Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities – Next Level

Featured snippets provide a incredible alternative for elevated site visitors and visibility to your website. There’s a lot to say about this SERP characteristic and quite a bit that has already been mentioned:

So what can I probably add to the dialog? Effectively, let’s check out how Moz Professional can assist with figuring out alternatives to realize (or steal) featured snippets inside your current toolkit. Then you possibly can take the infinite knowledge of parents like Crystal and Britney to raise your content material to new heights (and SERP options).

A Refresher on Featured Snippets

Earlier than we dig in, let’s take a quick second to speak about what featured snippets are, simply to refresh our reminiscences. Featured snippets are a kind of SERP characteristic which search to reply a question utilizing a snippet from a webpage. When a searcher makes a question, Google could try and reply that question by pulling out a portion of a website’s content material to show immediately within the outcomes.

Generally, as seen within the instance above, Google will even spotlight probably the most related a part of the blurb they’ve extracted.

Featured snippets can are available in quite a lot of codecs together with paragraphs, numerical lists, bulleted lists, and extra and might be recognized by the inclusion of a supply hyperlink on the backside of the characteristic. These options are to not be confused with reply options which don’t embrace a supply hyperlink and usually have a barely totally different format.

Now that we’ve refreshed our reminiscences on what featured snippets are, let’s dive into how we are able to use Moz Professional to establish alternatives to snag them.

Moz Professional Campaigns

Moz Pro Campaigns provide quite a lot of knowledge views and instruments you should utilize to scope out featured snippet alternatives. To start out, we’re going to try the Rankings Overview part.

Rankings

Inside the primary Rankings tab, you possibly can see and monitor your tracked website’s rankings for all of your tracked key phrases. Wherever your website has acquired a featured snippet will likely be famous as a rank of #1, with a featured snippet icon beside it which appears to be like like a pair of scissors.

Professional tip: Within the above screenshot I’ve opted to label these keywords as “featured snippet” so I can keep watch over them and establish if I lose a featured snippet as a result of a competitor overtaking me or by Google altering the SERP for these key phrases to not embrace a snippet.

If we jump over to the Competition tab of our rankings part, we are able to begin to spot alternatives to steal a few of this prime actual property within the SERP. Simply as we noticed within the Rankings tab, any key phrase the place the #1 has earned a featured snippet will likely be indicated by that scissors icon. This implies we are able to type our tracked key phrases by our tracked competitor’s rankings to establish the place they’re incomes these SERP options and the place I’m rating compared. This can assist me spot featured snippets inside placing distance by exhibiting me a aspect by aspect comparability.

Any key phrase the place we’re already rating on the primary web page and there’s a featured snippet current may very well be a possibility for me to reformat and superb tune our content material to scoop up that characteristic.

SERP Options

Now that we’ve recognized alternatives associated particularly to your opponents, let’s broaden our scope a bit. The SERP Options part of your Marketing campaign can provide extra perception into alternatives for featured snippets exterior of competitor rankings.

Inside this part of your Marketing campaign, the device will word what number of of your tracked key phrases embrace a featured snippet within the SERP in addition to what number of of these your website has earned.

This will provide an incredible alternative to research and establish featured snippet alternatives exterior of your competitor rankings. We are able to filter by featured snippet to see which key phrases embrace this SERP characteristic after which establish key phrases the place our website is just not at present featured. That is indicated by a gray featured snippet icon. For key phrases the place our website is at present rating however not included within the featured snippet, we may even see an choice to broaden the Insights column.

By increasing this drawer we are able to see what website the present featured snippet is being pulled from together with the precise URL. We are able to then use this data to establish areas of alternative for our personal content material. Can we probably present a greater reply to the question? What sort of markup and formatting is the present snippet’s publish utilizing? What can we do to raise my very own content material?

Professional tip: The SERP options part of your Marketing campaign might be exported to CSV, as nicely. Inside the export, any time a SERP characteristic is current however your website is just not included, this will likely be indicated by TRUE. In case your website is included within the SERP characteristic, it will likely be famous as Included.

Key phrase Explorer

Now that we’ve taken a have a look at how we are able to use Moz Professional Campaigns to establish and monitor featured snippet alternatives, let’s have a look at a couple of methods we are able to use Keyword Explorer to complement that data. Whether or not you’re doing key phrase analysis for a brand new shopper, trying to establish featured snippet alternatives to your website, otherwise you’re needing content material concepts to construct from, the Key phrase Explorer device is a useful addition to your device package.

First, let’s stroll by way of a workflow to assist establish current alternatives for featured snippets. Britney Muller additionally touched on this workflow in her Whiteboard Friday episode “Featured Snippets: What to Know & How to Target.

1. In Key phrase Explorer, enter your URL into Discover by Web site

From throughout the Key phrase Explorer > Discover by Web site you might have the choice to enter a root area, subdomain, subfolder, or actual web page to see key phrases you might be already rating for. The subdomain and subfolder choices might be significantly useful in case you are doing analysis for a particular vertical of what you are promoting or part of your website. For instance, it’s possible you’ll be trying to seize featured snippets to your weblog’s subfolder.

2. Filter your outcomes by rank

After getting into in your URL and clicking Analyze, you’ll have the choice to view the Ranking Keywords. From this record, filter by Rating to see solely the key phrases for which you’re rating on the primary web page (positions 1-10).



3. Add key phrases to a Key phrase Checklist

Now we now have an inventory of key phrases that might have the potential for a featured snippet alternative. Let’s dig somewhat deeper. Whereas it may be extremely useful to know what key phrases you’re rating #1 for (and it could be price adding those to a Campaign to trace and monitor over time) these could not current many new alternatives to your website. Google’s deduplication of featured snippet results in the SERP – that means that if a website has earned the featured snippet, that very same URL is not going to be listed within the remaining SERP outcomes – implies that in case your website is included within the featured snippet, it’s recognized as place #1 within the SERP. So let’s discover and choose the key phrases for which our website is rating 2 to 10 and add them to a Keyword List in Key phrase Explorer.



Professional tip: In case your website is rating for a lot of key phrases it may be useful to export your Rating Key phrases to CSV. You possibly can then filter and type by rank and search quantity to establish your strongest alternatives and add them to a Key phrase Checklist by way of copy & paste.

4. Discover key phrases with Featured Snippet alternatives

Now that we now have an inventory of potential key phrases, let’s slender it down additional. Inside our Key phrase Checklist, we are able to filter by SERP Function to see solely the key phrases which have a featured snippet within the SERP.



We are able to then take these key phrases and add them to a Marketing campaign, do additional analysis on them, or see what content material is at present featured within the SERP and establish methods to enhance our personal content material.

Professional tip: You need to use the Rank Check feature to see what web page in your website is at present rating on the primary web page of the SERP for these key phrases and export that knowledge to CSV.

Discover by Key phrase

Up subsequent is a workflow to assist us establish new alternatives and doable content material concepts for featured snippet inclusion. We’ll be utilizing Key phrase Explorer once more however we’ll be switching to the Discover by Key phrase part.

1. In Key phrase Explorer, enter your seed key phrase into Discover by Key phrase

Inside Key phrase Explorer > Discover by Key phrase we now have the flexibility to enter in a seed key phrase or time period and discover the SERP, key phrase metrics, and Key phrase Solutions. On this instance we’ll be scouting content material concepts and featured snippets for a weblog publish all about selfmade ice cream.



2. Click on on Key phrase solutions

After getting into “homemade ice cream” into the device and clicking Analyze, we are able to click on into Key phrase Solutions to see extra key phrase concepts together with their relevancy and month-to-month quantity.



3. Filter to see key phrase solutions that “are questions”

Contemplating that featured snippets are usually added to SERPs when Google is trying to immediately reply a question implies that when writing a weblog about selfmade ice cream, we are going to need to know what individuals are asking about selfmade ice cream. Inside Keyword Suggestions, we are able to filter to show key phrase solutions that are particularly questions.



Filtering this manner will permit us to see what individuals are asking, and the way typically they’re asking it, in an try and nail down content material concepts.

4. Choose key phrases and add to a Key phrase Checklist

As soon as we’ve recognized some subjects and questions which may be related to our new weblog, we are able to choose them utilizing the checkboxes on the left and add them to a Keyword List for additional evaluation.

5. Discover key phrases with Featured Snippet alternatives

Lastly, we’re going to revisit the final step from our earlier workflow and filter our Key phrase Checklist by SERP Function to see solely the key phrases which have a featured snippet within the SERP.

We now have an inventory of matter concepts and questions to think about answering in our new publish all about selfmade ice cream. This can assist to tell our content material together with the construction and markup for our posts. For instance, we could determine to put in writing a step-by-step course of for the way to make ice cream at dwelling. Or we could publish a recipe for vanilla ice cream. Or we may even write a publish all about the most effective components to make use of when making an ice cream case to raise our flavors. No matter what we determine to publish, we are able to now apply the ways and techniques outlined by Crystal Carter and Britney Muller for featured snippet optimization to our shiny new record of subjects.

Conclusion

Featured snippets aren’t going wherever anytime quickly — if something, we appear to be seeing increasingly more forms of them as time goes on. Identifying alternatives to optimize current content material or create new content material for inclusion in them can result in elevated visibility (and probably site visitors) to your website. I hope you now really feel ready to go use the Moz Instruments to scope out these prospects. With these actionable workflows in your toolkit, you’ll be capable of rise to the highest!