Rank Content in Google's Featured Snippet

You may have come across the Featured Snippet within the search results on a number of occasions. It's appearing more and more frequently for question-based keywords, for example, "how to create a graph in excel".

The Featured Snippet section appearing inside the first page of Google is an incredibly important section to have your content placed within. I did a study of over 5,000 keywords where HubSpot.com ranked on page 1 and there was a Featured Snippet being displayed. What I found was that when HubSpot.com was ranking in the Featured Snippet, the average click-through rate to the website increased by over 114%.

I spent a lot of time studying the factors that contribute highly towards ranking within the Featured Snippet. What I found was as follows:

1. Links don't matter that much for ranking in the Featured Snippet when you already rank on page one of Google.
2. You should aim to have the target search keyword within one of the HTML headers in your content (e.g. H2, H3, etc.).
3. Directly beneath the header that contains the target keyword, you should write the answer to the question, keeping it between 54–58 words in length.
4. Google doesn't always include a whole paragraph of text in the Featured Snippet. If you add "Step 1," "Step 2," "Step 3," etc. to the start of each HTML heading within your content (for example, within your H2 tags), Google will sometimes just list out your headings within the Featured Snippet. I've started to see this happen more and more in keywords beginning with "how to".
5. For shorter, less question-orientated keywords; for example, "Content Marketing", Google frequently pulls through a paragraph of text as opposed to a step-by-step section. With these keywords, pay close attention to the structure of your page.
6. Google tends to prefer Featured Snippet content that begin logically as an answer would. For example, the answer will begin with, "Start by", "The first step is", etc.

You can use a tool like SEMrush to find different keywords that you rank for where there is a Featured Snippet. Here's a good guide from Glenn Gabe that will show you exactly how to do that.

Once you find a load of Featured Snippet opportunities, go through your existing content and just update it to adhere to the rules that I outlined above. You should then start seeing some improvements over the coming few weeks, especially if you already rank in the top 5 results on page 1.