One of the best ways to find snippets that you can optimize content for is to think like your audience.
What questions are people actually trying to find answers for?
For instance, put yourself in the shoes of someone who is new to marketing and may not understand some common terms.
There are a whole lot of terms and acronyms in the marketing world that can be intimidating and confusing to people who aren’t familiar with them.
Do a short search, such as “What is a CTA in marketing?”
For this search query, there’s a featured snippet in the form of a paragraph.
For the term you look for, the snippet might contain a list or a series of steps. And who knows — the featured content might already be yours.
If it isn’t, check out ideas under the “People also ask” section.
These are questions related to the search you already entered. To look at snippets for each search query, just expand the phrase by clicking the arrows on the right.
Then, you can read through the full snippet for each related question.
This is a quick way to identify competitors and content ideas in one easy step. Now, you can steal their snippet with a bit of time and effort.
You can also identify some questions by using a site like Answer the Public.
Tip #3: Find content ideas on Answer the Public
Since questions are most likely to bring up featured snippets, you’ve got to answer how, what, when, where, why, or who.
The best place to find out the types of questions people might be asking about a particular topic is Answer the Public.
Let’s say you want to learn more about apple pie.
Just type it in and you’ll receive tons of suggestions for questions related to the topic that you can answer with your content.
Then, pick which angle you want to take. If you want to answer questions that address the “what,” just focus on that section.
Then, pick a question to answer from that group. It’s that simple!
Keep in mind that you may want to do some keyword research before you do this to make sure the words you’re searching are SEO friendly.
Tip #4: Do keyword research
It’s time for some good old keyword research.
You should already be doing it. But you can optimize your keyword research to help you get featured snippets, too.
It’s a good idea to use a tool or two to find out if a search query will bring up featured results or not.
I like Serpstat because it allows me to easily see which keywords bring up featured snippets on the results page.
Now that’s pretty neat, right?
Just type in a domain, keyword, or link, and hover over each result to see if featured snippets come up for each.
This is awesome for uncovering which featured snippets your competitors are currently ranking for.
Plus, if you already rank high for a particular keyword, it’s worth finding out if Google currently brings up featured snippets for those keywords.
If they do, try to rank for it by identifying (and answering) the questions that people have about that topic.
Then, just format your content to include tags that relate to those questions.
It’s also important to answer more than one question in each of your articles.
Tip #5: Answer multiple questions
Do you remember the Ahrefs study from earlier?
Well, it also uncovered that once a page earns a featured snippet, it’s more likely to become featured in other related queries.
That’s why you should structure your article in a way that answers every related question in one location.
Focus on beefing up one solid article that answers tons of questions rather than multiple articles if you want to earn featured snippets.
Word count is a huge factor to consider, too.
Tip #6: Stay within the optimal word count
Keep your section tight and concise so that Google can easily feature your content.
Section off your lists, paragraphs, and steps rather than letting them all run together.
Just look at this list — it’s only 52 words long!
According to SEMrush, this is a pretty normal length for a featured snippet. Their analysis found that “[t]he most common length of content in featured snippets is between 40-50 words.”
Because of this, you should try and keep each section of content no longer than 50 words and no shorter than 40.
Use headers to break up your content sections.
Tip #7: Use headers
One quick, simple way to format your content for featured snippets is to make sure that you break up each section.
Use the “Paragraph styles” section on Google Docs or in WordPress to do this.
Organize your steps, lists, or paragraphs with headers. I prefer h2 headers, myself. Use h1, h2, h3, or h4, and be sure to organize your subheadings by size.
For example, a subheading under a main heading that is h3 should be h4, not h2.
If you add “Step 1, Step 2” or “Rule 1, Rule 2” to each heading phrase, Google will place them in chronological order.
So be sure to format your article in chronological order, too, so that Google will be more likely to feature it.
Another great tip is to add a whole new are
