Everything You Need to Know about a Featured and a Rich Snippet in 2020

A snippet is a small piece of information that is shown on the search results page.

Why should you pay attention to it? Are you looking for new comfortable shoes for longboarding? Or maybe you are looking for some data for your research? Or maybe for some work-related things that are specific for your industry? A snippet of any kind will always be outstanding for your eyes.

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What Types of Snippets Exist?

• A Featured Snippet

This snippet represents an answer to a query that appears above the organic search results. The aim of the featured snippet is to answer a user's question right on the spot.

For example, if you are trying to get to know why people eat cakes, you will get the following featured snippet on the first page in Google Search:

Featured Snippets can be in the form of a list, a paragraph or a table.

The most frequent searches and results are in the following search categories:

• DYI

• Health

• Finance

• Requirements

• Status

• A Rich Snippet

This snippet represents an enhanced organic search result. A rich snippet on Google shows breadcrumbs, customer reviews, event information, rating, and price.

For example, if you are looking for information about a carrot cake, some of the results will be shown as rich snippets like these ones:

What Do You Need To Do To Get A Snippet?

It is not you but Google decides if some information from your page is going to be added to the snippet. However, you can also include some information in a way that your chances of getting a snippet significantly get higher.

• Do a keyword analysis on a constant basis and try to use long-tailed keywords

• Check what people ask and what they are interested in

• Try to include the following words into your text: "best", "vs", "make", "cost", "definition", "price", "list", "size", "change", "time", "mean", "deadline", "age", "often", and "another"

• Use question words "why", "how", "what", "why" and "who"

• Try to be very specific when answering a question and include key information in your answers

• Try to answer many questions in one article

• Add some eye-catching and unusual images to your article

• Format your article with meta-description, and H1,H2, H3 etc

• Use numbered lists and lists with bullet points

• Add Q&A to your website and try to provide answers with complete sentences there

What Does A Snippet Mean For Web Developers?

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Even though it is Google that decided if you are going to get a snippet or not, you can still add both a featured and a rich snippet into the code. This will a bit increase the chances of being indexed by Google and of getting a snippet.

Additional Criteria To Get A Rich Snippet:

• Add information to a Schema Markup

• Test your Page on having a Schema Markup

How Does A Featured and A Rich Snippet Influence SEO?

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Even though Google has clearly stated that snippets of any kind do not directly affect SEO rankings, they give you an excellent opportunity to get more clicks. It also gives you an opportunity to increase the number of no-click searches.

Keep in mind that from January 2020, Google will not repeat the results on both the first page and in the snippet as it was before. If some information from your website is included into the snippet, your result will be shown on the second page.

Conclusion

Getting a featured or a rich snippet takes time and some efforts. In a long run, the efforts are going to be completely paid off with a higher amount of clicks, click-through rates, impressions, and some traffic increase.

References:

1. Sistrix: What are Featured Snippets?
   
2. Neil Patel: 9 Tips For Ranking in Google's Featured Snippets
   
3. Ann Smarty: How to Optimize for Google's Featured Snippets to Build More Traffic
   
4. Backlinko: Featured Snippets
   
5. Wilco de Kreij: How to optimize for featured snippets [step-by-step guide]