece of search engine real estate!

Get out there and let's WIN some snippets!!

I hope you gained some useful knowledge from this article and I would like to know who has achieved the featured snippet and what things did you do to make it happen?

Cheerz,

Cory