Use featured snippets to rank your SaaS content for SEO
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Updated: 05/10/2022
How to rank your SaaS SEO content for featured snippets
Ahmad shares how to win Featured Snippets? The secret to overtake large websites in SERP
If you don't already know what a featured snippet is, try googling "what is a featured snippet" and you will get a featured snippet about featured snippets.
Google essentially pulls a snippet of text from your page and features it directly on top of SERP for queries.
Featured Snippets have been around for few years now. As Google is getting better at understanding natural languages, their % is increasing. While some SEOs see this as theft by google, Ahmed considers this as a big opportunity for newer less authoritative sites.
I will explain WHY
As per Semrush study, 1 in 5 queries typed into google result in a featured snippet. They appear mostly for informational queries. On mobile devices, they push almost all the other results down the visible screen which is huge real estate for any brand.
This is a great opportunity for smaller, newer sites. Here is WHY
Google doesn't seem to care much about the website authority while showing featured snippets (except for YMYL queries).
It cares about the completeness & conciseness of the target answer more than any other factor
If your page has a short paragraph that answers a query.
These are the 3 Cs, they make your chances of winning the featured snippet:
- Completely
- Concisely
- Confidently
Make sure your SaaS content is complete to appear in featured snippets
Google wants the users to get quick & complete answers to their queries right on the SERP page (without clicking on any link in search results ), it prefers answers that are complete and standalone.
Try searching "how to cure concrete". The resulting paragraph in the featured snippet is a
- Complete & standalone answer to the question.
- It doesn't refer to any other para above or below.
- It doesn't include things like "keep reading for more" or "As discussed above..." or "it depends"
It answers the query completely so that someone searching for this knows exactly how to cure concrete by just reading that one paragraph.
Make sure your SaaS content is concise to appear in featured snippets
Your target answer should be short and concise. For paragraph-style snippets, the answer should be less than 50 words or 250 characters.
If you are targeting with a list, it should have 6 list items or less If targeting with a table, use 5x2 (rows x columns).
Conciseness is important as google doesn't have much space to show a lengthy answer. If you can't answer the question in less than 300 characters, it's a sign of a lack of topical clarity.
Not all questions can be answered in 300 characters but most can be. Be creative. Target the query with the right format.
If a query is best served with a table, your paragraph-style answer won't win the snippet and vice versa.
Look at the already ranking snippet and write yours in a similar format but with better wording and more condensed information.
Make sure your SaaS content is confident to appear in featured snippets
Google can judge the confidence of the writer by looking at the types of words he/she uses.
If you use words like:
- "I think"
- "I guess"
- "In my opinion" etc.
This shows that you lack confidence in the universality and validity of your answer.
That's why you are trying to mask it as a personal opinion in case you are wrong. Use a solid, definitive tone and state your answer in an encyclopedia-style language.
- no slangs
- no opinion
- no personality
Consider the answer to " How to cure concrete?"
"To cure concrete effectively, water it down 5 - 10 times per day for the first 3 days and then let it dry off completely"
vs. ....
"As discussed above, concrete can be cured with proper watering. In my opinion, you have to water it like 10 times for a few days. "Which answer would you trust more? Which answer will Google trust?
So, always :
- target a query with an answer target within your article
- write a complete standalone answer
- be concise and confident.
- don't use slang
- don't put personality in your answer
- don't present it as an opinion
- Lastly, BOLD your answer paragraph.