How to Optimize Your Content For Featured Snippets on Google

Google featured snippets are the most coveted position in the search results. SEOs like to call the featured snippet “position zero” because it appears at the very top of the SERPs—even ahead of the first organic ranking.

What’s cool about featured snippets is that they give websites an opportunity to rank higher in the SERPs for searches that wouldn’t normally give them the top spot. 

Google might rank your site in the fifth or sixth position for a particular search, but when optimized properly, that same search could land you the featured snippet—ahead of those sites that were previously outranked you. 

This doesn’t happen by accident. So if you’re ready to own the search results and claim the featured snippets for all of your top keywords, read on for my exact blueprint on how to accomplish this.

What Exactly is a Featured Snippet?

Featured snippets are special search boxes that appear at the very top of Google’s SERPs. These results display content that has been extracted from a particular web page, providing a concise answer or result to search.

The purpose of a featured snippet is to provide searchers with a quick response that directly answers what they’re searching for. 

I’m sure you’ve seen these before, but here’s an example of what a featured snippet looks like:

It’s worth noting that not every search query has a featured snippet.

According to a recent study, about 19% of all search results have a featured snippet. The study also found that certain categories of searches are more likely to have featured snippets than others—including 62% of searches for both travel and electronics, 59% for arts and entertainment, and 54% for science. 

Why It’s So Important to Optimize Content For Featured Snippets

Getting a featured snippet is huge because it increases your visibility and drives more traffic to your website. In fact, featured snippets get 35% of clicks in the SERPs. 

For mobile searches, which account for 63% of all searches in the US, featured snippets often take up the entire screen—effectively pushing your competitors out of sight. 

Featured snippets also dominate voice searches, with a whopping 40% of all voice search answers coming directly from a featured snippet. 

Optimizing your content for featured snippets is crucial for SEO. But it’s not quite the same as applying other standard SEO tactics to climb the rankings. You could have content that’s worthy of a top-three result, but if it’s not optimized properly, you won’t have a shot at the featured snippet.

Types of Featured Snippets

There are four main types of featured snippets. 

• Paragraph Featured Snippets — These are brief definitions or answers to questions, typically 40-60 words.
• List Featured Snippets — List snippets can include numbered lists, bullet lists, and step-by-step instructions of how to do something. 
• Table Featured Snippets — Table snippets aren’t as common, but they appear in instances where showing data is the most logical way to present information. 
• Video Featured Snippets — These include a screenshot of the video thumbnail and a direct link to the video either embedded on a website or on YouTube. 

There’s also something known as a “double snippet” which includes more than one result as the feature. The example I showed you in the previous section actually shows a double snippet as the images aren’t coming from the same site as the paragraph. 

It’s important that you understand the types of featured snippets because it will help you figure out what you’re trying to optimize for based on the content type and keywords you’re targeting. 

Featured Snippets vs. AI Overviews

A featured snippet is not the same as an AI overview, and there are several key differences and noteworthy points that you should be aware of.

First, featured snippets pull content verbatim from a source while AI overviews summarize information pulled from multiple sources.

It’s possible for a search to have a featured snippet and an AI overview. If this happens, the AI overview will appear before the snippet. And while it’s common for AI overviews to use information from the featured snippet, the AI overviews don’t always pull content from the snippet.

Here’s an example showing an AI overview pulled information from one of my blog posts:

This particular search doesn’t have a featured snippet—and my post ranks second organically only behind a Reddit discussion.

Here’s another example that shows an AI overview and featured snippet both appearing in the SERPs:

In this example, my blog post has the featured snippet but it’s not used in the AI overview. 

In terms of optimization, I’d focus your efforts strictly on the featured snippet. Google’s AI is advanced enough to pull insights contextually even if content hasn’t been formatted or answered in a certain way. 

Having your content used in the AI Overview is also a bit of a double-edged sword—as if the AI does a good enough job providing the answer, then you may not get any traffic. 

How to Optimize Your Content For Featured Snippets

Now that you have a deeper understanding of featured snippets and how they work, you can start taking some actionable steps to optimize your content for them. 

Here’s what you need to do.

Start With Content That’s Already Ranking

Look for low-hanging fruit opportunities and quick wins whenever you can find them. In this case, it’s typically easier to start with existing content that’s already ranking on page one or two as opposed to starting from scratch.

Go through all of your content that’s performing best in the SERPs and start with those.

While you’ll eventually want to apply these concepts to all new content, there’s a greater probability of an existing post that’s currently ranking as the fifth position to become the featured snippet if you just make a few slight tweaks. 

Answer Questions People Are Actually Asking, and Keep it Concise

When it comes to featured snippets you can’t be robotic and write for Google—you need to actually answer the question someone is asking or define the term they’re searching for.

If you’re writing in a way that pleases Google then you’re likely adding too much fluff and nonsense to something that could be answered in just one or two sentences. 

Keep it concise, but try to frame the answer in a way that includes keywords for the question being asked. Here’s a great example:

Had the article just said “yes” then it’s highly unlikely they’d be the featured snippet. But since they directly answered the question in a single sentence with some additional related context in the same paragraph, it’s easy for Google to pull this as a snippet in the SERPs. 

Use Headers and Subheaders

Using H2s and H3s properly in your content is important for SEO—and it’s really important for featured snippets.

Answering a question or defining a term that’s buried in a wall of text likely won’t be pulled as the feature. But if you can provide this information directly within a relevant header, it drastically increases your chances.

Another reason why it’s important to use headers is because Google can pull those headers and display them as a list snippet.

For example, here’s a recent post I wrote about what to do when a Google update causes your rankings to drop that earned a featured snippet spot.

As you can see, this is a step-by-step guide, and Google is displaying each of my five steps as a snippet in a list format.

However, I didn’t actually list these five steps sequentially as a numbered list or bullet list anywhere in the post.

Each step is its own H2 header, and Google just pulled those directly for the snippet. 

Look at the Current Featured Snippets You’re Trying to Beat

This is one of my favorite tricks for optimizing your content. Simply look at the featured snippet for a particular keyword you’re targeting and see if you can make yours better.

I also like this technique because it helps you see where you stand and where to focus your efforts.

For example, if the current snippet is really good and being provided by a high authority domain, you may not have a shot at beating them. But if the snippet could be better and you’re confident you can outrank the domain, then go for it. 

This process also helps you understand how Google thinks this content should be served as a snippet. Now that you know what they want, you can give it to them.

Avoid Using Your Brand Name and First-Person Language

If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you know that I always write in first person and I commonly reference my businesses and services. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I think it adds some authenticity to the content.

However, this doesn’t work when you’re optimizing for Google’s featured snippets.

Starting a sentence with “I think” or “my definition of” just won’t get the job done. So be hyper-aware of this as you’re optimizing. If you think there’s a chance that a particular part of your content can earn the snippet, eliminate first-person language and cut out any brand-specific references (unless, of course, the brand is related to the keyword or query). 

Final Thoughts

Optimizing your content for featured snippets should be part of your big-picture SEO strategy. But you should do it carefully and don’t let it detract from your overall approach to content.

At the end of the day, you need to be serving people with the highest quality content that you can produce—answering questions, providing deep insights, and adding real value.

If you’re doing this stuff then good things will happen, and you may even get some featured snippets naturally.