{"id":142496,"date":"2020-12-03T13:41:43","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T13:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=142496"},"modified":"2020-12-03T13:53:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T13:53:50","slug":"research-insights-role-of-featured-snippets-in-website-traffic-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/12\/03\/research-insights-role-of-featured-snippets-in-website-traffic-boost\/","title":{"rendered":"Research insights: Role of featured snippets in website traffic boost"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h2>30-second summary:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Featured snippets account for a 35.1% share of all clicks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The featured snippet and knowledge panel SERP give a better click-through rate together. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Users click on featured snippets that seem &#8220;informative&#8221;.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Users who prefer the regular search results listings don&#8217;t click on featured snippets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;People also ask&#8221; boxes are an unpopular choice showing the lowest amount of clicks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">24% of users consider a featured snippet as an &#8216;Ad&#8217; and don&#8217;t click on it.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Featured snippets are probably the first thing people see when they perform a search query. Acquiring the position \u2018zero\u2019 on the SERPs, the featured snippets dominate the page and immediately capture the attention of the viewer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, does it make an impact on the visitor? Do the featured snippets get more clicks when compared to the top results? How does the audience perceive them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To answer these questions and more, we at <\/span>Engine Scout<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> recently conducted a study and analyzed how featured snippets influence searchers&#8217; behavior and overall experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The methodology applied for the featured snippet study<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In our <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/enginescout.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Featured-Snippet-Study-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study on<\/a> featured snippets<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, we collected data from 3552 testers, who were asked to look at four different SERPs with snippets. They were required to make a search on Google related to a specific keyword and make a selection from the results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To collect an unbiased opinion, featured snippets were not mentioned anywhere in the survey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There were three choices for the testers to choose from: Ads, featured snippets, and regular result listing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They were later asked which section they clicked on to estimate the Click-through rate (CTR).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-142499 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-1.jpg\" alt=\"Featured snippets - sections\" width=\"336\" height=\"431\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-1.jpg 336w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-1-234x300.jpg 234w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>What is a featured snippet and how does it boost website traffic?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The featured snippet is a summarized extract from a post that answers the user&#8217;s &#8216;<\/span><b>search query<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216; most accurately. It is placed above all the Google search result listings, occupying position zero.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This means no matter what your website&#8217;s ranking for a certain post if Google chooses a featured snippet from your post, it will appear on the top.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142505\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-5.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-5-300x137.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Ahrefs, it is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/featured-snippets-study\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">99.58%<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> true that Google will only consider your content for a featured snippet if it is already ranking on Page #1. The other 0.42% pages that Google considers account for their \u2018<\/span><b>People also ask<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019 box SERP feature. This feature only receives a total of 6% click shares, for the same reason.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The &#8216;<\/span><b>concise and direct<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216; nature of these featured snippets motivates users to click on them. According to our study, they account for 35.1% of all clicks which translates to getting &#8216;<\/span><b>extra traffic<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216; to your website.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142504\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-4.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-4-300x143.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Optimizing a post to rank for a featured snippet can be tricky. Any content can be worthy of becoming a &#8216;Featured-Snippet,&#8217; including a <\/span><b>paragraph, a list, table, or even a video.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Try these three quick strategies to win more featured snippets that get clicks to your website.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>1. Include direct answers to a search query in a paragraph snippet<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Paragraph snippets account for <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/04\/25\/what-are-featured-snippets-and-how-do-i-get-them\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">82% of the total<\/a> featured snippets<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These snippets give the most relevant response to a query in a paragraph form. They usually als<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">o display a pertinent image alongside or above the text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here is an example of how Google shows a paragraph snippet when asked about &#8216;<\/span><b>What is SERP?<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142506\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"366\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed.jpg 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-300x214.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>2. Make the best use of keywords in your paragraph<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attaining the first rank in Google for a keyword requires quite an effort.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Enriching your optimized content for featured snippets with the right keywords increases your chances of that &#8216;<\/span><b>Position Zero<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216; in the SERP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Try to include <\/span><b>question-oriented keywords<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in your content. People find search results with keywords resonating with their question as &#8220;<\/span><b>trustworthy<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8221; and &#8220;<\/span><b>informative<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.&#8221; This is the primary reason why they prefer a featured snippet over all other organic results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142502\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"496\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-3.png 496w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-3-291x300.png 291w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 496px) 100vw, 496px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take a close look at your competitor&#8217;s featured snippets for some inspiration. Make a list of keywords that have triggered a featured snippet for them, and make your content surrounded by these keywords.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@the_manifest\/3-best-tools-to-help-capture-featured-snippets-on-google-65063f99ae06\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several online tools<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> can lessen your workload by retrieving information and keywords from the competition&#8217;s snippets. You can use them if you find it time-consuming to manually optimize your content for featured snippets.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>3. Include a knowledge panel in your content marketing strategy<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A <\/span><b>box with information relevant<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to a search query appearing on SERP&#8217;s right panel is called a <\/span><b>Knowledge Panel<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It only appears when the search is about an entity, for example, business, person, or location. The information inside this box lets the reader know about the entity and gives them a way to reach out to it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142501\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"218\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-2.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-2-300x128.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Featured snippet alone offers a close competition to the organic listing for the total click share.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But pages ranking for both the featured snippet and the knowledge panel outperform the organic listings for the CTR. A double featured snippet leaves behind the CTR of organic listings, getting 42.1% of the total click share.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142500\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"246\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-1.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-1-300x144.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, it is an added benefit if you strategize your featured snippet to trigger a knowledge panel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For reference, check out<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.searchenginepeople.com\/blog\/featured-snippet-vs-knowledge-panel.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> this post to see how Gennaro Cuofano<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> structured his featured snippet with his Amazon author page reference. Google considered this reference and used it to display a knowledge panel alongside his featured snippet.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The other side of the story<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Featured snippets can sometimes work opposite to their intent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to our study, 24% of users confuse featured snippets for Ads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-142498 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed.png\" alt=\"Featured snippets and how people confuse them for an ad\" width=\"512\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed.png 512w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/unnamed-300x219.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, merely optimizing content to target the featured snippet doesn&#8217;t ensure a high CTR.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.inc.com\/jason-aten\/google-is-making-it-harder-to-tell-difference-between-ads-search-results.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google keeps altering its interface<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to make the Ad label on the paid search results barely noticeable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As featured snippets also acquire the top position on SERPs, it is very natural for someone to get confused and <\/span><b>not<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> click them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Dr. Pete Meyers, the Marketing Scientist at Moz:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;The lesson for SEOs is that we can&#8217;t just target a feature \u2014 we need to understand query intent, what our buyers expect from that feature, and how they perceive that feature.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Try to make your content look like a straightforward, quick answer to a query with images for references to appear very different from an ad.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Wrap up<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google introduced the featured snippet to make it easy for searchers to find relevant answers quickly. With voice search technology becoming a common search tool for <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/09\/02\/voice-search-seo-guide-trends-and-best-practices\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">half of the smartphone users<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u00a0 featured snippets catered to the trend and enabled users to read the answer out loud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To make Google identify your content worthy to pick snippets from, you have to optimize your content so it&#8217;s relevant and appropriate for voice search SEO, so it helps to bring in more traffic to your site.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Gorham is Co-Founder at <a href=\"http:\/\/enginescout.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Engine Scout<\/a> Digital Marketing. He can be found on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jonathangorham\/?originalSubdomain=au\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study on featured snippets reveals how they can help increase traffic to a website and what encourages and discourages searchers to click on these snippets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":142497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[75,118,99,716,37,27385,27995,27442,27967,27103,737,22,32,11946],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-142496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-seo","tag-content-2","tag-content-marketing","tag-ctr","tag-featured-snippets","tag-google","tag-google-featured-snippets","tag-knowledge-panel","tag-meta-content","tag-paa-box","tag-people-also-ask","tag-research","tag-seo","tag-serps","tag-website-traffic"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Research-insights-Role-of-featured-snippets-in-website-traffic-boost.png","category":"Industry","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142496"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=142496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}