With nearly 2 trillion searches each year, Google sets the Gold standard for search engines globally. Need directions? Looking for pizzerias near you? Google can answer all these questions and more. Google’s success is the ability to quickly and accurately answer web users’ search queries. To that end, Google must constantly improve their algorithms and search engine results to keep their dominant share of the market.
Google’s has something referred to as featured snippets. Ever notice an interesting occurrence when you type in a basic search query such as “what day does Halloween fall on this year”? Before you have a chance to click your browser page, the answer appears at the top of your screen. For these types of search queries, Google renders a descriptive text box at the top of the search engine result page (SERPs). Now that you know that a featured snippet is, let’s dive into how they help users, and how your business can strive towards becoming a featured snippet!
The Reasoning Behind Google’s Featured Snippets
Google displays featured snippets to help answer a user’s question by presenting information in a straightforward way. Google users refer to these snippets as “answer boxes” because they usually hold the answers to all of their questions. Google’s featured snippets may contain a brief sentence, a short paragraph with an accompanying image, a list, or a table to present information. Most recently, Google even began testing out videos in featured snippets.
But why does Google show featured snippets at the top of SERPs? It’s quite simple—Google believes quick and short-featured snippets will help mobile and voice search queries. Since mobile search traffic volume outclasses desktop traffic, Google wants to keep up with the times. If you type in a search query on the go, the last thing you want to do is scroll through Google’s SERPs until you find your answer. You want a simple search process and Google knows that, so they created snippets to give you answers as soon as you want them.
Optimizing Your Website For Google’s Featured Snippets
You must keep Google’s featured snippets in mind when optimizing your website. Make sure to take advantage of important keywords by including them throughout your web pages. Most importantly, always ask yourself, “how can I make my website more user-friendly?” You can start by implementing much-needed improvements such as:
- Analyzing your website’s speed using Google’s page speed tool
- Making your website adaptive to any device; desktop, mobile or tablet
- Scaling your images appropriately when using responsive designs
- Modifying any duplicate title, tags, or meta descriptions
- Submit your XML sitemap to Google using the Google Search Console
Remember: you want a user-friendly website so that visitors can find what they’re looking for without having to search through every page. You have a lot of work to complete before your website is completely optimized, so get started. Who knows, your website may end up in a featured snippet one day!
Harness Google’s Featured Snippets By Partnering With Our SEO Agency
If you need help keeping up with Google’s latest updates, Premiere Creative is here to help! With decades of experience in Google rankings and search engine optimization, we can come up with a personalized plan for your website to become featured snippet-worthy. Contact us at (973) 346-8100 for help with your web marketing today!