Got Ranked With Featured Snippet- What To Do Next ? A Case Study !

bymaydv

623 followers

Updated 4 years ago

Ranking on Google's first page with featured snippets is one metrics that is being touted as very important for your site's growth. The more no. of featured snippets your site ranks with, the better growth prospects it ensures. The reason being, it helps you enhance CTR (Click Through Rate) of your page/post and that ultimately ends up in a sustained good ranking (The catch though, is that the quality of the content over the post should be so awesome that the audience remains glued to the page for reasonably good time, else skipping the page so soon sends a bad signal to the Google and Google daddy brings down your ranking).

I assume, you already have a good content over your page/post and you keep updating it with by adding some value. Let us see what happens to the end,

I am going to take a live example of what actually could happen when you commit to provide your audience what they want. This example is straight from one my sites, I have started working on it sincerely, off late. The target Keyword is Transfer Pricing Manipulation over preventiveofficer.com. Just have a look over the blog post before you start reading through post in here.

Below is the Google's Result for Search Term "Transfer Pricing Manipulation" to start with:

Snippet Result for KW Originally

A plain reading of the snippet gives an impression that the Snippet couldn't find enough material/words about the Target concept/ keyword here. Why I can say this is that the very first line of the snippet is about "Transfer Pricing Manipulation" ending in dots (....) while, the second line of the snippet starts with "Transfer Pricing" which is used in good sense. There is one more reason of my claiming that Google couldn't find enough of relevant material on "Transfer Pricing Manipulations". And this has to do with the theme of the Blog Post, which is about "Transfer Pricing Manipulations" itself. I am posting the screenshot of actual content below from where the snippet has been taken.

The Content over Blog Post From Where Google Snippet has been Taken

To measure success or failure of what I intend to do, I am posting the inside view of my Google Websmaster Tool /Search Console. Just check yourself how the numbers look like in respect of my Traget Keyword "Transfer Pricing Manipulation" .

Search Console Performance Results, Currently

These Numbers are 8, 78, 10.3% and 5.9 respectively corresponding to Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Average positions. I assume as you are versed with the working of Google search console.

What I am Going to Do?

As, I have got a strong feeling about the inadequacy of the content on my target KW and the theme around, I am going to add few lines, exactly at place where the Snippet is ending in dots (...). Let me clarify my condidence that the post has already got enough of content to explain the key concept. My only finding is that the paragraph from where google tried extracting the snippet FIRST is not having sufficient material. So I ll make certain changes in that particular para (its is the very first para of the Blog post) and if needed will go tweaking other paras too. I After all these changes, I ll wait for a Week or Two and will come up with the RESULTS available so that, you too can rely on this blog post as a case study / training material. STAY TUNED !!

Edit 1: I Tweaked the para 1 of my post from Where Snippet was Extracted

After Tweaking the para 1 to eliminate the dots (....) after 4/5 days later I started getting Snippet as below:

So, it was a wiser decision to Tweak my paragraph as the dots are gone and it certainly helped getting better CTR.
But, then I thought adding a FAQ section at the end of the blog post and seems it went adverse to my interests (at least for now). The SERP position has gone down to 3 from 1 and now I am waiting for a couple of weeks to see if the ranking improves. Here is the screenshot:

Obviously there is no point in sharing Search Console's data as of now as the CTR and number of clicks must have gone down. I am waiting if the ranking improves and then I ll post the screenshot of Search Console's data. Stay tuned !

EDIT 2- My Site has Regained the SERP 1

Guys, the final result of both the tweaks that I made on my Blog viz. changing the content in the first paragraph and then adding an FAQ section at the bottom goes in my favour now. The blog has regained the position 1 in the SERP with no dots (as seen in the very first screenshot) within the featured snippet now. The CTR has improved and the KW is getting second highest number of clicks. Here is the screenshot of the SNIPPET.

And, below is the screenshot of Search Console

CONCLUSION of Case Study:

1.When your blog ranks with featured snippet, inspect minutely if it perfectly features the short answer to the target query. If you feel google is struggling to catch snippet from blog content, do undertake the required tweaks and enable the Google extract the query answer most precisely.

2. Wait and watch, if the tweaks you made is not going in your favour, go back to the original version of the contents. Please do not get disappointed, if you donot get the expected results within few days. Give sometime to Google.