Rob Bucci – BrightonSEO April 2016: Deep diving into featured snippets: How to earn more and rise to the top of the SERPs

1. DEEP DIVING INTO
FEATURED SNIPPETS:
How to earn more and rise to the top of the
SERPs

2. WHY FEATURED SNIPPETS?
They represent a valuable opportunity to drive organic
traffic for sites that are capable of getting them.
@STATrob

3. MAXIMUM AUTHORITY.
Appearing in a featured snippet gives your content a
big credibility boost in the mind of the searcher.
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4. LEAPFROG THE COMPETITION.
By appearing in a featured snippet, you’re effectively
ranking at position zero. Above all other organics.
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5. HUGE TRAFFIC VALUE.
Sites are seeing 20 - 30 percent increases in organic
traffic to URLs that appear in featured snippets.
@STATrob

6. WHAT’S ON THE AGENDA?
• Explain the research methodology
• Share the results of the research
• Provide tips for securing your own featured snippets
@STATrob

7. THE DATA
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8. FIRST, COLLECT 1,000,000 QUERIES.
We took the 1 million queries with highest CPC from the
GrepWords database by Russ Jones @ Moz.
@STATrob

9. NEXT, COLLECT 1,000,000 SERPS.
We used STAT to grab the 1,000,000 SERPs for each
query in our list.
@STATrob

10. Here is an example of a featured snippet.

11. Not to be confused with a knowledge graph snippet.

12. 93,832 FEATURED SNIPPETS.
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13. COLLECT ON-PAGE & OFF-SITE DATA.
We collected the top-10 ranking URLs for each SERP
where we found a featured snippet. This added up to
346,643 unique URLs!
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14. FINALLY, WE ANALYZED IT ALL.
Tableau and Excel were our tools of choice.
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15. MANY TYPES OF
SNIPPETS. MANY TYPES
OF SERPS.
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16. FEATURED SNIPPET FORMATTING
TYPE OF SNIPPET % OF TOTAL SNIPPETS
Paragraph Snippets 81.95%
List Snippets 10.77%
Table Snippets 7.28%

17. This is a paragraph featured snippet.

18. This is a list featured snippet.

19. This is a table featured snippet (with an image).

20. FEATURED SNIPPETS & IMAGES
TYPE OF SNIPPET FREQUENCY OF IMAGES
Paragraph Snippets 28.40%
List Snippets 26.30%
Table Snippets 17.70%

21. FEATURED SNIPPETS & UNIVERSAL RESULTS
RESULT TYPE SNIPPET SERPS ALL SERPS
Places 0.00% 13.20%
Video 24.50% 20.50%
Images 13.90% 15.60%
News 5.40% 3.40%
Shopping 4.00% 1.70%
Twitter 0.00% 0.50%

22. FREQUENCY AT WHICH SNIPPETS ARE
SOURCED FROM EACH RANKING POSITION
0.00%
7.50%
15.00%
22.50%
30.00%
RANKING POSITION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12+
0.65%0.16%0.84%1.03%1.53%2.18%
4.02%
10.42%
12.88%
16.24%
20.46%
29.60%

23. INFLUENCE OF CPC
0.00%
3.00%
6.00%
9.00%
12.00%
CPC RANGE
$9.55+ $10.20+ $10.95+ $11.88+ $13.11+ $14.60+ $16.57+ $19.57+ $24.61+ $34.89+
7.65%
9.28%9.54%9.62%9.64%9.71%9.60%9.37%9.25%9.19%

24. INFLUENCE OF SEARCH VOLUME
0.00%
4.00%
8.00%
12.00%
16.00%
RANKING POSITION
10 20 30 40 50 60-90 100-140 150-320 330-27M
15.20%
12.60%
11.10%
10.10%
9.30%
8.70%
8.20%
7.70%
5.90%

25. INFLUENCE OF WORD COUNT
0.00%
7.50%
15.00%
22.50%
30.00%
RANKING POSITION
1 2 3 4 5 6+
24.54%
12.19%
7.58%
6.66%
9.26%
10.49%

26. WORDS THAT TRIGGER
FEATURED SNIPPETS
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27. HOW WE CALCULATED FREQUENCY
WORD TOTAL OCCURRENCE SNIPPET OCCURRENCE SNIPPET FREQUENCY
lasik 3 2 66%
surgery 2 1 50%
age 1 1 100%
for 1 1 100%
seattle 1 0 0%
cost 1 1 100%

28. “math” or “finance” words like [salary].

29. FINANCIAL AND MATH WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
average 77.71%
salary 76.84%
many 72.06%
much 69.95%
deductible 60.32%
cost 50.64%

30. “time” related-words like [often]

31. TIME WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
often 73.38%
years 69.42%
deadline 60.11%
last 48.06%
when 47.89%
age 44.44%

32. “health” & “healthcare” related-words like [symptoms]

33. HEALTH & HEALTHCARE WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
psychologist 55.85%
eat 50.00%
symptoms 47.10%
burn 45.61%
hurt 45.53%
calories 45.21%

34. “general questions” & “transition” related-words like [definition]

35. GENERAL QUESTIONS & TRANSITION WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
forming 75.00%
does 79.94%
become 63.46%
cause 61.57%
definition 60.41%
removing 54.00%

36. “DIY process” related-words like [faucet]

37. DIY PROCESS WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
faucet 62.50%
fixing 59.26%
replacing 58.78%
clogged 58.55%
recover 56.05%
remove 55.99%

38. LOCATION WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
san 0.56%
vegas 0.55%
diego 0.50%
denver 0.43%
austin 0.38%
las 0.34%

39. SUBJECTIVE WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
free 1.58%
rankings 0.92%
comparison 0.19%
review 0.14%
good 0.05%
best 0.00%

40. IMAGE/VIDEO WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
videos 1.78%
photo 1.77%
picture 1.50%
pictures 1.20%
photos 1.10%
logo 0.88%

41. ON-PAGE FACTORS
@STATrob

42. USE OF <TABLE> TAGS
0.00%
12.50%
25.00%
37.50%
50.00%
featured snippets regular results
33.87%
41.23%

43. USE OF <OL> TAGS
0.00%
12.50%
25.00%
37.50%
50.00%
featured snippets regular snippets
30.97%
43.85%

44. MATCHING QUERY IN <H1> or <H2>
0.00%
2.50%
5.00%
7.50%
10.00%
featured snippets regular results
7.11%
8.62%

45. THERE’S JUST NOT ENOUGH TIME.
We also looked into social media and linking factors
that might influence featured snippets. Check the
white paper for that information.
@STATrob

46. OK, SO HOW DO I EARN
FEATURED SNIPEPTS?
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47. #1: ANALYZE YOUR KEYWORD
OPPORTUNITIES.
Use tools like STAT, SEMRush, even Google Search
Console. Look for target keywords.
@STATrob

48. #2: CREATE STRATEGIC NEW
CONTENT TARGETED AT SNIPPETS.
Refer to our data on which words trigger featured
snippets. Look for ideas that make sense for your
vertical.
@STATrob

49. #3: BRING IN QUESTION AND
ANSWER FORMATTING.
When possible, devote a page to answering a single
question. Try to find ways to incorporate FAQs into
your content.
@STATrob

50. #4: SLICE UP YOUR COPY WITH
SUBHEADS, LISTS & TABLES.
Well structured page sections makes it easy for
Google to determine what content is most relevant to
a given search query.
@STATrob

51. #5: POLISH YOUR EXISTING
SNIPPETS FOR HIGHER CTR.
You can influence the display copy in an already
earned snippet to drive up your click throughs.
@STATrob

52. THANKS!
Watch out for our white paper in your email.
Get the data at getSTAT.com/data/fs
@STATrob