Around one-fifth of all keywords set off a featured bit

99 percent of all featured snippets tend to appear within the first natural position and take control of 50% of the screen on mobile phones, driving higher-than-average click-through rates (CTR).

The key to included snippet optimization lies in a few specific areas: long-tail- and question-like keyword technique, date significant content that comes at the right length and format, and a concise URL structure.

Google has actually constantly been pretty hazy on any information about winning highlighted snippets. This was the case when they were initially presented, making them something services considered to be the cherry on top of their SEO efforts, which is still mostly the case. Having first-hand understanding about the value and power of highlighted bits, Brado coordinated with Semrush to perform the most extensive research around included bit optimization to uncover how they really work, and what you can do to win them.

Revealing the highlights from a Featured snippets study that analyzed over a million SERPs with highlighted bits present, this post unwraps actionable tips on amping up your optimization technique to finally win that Google reward.

General patterns across the included snippet landscape.

With billions of search questions go through the Google search box each day, our study found that around 19 percent of keywords activate a featured bit. Why does this even matter? Included snippets are known to drive greater CTR-- as another research study revealed, they are responsible for over 35 percent of all clicks.

More showing the enormous power of highlighted bits, our research study showed that they use up over 50 percent of the SERP's real estate on mobile screens.

Combine this with our findings that 99 percent of the time included snippets take control of the very first organic position, and that they remain in a lot of cases triggered by long-tail keywords (suggesting particular user intent), and you'll get the reason behind exceptionally high CTR numbers.

Are some markets most likely to set off highlighted snippets?

In the research study, we specified markets by keyword categories, finding that, undoubtedly, featured snippet volume is irregular throughout different segments.

The top industry, seeing a featured bit in 62 percent of all cases, is Travel and Computer & Electronics, followed by Arts & Home entertainment (59 percent), and Science (54 percent), while Real Estate keywords drag all the rest with just 11 percent of keywords activating a featured bit.

included bit optimization insights on keyword categories that activate.

On a domain level, the industry breakdown differs somewhat, with Health and News sites having comparable highlighted bit volumes.

You can discover the complete industry breakdown within the research study.

Featured snippets are everything about makes, not wins.

Just hoping your content will win you a featured snippet isn't enough-- as our research study revealed, it's everything about hard-earned content optimization outcomes.

When it pertains to optimization and keywords, Homepage use 'the more the better' logic.

Our research study discovered that 55.5 percent of featured snippets were set off by 10-word keywords, while single-word ones just appeared 4.3 percent of the time.

Something even much better than long-tails is questions. 29 percent of keywords setting off an included bit begin with question words-- "why" (78 percent), "can" (72 percent), "do" (67 percent), and in the fewest cases, "where" (19 percent).

included bit optimization insights on question keywords that set off.

The SERPs we analyzed consisted of four kinds of featured bit: paragraphs, lists, tables, and videos:.

70 percent of the outcomes revealed paragraphs, with approximately 42 words and 249 characters.

Lists was available in as the second-most-frequent highlighted snippet (19 percent), with approximately 6 item counts and 44 words.

Tables (6 percent) usually included five rows and 2 columns.

Videos, whose typical duration stood at 6:39 mins, appeared in only 4.6 percent of all cases.

Naturally, do not blindly follow this data as the golden rule, rather see it as a great beginning point for featured-snippet-minded material optimization.

Plus, bear in mind that content quality always dominates quantity, so if you have a high-performing piece that features a 10-row table, Google will simply cut it down, showing the blue "More rows" link, which can even enhance your CTR.

As it ends up, URL length matters in Google's option of a website that deserves a highlighted bit. Try to stay with cool site architecture, with 1-3 subfolders per URL, and you'll be more likely to win.

Simply for recommendation, here is an example of a URL with three subfolders:.

xyz.com/subfolder1/subfolder2/subfolder3.

In the "to include or not to include a post date" dilemma, based upon our featured snippet analysis, we 'd suggest that you publish date-marked content.

The majority of Google's highlighted bits include a short article date, with the following breakdown: 47 percent of list-type featured bits originate from date-marked material, paragraphs-- 44 percent, videos-- 20 percent, and tables-- 19 percent of the time.

While fresh-out-of-the-oven material can be preferred by Google, 70 percent of all content making it into the included bit was anywhere from two to three years old (2018, 2019, 2020), suggesting as soon as again that content quality matters more than recency, so you should not worry that putting a date on it will work versus you.