Founder at M16 Marketing and a Forbes Agency Council member, Don is a leading marketing technologist on a mission to create success stories.
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Google’s search results consist of more than just standard organic listings. Featured snippets, for instance, offer ranking opportunities.
Featured snippets are unpaid, organic listings in a reverse content format. Standard organic listings show the page’s title at the top and then a description underneath. Featured snippets show the page’s description first.
Performing any given search on Google may yield a relevant featured snippet. The featured snippet will be between the standard organic listings and the Google ads. If there are no Google ads on the search results page, the featured snippet will be at the very top.
There are five different types of featured snippets, each of which contains a different type of content.
1. Paragraph
Paragraph featured snippets contain text content in the form of a paragraph. It’s the most common type of featured snippet. According to Search Engine Journal, over 81% of all featured snippets are paragraphs. Paragraph featured snippets consist of a text excerpt that Google pulls from a webpage and displays as a paragraph.
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You can rank for paragraph featured snippets by focusing on text content. Like other types of featured snippets, they typically appear as answers to a search query. Users may search for a question, and Google may return a relevant featured snippet with an answer to it. To rank for paragraph featured snippets, create high-quality text content that provides concise answers to questions users may ask.
2. Table
Table featured snippets contain content in the form of a table. Tables, of course, are used to organize data. They have horizontal rows and vertical columns. Each section where a row intersects with a column is a cell.
Creating table-formatted content can help your website for rank for table featured snippets. Rather than conveying data in complete sentences, you may be able to use a hypertext markup language (HTML) table. The data just needs to have two or more variables.
3. Ordered List
There are also ordered list featured snippets. These contain content in the form of a numbered or otherwise sequential list. You often can find them when searching for how-to keywords and recipes. Ordered lists may reveal the steps to performing a task or cooking a dish.
To rank for ordered list featured snippets, create content using HTML ordered lists. Be sure to create HTML ordered lists that specifically answer the questions for which you want to rank. If there’s an ordered list on your website that answers a user’s query, Google may rank it in one of these featured snippets.
4. Unordered List
In addition to ordered list snippets, there are unordered list featured snippets. Also known as bullet point featured snippets, they contain content in the form of an unordered list. These lists are not sequential.
You can rank for unordered lists by creating content using HTML unordered lists. In HTML, unordered lists use the
- tag, whereas ordered lists use
- tag for individual items. Use HTML ordered lists for content with sequential items and HTML unordered lists for content with nonsequential items.
5. Video
You may come across video featured snippets when performing Google searches. They contain content in the form of a video. Most of them involve YouTube videos. Clicking a video featured snippet will then load the YouTube page where it’s hosted while automatically playing the depicted video.
To rank for video featured snippets, of course, you need to create video content. Don’t just host the video content directly on your website. Instead, upload it to YouTube. This will increase the chance of it ranking in video featured snippets. If you want to share the video content on your website, you can embed it.
What About Images?
There isn’t a specific type of featured snippet for images. With the exception of video featured snippets, though, featured snippets may contain one or more images. They are shown to the right of the featured snippet’s main content.
Including images on your website can help you rank for featured snippets. Images attract the attention of Google’s users. Users who search for a keyword may be drawn to your featured snippets if they contain images.
Beware Of Snippet Tags
Google supports tags to prevent content from appearing in regular search engine results snippets and featured snippets. They include the “nosnippet” tag and the “data-nosnippet” tag.
The “nosnippet” tag tells Google not to include any content from the page on which it’s used in a regular snippet or featured snippet. The “data-nosnippet” tag tells Google not to include just certain parts of a page in a regular snippet or featured snippet. If your website isn’t ranking in featured snippets, check to see whether it has either of these tags.
Featured snippets aren’t new. Google has been serving them since 2014. Since then, featured snippets have only become more popular. Google now displays paragraph, table, ordered list, unordered list and video featured snippets. You can rank for them by creating the right type of content.
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Author: Don Dodds, Forbes Councils Member
- . Both types of lists use the
