If you own an online business, success for you means building your brand on the internet in a way that your target-customers are able to easily find and access the services  that you offer. The key to being able to have the customers find you is working on creating a solid online presence.

While there are numerous ways of optimising your website to rank higher on Google, the end result that you would like to get from them is always the same- better visibility. Ranking within the top ten results for any search query related to your niche has been the most followed path leading to the outcome. What’s better is having your website pop up in what is ‘Knowledge Box’ or popularly known as Google’s Featured Snippets.

In this article, I am going to help you understand the way in which these Snippets work and how you can get yourself featured in them. Let us first understand about what Google’s Featured Snippets are.

What Are Google’s Featured Snippets?

Whenever a search is conducted on Google, it enlists numerous results pertaining to the search query. The results are arranged in order of their relevance and quality. However, whenever a search is made that is aimed at seeking an answer to any question, Google displays what is known as an Answer Box with the relevant information in it.

This box, also known as Featured Snippet, is a way through which Google displays the most useful and relevant answer at the top of the organic results. The information contained in the box is generally a section from a website that has managed to curate its content in a way that it satisfies the need of the user.

If the user further wants to look more into the details of it, he can click on the link of the website and he will be directed to the page containing the information. In most of the cases, however, the query is generally addressed by the information displayed in the answer box and there is no longer a need to look for more.

That is about the Featured Snippets. But is it really a big deal? Does it really matter so much to have your website show up in the answer box? The obvious answer is YES. By having customers find you through the featured snippets, in a way, the customers receive the message that since Google’s SERP has decided to place you at the top of all organic results, your content has the required authority and trust of the search engine to be classified as a credible source.

Get Featured In Google’s Snippet

Now that you have understood the importance of having your business featured in Google’s Snippets, let me now help you figure out the ways through which you can get to that spot.

Before we get going with the details of it, let me make it clear that your website’s ranking is the most crucial factor that needs to be considered and worked upon to get any significant results. By following the necessary procedures of an SEO strategy, you can fulfil the requirements of the search engine algorithm and have it consider your website for top ranking prospects.

In this way, you create a solid ground and improve your chances of making it into the answer box. The next and certainly the most important thing is to create your content in a way that makes it an ideal choice for featuring in Google’s Snippet. But how do we do it?

The key is in analysing the intention behind the queries and providing value-rich and relevant and precise information. By having an idea about the possible questions that customers might need an answer for, you can structure the content on your website to match the intention as well as the question of the users and provide the best piece of content to fulfil their requirements.

Figure out the most frequent and recurring queries that customers have related to your niche of activity and address them in the best possible ways, keeping the answers crisp, precise and whole. If you are able to do this successfully, you are well on your way to have your website featured at the top of the organic results.

The benefits of reaching to that spot are also numerous- from being seen as a website with high authority to gaining more visitors and many more. The reasons to work on it are a handful and so let’s dive into the steps that you can follow.

• Make Use Of Structured Data

By organising your website’s content through the use of schema markups or structured data, you emphasise and highlight the most important parts for the search engine AI bots to focus on. For more details on how structured data works and how you can use them to your advantage, refer to my article on how to add structured data to your website.

• Focus On Building Trust & Authority

I cannot emphasise this enough that the whole of a successful online marketing experience is building that trust and authority- with the customers as well as the search engine. That being said, your prime focus should always be on proving and establishing your credibility by building high authority and trust with the customers.

Building high quality backlinks, publishing relevant and fresh content, monitoring the SEO trends and optimising accordingly are some of the ways through which you can do that. And when you pair that with contents that are structured in a way to specifically address the queries of the customers, you will climb the ladder to the featured snippet.

In times of neck-to-neck competition when there are dozens and dozens of businesses like yours waiting to get the customers, your best bet is making sure that you seize every opportunity to gain an upper hand. Securing your spot in the Featured Snippet is one of the best ways to do it. Now that you have understood the intricacies of it, waste no time. Draw up a strategy and get going. And if you need an expert SEO consultant to help you with that, I am only one call away.