With the increasing number of search engine optimization experts working to fetch top rankings in search engine search results pages for their clients, it has become harder to achieve first page rankings. You might want to thank the rapidly surging up competition for making the task of achieving the first page rankings a strenuous one.

Furthermore, Google’s organic search results are no longer generating as much traffic as they used to. You might certainly be wondering “how to overcome this arduous situation and improve the website ranking as well as the traffic?” Fortunately, Google wouldn’t disappoint you here. There’s definitely something which could make this task easy. The answer is’ Featured Snippets”.

What are Featured Snippets?

Featured snippets are selected search results that are featured on top of Google’s organic results below the ads in a box. The sole purpose of featured snippets is answering the query of the user right away. Given this reason, featured snippets are also known as the “answer boxes”. When you deploy featured snippet for a query, it certainly increases the website traffic as it is visually compelling, yet to the point.

The future lies in the featured snippets. Researches indicate that nearly 40.7 percent of the voice queries are answered using the information extracted from the featured snippet.  With the growing influence of voice assistants, the number of featured snippets will continue to stride.

Types of featured snippets

Generally, there are three major types of featured snippets. These are:

• Paragraph: The answer is given in the paragraph form inside a box with or without the image.
• Table:Here, the answer is given in the table form.
• List: In this type of snippet the answer is provided in the list form.

Out of the three available snippet types, the paragraph format is the most popular snippet.

How to target featured snippets?

You might not like to hear it, but there’s no shortcut or a magical path to target featured snippets directly. Google hasn’t explained how to do it. The key is to rely on experience and the researches done by the well-grounded analytics software companies. According to some web studies, there’s no way to rank in the featured snippets if your website doesn’t already rank anywhere on the first page of Google. That is the biggest obstacle in your journey to rank in the featured snippets.  You need to recognize the search terms where you already rank in the top ten ranks and these terms should also return a featured snippet.

Try searching the keywords which are relevant to your website and see the featured snippets in the search results. Analyze the content the appearance of the website in the featured snippet and try to figure out why this page is a chosen snippet. Try using the same type of keywords and content on your page. You should also consider adding the snippet-optimized content to your already well ranked pages in the succinct paragraph or in the list form.

Here are some of the pro tips

Try to comprehend the purpose of the person searching for the term and then scrutinize the existing snippet carefully and compare it with the content of your page. Do you think that there’s a paragraph on your page that can answer the query of the user in a better manner than the existing snippet? If yes, then try to place that paragraph at the beginning of your page. Also, if the existing snippet features an image, then try to find a relevant picture of the same dimension and design and include a similar one on your page.

If the current snippet is a list snippet and you don’t have a list on your page, then you’re already out of the league. You have to surpass the content of the existing list snippet. This could be done by adding the h2 and h3 tags and ordered or unordered lists.

Similarly, if the existing snippet is a table snippet, then you will have to structure your content accordingly.

The future marketing strategies of the majority of the SEO experts will revolve around the featured snippets. It’s the perfect time to prepare your search engine marketing strategies to target the featured snippet. With the support of right SEM professionals and their flawless strategies, your website can acquire the featured snippet, a spot which will indubitably boost your business.