Are featured snippets as exciting as they’re said to be? In this talk, Emily Potter gave a balanced look at how effective they really are, ultimately inferring some useful points about how to swoop in and steal top ranking positions.
Overview
Speaker: Emily Potter
Job role and company: Consultant at Distilled
Website: https://www.distilled.net/
Twitter profile: @e_mpotter
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emargaretpotter/
Link to the slides:
What was the talk about?
Google is increasingly gathering data from websites and presenting it through featured snippets in results — making Google the enemy to some extent. You need to cater to snippets, but not obsessively: tweak your content to suit, exploit obvious opportunities, and do a lot of research.
Fave quote
“On articles claiming that featured snippets boost CTR dramatically: “All of these studies suck. Sorry if anyone who wrote these is in the audience; we can talk afterwards!”
Potential impact on the industry
The idea that featured snippets are magical drivers of traffic must be abandoned. They do help, but not that much. Webmasters who want to go ahead should be as practical as possible, accepting that the system is unfair and being willing to game it.
Key takeaways
- If you’re outranking a page but it’s getting the featured snippet, try stealing the H1.
- Where Google is sticking points and counterpoints together, you can provide them in full linked with “However” to have a shot at being selected.
- Top results using tables, bullet points, etc.? Reformat your content to match.
