Thread by @RusToffee

How to Outrank Tough Competitors with Featured Snippets

"Stealing" a featured snippet is by far the best way to outrank even the toughest competition in your niche.

Here's a SIMPLE framework to own POSITION #0

🧵👇

#SEO #featuredsnippets

How to Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities

According to research by Ahrefs, Google is 99.58% more likely to rank pages as a featured snippet that already appear in the top 10.

Disclaimer: Since that study was published the number of organic listings has decreased to as low as 5 positions in certain SERPs.

So in my example, I'll look for positions #2-5 only.

How to Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities using @ahrefs

After entering your domain name in the dashboard, set up the following filter.

Position: 2-5
SERP Features: 'where target doesn't rank' and select 'Featured snippet'

How to Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities using @semrush

After entering your domain name in the dashboard, set up the following filter.

Position: 2-5
SF: Domain doesn't rank and select 'Featured snippet'

According to Ahrefs, Hunker has over 59k opportunities to claim those featured snippets. Semrush shows even more opportunities.

So how can we optimize content for Google's featured snippets?

How to Steal Featured Snippets

After you identified your featured snippet opportunities, you need to manually assess SERPs for those queries.

Understanding the type of featured snippet Google generates for a particular keyword is crucial.

You can't claim a featured snippet if you don't comply.

There are 5 main types of featured snippets:

Paragraph
Numbered list
Bullet list
Table
Video

Let's look at this specific example of how a featured snippet can be owned.

Google search for 'how to clean window screens that cannot be removed' shows that the Zephyr Thomas website currently owns a featured snippet for that query.

What's the catch you may ask?

Although this website has a low DR of 12, it outranks much higher authority websites like Hunker, Family Handyman, and Apartment Therapy.

According to Google, they provide a more accurate answer to a user's query than their competitors.

So how would we steal a featured snippet if we were Hunker?

Let's determine what type of featured snippet it is.

Since it's a numbered list, we must have a numbered list in our content to claim it.

In some cases, Google will create a numbered list from your headings alone.

Let's take look at Hunker's article that is ranking for this query.

Why do they not own a featured snippet, since they list steps just like Zephyr Thomas?

Imagine if Google generated a featured snippet based on the content of Hunker's article. The result will look like this:

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
...

This makes no sense and this info will help no one.

SOLUTION

For Hunker to be a contender for a featured snippet for this query, each step must be named similarly to the Zephyr Thomas website.

If Hunker were to implement this strategy, they would gain tens of thousands if not hundreds of additional organic visitors.

Are you optimizing the content on your website to claim those highly coveted featured snippets?

If not, you might be missing on a lot of opportunities.