Bring your leads back from the dead with an engaging autoresponder. Aaron Orendorff shares four post-conversion tactics to do that.
The post 4 Post-Conversion Autoresponder Tactics to Keep Your Leads Alive by @@iconiContent appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
SEM is considered one of the most powerful marketing channels. But does SEM really help drive traffic to your site? It's a question many search marketers have heard from clients, especially since SEM is taking up a large chunk of marketing budgets.
The post The Effectiveness of Search by @annaleacrowe appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Our communities have been discussing the story, along with a few stories about links, AdSense, HTTPS, and more this week.
One of our stories about links is actually quite different from the usual “how do I get them” discussion – on WebmasterWorld, users are wondering about the UI/UX aspect of links.
The standard practice is to make them blue and underline them, but if you've been surfing the web lately you might have noticed that not everyone does that anymore. Here's the rest of our new and exciting discussions for the week:
Color Us Surprised: Links Are Still Incredibly Important!
As Google grew and became more sophisticated, there were some webmasters who wondered if links would fall by the wayside. Would new ways of identifying a website's importance and relevance to a search query develop? If they have, they haven't impacted links very much.
Eric Ward recently reported for Search Engine Land that links are actually more important than most people think. Some of us are less surprised to learn this than others – you can get some great links for reading over on Threadwatch!
Blue, underlined text (or magenta/red underlined text if you've clicked it already) has been the hallmark of a link since the dawn of the 'Net. But, as ergophobe of WebmasterWorld writes,
“…for many years now, the vogue has been to make links practically impossible to find. I actually run some sites that I did not design where I basically cannot see the links…”
This thread is all about the UI/UX concerns of links. Web users have been trained how to recognize links for years. When we change how our links look, are we making it more difficult for users to parse our websites?
Keyplyr writes that compromise is possible:
“Usability vs aesthetics has always been a conflict, but IMO I found the compromise best suited for my design and my users.”
Graeme_p emphatically disagrees:
“The internet diversifying is a bad thing. Different approaches for different audiences is a bad thing. Usability depends on convention.”
What do you think?
What is the Value of Attending an Industry Conference or Trade Show?
Attending regular industry conferences and trade shows involves some sacrifices – money and time, specifically. And are they worth those sacrifices? Kim on Cre8asite writes that,
“For me, taking risks and working hard to get to a conference where I would be educated and network was how I was able to teach myself.”
EGOL agrees that they have value:
“…especially if you are in the early to middle stages of your learning…A lot of people balk at spending [the kind of money it takes], but this type of education can be self-funding if you are serious about getting educated and applying what you learn.”
For other members, the value of conferences diminishes as your own experience decreases. But at that point, isn't it worth giving back to the community with what you've learned? Smaller niche-specific conferences are almost always valuable for the networking, Cre8asiteforums users agree. What's your stance?
AdSense – What's Good Traffic Mean?
Plenty of people who run AdSense are obsessed with getting as much traffic as possible. But there's good traffic and there's bad traffic, and your goal should be to maximize the former. So what makes traffic good?
Threadwatch has some highlights from a recent WebmasterWorld thread all about it. You probably want
“…traffic that purposefully visits your site, sticks around for more than two pages without bouncing, visits multiple times, comes from an authoritative or relevant link, and is relevant to your niche and location.”
Beyond that, there may be certain age groups that work best for you, too. The definition of good traffic is a little different for everyone – get some ideas from this thread!
HTTPS – One More Reason to Change
Chedders on SEO Chat pointed this out –
“…Chrome as of version 50…no longer supports any requests for user location unless it's via HTTPS.”
So if you've got a website that takes a user's location to display relevant ads or content, that function could be totally broken for Chrome browsers as of April, 2016!
How Do I Get Someone's AdSense Suspended
A user from WebmasterWorld has fallen victim to a very stubborn and malicious content scraper. A significant amount of their content has been stolen and re-purposed to make a quick buck with AdSense.
Now Mr_Jefe wonders how to get the scraper's AdSense account suspended. Or, failing that, how to end the scraper's attacks. Everyone deals with content scrapers eventually – but this one is so prolific that it makes for a very interesting read.
Did you know that Verizon also owns AOL? For many of us who have been around to watch the old search engines come and go, putting AOL and Yahoo in the same bucket says a lot about Yahoo's potential future.
The sale to Verizon doesn't include Yahoo's most valuable components, though – Yahoo Japan, the company's cash, or its lucrative stocks in Alibaba. Users on Cre8asiteforums wonder what Verizon's plans are – and what about Yahoo's current deals with Bing and Google?
The post Links and Usability, Verizon Buys Yahoo, And More: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.
This recap of Patrick Hutchison's webinar is filled with strategies to turn browsers into buyers. If you sell products online, this is one webinar you won't want to miss!
The post #SEJThinkTank Recap: The Search Marketer's Guide to Turning Online Browsers into Buyers by @dantosz appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.
This week we begin with a bounty of up-to-date search marketing stats, then we end with some bizarre Google searches and a quiz. A perfect Friday round-up I'd say. Maybe I can find a cat gif somewhere too. No promises though!
We have a bumper load of search marketing stats from Merkle this week, all of which plot the various search trends of Q2 2016.
The full report covers paid search, organic search, social media, display advertising, and comparison shopping engines, but for now here's a handful of the most interesting revelations…
Spend on social advertising has increased by 47% year-on-year (YoY) in Q2 2016, with social ads attracting a 21% higher cost-per-click (CPC) according to the latest global data from Kenshoo.
Growth continues to be driven by mobile, which accounts for 64% of spend, with retailers' Dynamic Product Ads on Facebook and Instagram, as well as video, playing an increasing role in paid social.
Budgets directed to mobile search ads and Product Listing Ads (PLAs) climbed 63% and 71%, respectively, leading to a rise in overall search advertising spend of 10% YoY.
AdGooroo released its quarterly paid search report which examines all US Google desktop text ad activity on the top 50,000 keywords across 14 of Google's industry categories in Q2 2016 vs. Q1.
Here are some of the findings:
As Al Roberts reported this week, Google announced that DoubleClick publishers can make all or some of their web and app native ad inventory available through the service, and advertisers can purchase that inventory programmatically through DoubleClick Bid Manager.
Al goes on to report:
“DoubleClick native programmatic asks advertisers to supply creative components, such as headline and body text, and DoubleClick automatically formats the content for the publisher's site and the device the viewer is using. The native ad units come in two flavors: a traditional banner slot and a responsive fluid ad slot.”
There are more than 200 publishers already signed up to offer programmatic native ads through DoubleClick.
As Sophia Loras reported this week, Verizon has agreed to acquire Yahoo's operating business in a $4.8 billion cash deal, sealing the fate of one of the internet's pioneers.
Under the deal Verizon will amalgamate Yahoo's search, email, video, mobile, digital and advertising assets with it's AOL entity. Verizon acquired AOL in a $4.4 billion deal last year to enhance its programmatic offerings.
Marissa Mayer, chief executive officer of Yahoo stated:
“As one of the largest wireless and cable companies in the world, Verizon opens the door to extensive distribution opportunities. With more than 100 million wireless customers, a shared view of the importance of mobile and video ad tech, a deep content focus through AOL, Verizon brings clear synergies to the table.”
According to a Google blog post, three new mobile ad features will begin rolling out in AdWords to all advertisers this week.
These are optimized for the screen sizes of the most popular smartphones and feature two headlines, each with 30 characters, and one long 80-character description line. That's nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services.
Google will now help you build your own responsive ads for display. Just provide a 25-character or 90-character headline, a 90-character description, an image, and a URL, and Google will design ads that fit perfectly across more than two million apps and websites on the Google Display Network.
New device bid adjustments allow you to maintain the efficiency of managing a consolidated campaign that reaches consumers across devices while giving you more control to set individual bid adjustments for each device type - mobile devices, computers, and tablets.
As reported this week by Search Engine Journal, Digitaloft has collected data on the most bizarre searches undertaken on Google and the findings should probably be cause for some concern…
Go on, it's Friday, and it kinda looks like your doing work right?
How well do you know these 25 SEO abbreviations?
And here's your reward for a job well done…
An update this week to the Google Chrome browser for iOS brings support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
The post Google Chrome for iOS Now Supports Accelerated Mobile Pages by @SouthernSEJ appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Posted by KelseyLibert
Content marketers, does the following scenario sound familiar?
You're tasked with creating content that attracts publicity, links, and social shares. You come up with great ideas for content that you're confident could accomplish these goals. However, any ideas that push the envelope or might offend anyone in the slightest get shot down by your boss or client. Even if a provocative idea gets approved, after feedback from higher-ups and several rounds of editing, you end up with a boring, watered-down version of what you originally envisioned.
Given the above, you're not surprised when you achieve lackluster results. Repeat this cycle enough times, and it may lead to the false assumption that content marketing doesn't work for the brand.
In this post, I'll answer two questions:
To get big results, content needs to get people talking. Often times, the best way to do this is by creating an emotional reaction in the audience. Content that deals with a controversial or polarizing topic can be a surefire way to accomplish this.
On the other hand, when you play it too safe with your content, it becomes extremely difficult to ignite the emotional response needed to drive social sharing. Ultimately, you don't attract the attention needed to earn high-quality links.
Below is a peek at the promotions report from a recent controversial campaign that resulted in a lot of high-quality links, among other benefits.
We understand and respect a client's fierce dedication to protecting their brand. The thought of attaching their company to anything controversial can set off worst-case-scenario visions of an angry Internet mob and bad press (which isn't always a terrible thing).
One such example of balancing a sensitive topic while minimizing the potential risk is a recent campaign we created for apartment listing site Abodo. Our idea was to use Twitter data to pinpoint which states and cities had the highest concentration of prejudiced and tolerant tweets. Bigotry in America is an extremely sensitive topic, yet our client was open to the idea.
Want to get a contentious idea approved by your boss or client? Here's how we did it.
Controversy for the sake of controversy is not going to provide value to the brand or the target audience.
I asked Michael Taus, VP of Growth and Business Development at Abodo, why our campaign idea got the green light. He said Abodo's mission is to help people find a home, not to influence political discourse. But they also believe that when you're moving to a new community, there's more to the decision than what your house or apartment looks like, including understanding the social and cultural tone of the location.
So while the campaign dealt with a hot topic, ultimately this information would be valuable to Abodo's users.
If your “safe” content is struggling to get attention, make the case for taking a risk. Previous campaign topics for our client had been too conservative. We knew by creating something worth talking about, we'd see greater results.
While we couldn't guarantee there wouldn't be a negative response once the campaign launched, we could guarantee that we'd do everything in our power to minimize any potential backlash. We were confident in our ability to protect our client because we'd done it so many times with other campaigns. I'll walk you through how to do this throughout the rest of the post.
On the client's end, they can get approval from other internal departments; for example, having the legal and PR teams review and give final approval can help mitigate the uncertainty around running a controversial campaign.
The campaign was a big success, with results including:
Beyond these metrics, Abodo has seen additional benefits such as partnership opportunities. Since this campaign launched, they were approached by a nonprofit organization to collaborate on a similar type of piece. They hope to repeat their success by leveraging the nonprofit's substantial audience and PR capabilities.
We find that good journalism practices can greatly reduce the risk of a negative response. Keep the following five things in mind when creating attention-grabbing content.
Rather than presenting an opinion, just present the facts. Our clients are usually fine with controversial topics as long as we don't take a stance on them and instead allow the data we've collected to tell the story for us. Facts are facts, and that's all your content needs to offer.
If publishers want to put their own spin on the facts you present or audiences see the story the data are telling and want to respond, the conversation can be opened up and generate a lot of engagement.
For the Abodo campaign, the data we presented weren't a direct reflection of our client but rather came from an outside source (Twitter). We packaged the campaign on a landing page on the client's site, which includes the design assets and an objective summary of the data.
The publishers then chose how to cover the data we provided, and the discussion took off from there. For example, Slate called out Louisiana's unfortunate achievement of having the most derogatory tweets.
How do you feel when you watch a news report or documentary that only shares one side of the story? It takes away credibility from the reporting, doesn't it?
To keep the campaign topic from being too negative and one-sided, we looked at the most prejudiced and least prejudiced tweets. Including states and cities with the least derogatory tweets added a positive angle to the story. This made the data more objective, which improved the campaign's credibility.
Regional publishers showed off that their state had the nicest tweets.
And residents of these places were proud to share the news.
Pleased WI was one of the top-10 least nasty places for pejorative tweets! Stay away from Louisiana. https://t.co/ijoAMsmKao
- Sam Million-Weaver (@millionweaver) March 9, 2016
If your campaign topic is negative, try to show the positive side of it too. This keeps the content from being a total downer, which is important for social sharing since people usually want to pass along content that will make others feel good. Our recent study on the emotions behind viral content found that even when viral content evokes negative emotions, it's usually not purely negative; the content also makes the audience feel a positive emotion or surprise.
Aside from objective reporting, a huge benefit to telling more than one side of the story is that you're able to pitch the story for multiple angles, thus maximizing your potential coverage. Because of this, we ended up creating 18 visual assets for this campaign, which is far more than we typically do.
Be careful of twisting the data to fit your agenda. It's okay to have a thesis when you start, but if your aim is to tell a certain story you're apt to stick with that storyline regardless of what the data show. If your information is clearly slanted to show the story you want to tell, the audience will catch on, and you'll get called out.
Instead of gathering research with an intent of "I'm setting out to prove XYZ," adopt a mindset of "I wonder what the reality is."
You don't want the validity of your data to become a point of contention among publishers and readers. This goes for any data-heavy campaign but especially for controversial data.
To combat any doubts around where the information came from or how the data were collected and analyzed, we publish a detailed methodology alongside all of our campaigns. For the Abodo campaign, we created a PDF document of the research methodology which we could easily share with publishers.
For even more transparency, make your raw data available. This gives publishers a chance to comb through the data to find additional story angles.
This is true for any content campaign, but it's especially important to have an error-free campaign when dealing with a sensitive topic since it may be under more scrutiny. Don't let mistakes in the content become the real controversy.
Build multiple phases of editing into your production process to ensure you're not releasing inaccurate or low-quality content. Keep these processes consistent by creating a set of editorial guidelines that everyone involved can follow.
We put our campaigns through fact checking and several rounds of quality assurance.
Fact checking should play a complementary role to research and involves verifying accuracy by making sure all data and assertions are true. Every point in the content should have a source that can be verified. Writers should be familiar with best practices for making their work easy to fact-check; this fact-checking guide from Poynter is a good resource.
Quality assurance looks at both the textual and design elements of a campaign to ensure a good user experience. Our QA team reviews things like grammar, clarity (Is this text clearly making a point? Is a design element confusing or hard to read?), and layout/organization.
Although the controversial subject matter helped this campaign gain attention, we also incorporated other proven elements of highly shareable content:
The more share-worthy elements you can tack onto your content, the greater your chances for success.
Have you seen success with controversial or polarizing content? Did you overcome a client's objection to controversy? Be sure to share your experience in the comments.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
The future of search has me in a constant spin cycle. Do you feel this way? Bing has 133 million monthly searches. Google hit over 100 billion. That's a lot to take in.
The post Search Marketing Is The Future, Right? by @annaleacrowe appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Majestic is already an invaluable tool for many SEO's worldwide, but did you know that it can also be used to aid your social media efforts? Earlier this year, in May, Google announced that Android Pay is being launched in the UK, so I sat down to check out how shareable this announcement is, by…
The post Using Majestic to Analyse Fresh Content appeared first on Majestic Blog.
Google's flagship app for iOS has been updated with several key new features, one of which you won't believe it didn't have until now.
The post Google App for iOS Updated With Improved Voice Search, Forward Button, + More by @SouthernSEJ appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Majestic has always placed the quality of its data first and foremost – this has been the basis of everything we have done – from developing infrastructure to support what we believe is the fastest link data API's, maintaining stability of platform, and adding high quality Flow Metrics like Trust Flow and Citation Flow. However,…
The post New Features: Enhancing Majestic Usability appeared first on Majestic Blog.
Here's a look at how Facebook is asserting its dominance in livestreaming, how other players are countering – and what this means for brands and marketers.
The post Why Facebook is the 800-Pound Gorilla of Livestreaming appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
In this latest #AskAnSEO post, Jenny Halasz answers questions about header tags, SEO resources, must-have tools, and more.
The post #AskanSEO: Rapid Fire on Header Tags, SEO Resources & Tools, and more! by @jennyhalasz appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Programmatic, while still the source of much confusion, is a now a huge part of the digital advertising ecosystem.
In fact, according to eMarketer, this year, two-thirds of digital display ad spend in the United States will be programmatic.
Because of the demand for programmatic, popular online services like Spotify are embracing programmatic ad offerings, and companies are now working to extend programmatic concepts to traditional offline channels, like direct mail.
Last week, at its DoubleClick Leadership Summit, Google announced that DoubleClick publishers can make all or some of their web and app native ad inventory available through DoubleClick, and advertisers can purchase that inventory programmatically through DoubleClick Bid Manager.
Several months ago, Google launched programmatic native ads for publishers and advertisers that already had a direct relationship. The New York Times was one of the publishers participating in the initial launch. Its Frame Flex offering for mobile increased click-through rates 40 to 50% over standard 300×250 ad units.
DoubleClick native programmatic asks advertisers to supply creative components, such as headline and body text, and DoubleClick automatically formats the content for the publisher's site and the device the viewer is using. The native ad units come in two flavors: a traditional banner slot and a responsive fluid ad slot.
Google says that more than 200 publishers are signed up to offer programmatic native ads through DoubleClick.
While programmatic has the potential to help advertisers and publishers scale their use of native ads, it remains to be seen whether programmatic native will deliver the same experience and results as non-programmatic native.
Native ads increasingly generate a sizable portion of ad revenue for numerous high-profile publishers, and to capitalize fully on the native ad opportunity, a number of them have built internal teams to help their advertisers develop campaigns centered around native ads. Because they are more tightly integrated with the user experience, the native ads typically come at a premium cost.
As The New York Times recently detailed, “the resulting arrangements are more client-agency than advertiser-publisher.” According to the Financial Times' Chief Commercial Officer, Jon Slade, “We have the basic building blocks of a full-service agency.”
Native ads that are purchased programmatically might resemble the kinds of ads publishers are crafting as far as formatting is concerned, but there's an argument to be made that they aren't the same thing because they're not crafted for a specific site and audience.
If publishers and advertisers embrace programmatic native offerings like DoubleClick's in the name of scale, publishers might introduce unwanted commoditization to the native space, and advertisers might find that they ultimately don't get the results they expect.
Twitter advertising revenue and ad engagement grew in Q2 of 2016, but the company also reported less overall advertiser demand than expected.
The post Twitter Ad Revenue & Engagement Grows, But Demand Drops by @DannyNMIGoodwin appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
A Google AdWords metric that has been around for the past 15 years is being retired on September 21st.
The post Google AdWords to Eliminate 'Converted Clicks' on September 21st by @SouthernSEJ appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
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This morning, Merkle released their quarterly Direct Marketing Report, ahead of Google's own Q2 earnings announcement and it makes for a bumper stat-filled reading.
Of particular note are the revelations that:
The report covers the latest trends in paid search, organic search, social media, display advertising, and comparison shopping engines, so let's cherry-pick some of the highlights…
Google officially unleashed three anticipated AdWords updates today that are designed to help advertisers capitalize on the the shift toward a mobile-first world.
The post Good AdWords Updates: Expanded Text Ads, Responsive Ads, & Device Bidding by @SouthernSEJ appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Posted by Dr-Pete
It's been over two years since Google launched Featured Snippets, and yet many search marketers still see them as little more than a novelty. If you're not convinced by now that Featured Snippets offer a significant organic opportunity, then today is my attempt to change your mind.
If you somehow haven't encountered a Featured Snippet searching Google over the past two years, here's an example (from a search for "ssl"):
This is a promoted organic result, appearing above the traditional #1 ranking position. At minimum, Featured Snippets contain an extracted answer (more on that later), a display title, and a URL. They may also have an image, bulleted lists, and simple tables.
We're all busy, and Google has made so many changes in the past couple of years that it can be hard to sort out what's really important to your customer or employer. I get it, and I'm not judging you. So, let's get the hard question out of the way: Why are Featured Snippets important?
Here's the top portion of a SERP for "hdmi cable," a commercial query:
There are a couple of interesting things going on here. First, Featured Snippets always (for now) come before traditional organic results. This is why I have taken to calling them the "#0" ranking position. What beats #1? You can see where I'm going with this... #0. In this case, the first organic is pushed down even more, below a set of Related Questions (the "People also ask" box). So, the "#1" organic position is really third in this example.
In addition, notice that the "#0" (that's the last time I'll put it in quotes) position is the same URL as the #1 organic position. So, Amazon is getting two listings on this result for a single page. The Featured Snippet doesn't always come from the #1 organic result (we'll get to that in a minute), but if you score #0, you are always listed twice on page one of results.
In our 10,000-keyword tracking data set, Featured Snippets rolled out at approximately 2% of the queries we track. As of mid-July, they appear on roughly 11% of the keywords we monitor. We don't have good historical data from the first few months after roll-out, but here's a 12-month graph (July 2015 – July 2016):
Featured Snippets have more than doubled in prevalence in the past year, and they've increased by a factor of roughly 5X since launch. After two years, it's clear that this is no longer a short-term or small-scale test. Google considers this experiment to be a success.
When Featured Snippets launched, SEOs were naturally concerned that, by extracting and displaying answers, click-through rates to the source site would suffer. While extracting answers from sites was certainly uncharted territory for Google, and we can debate their use of our content in this form, there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that Featured Snippets not only haven't harmed CTR, but they actually boost it in some cases.
In August of 2015, Search Engine Land published a case study by Glenn Gabe that tracked the loss of a Featured Snippet for a client on a competitive keyword. In the two-week period following the loss, that client lost over 39K clicks. In February of 2016, HubSpot did a larger study of high-volume keywords showing that ranking #0 produced a 114% CTR boost, even when they already held the #1 organic position. While these results are anecdotal and may not apply to everyone, evidence continues to suggest that Featured Snippets can boost organic search traffic in many cases.
Featured Snippets were born out of a problem that dates back to the early days of search. Pre-Google, many search players, including Yahoo, were human-curated directories first. As content creation exploded, humans could no longer keep up, especially in anything close to real-time, and search engines turned to algorithmic approaches and machine curation.
When Google launched the Knowledge Graph, it was based entirely on human-curated data, such as Freebase and Wikidata. You can see this data in traditional "Knowledge Cards," sometimes generically called "answer boxes." For example, this card appears on a search for "Who is the CEO of Tesla?":
The answer is short and factual, and there is no corresponding source link for it. This comes directly from the curated Knowledge Graph. If you run a search for "Tesla," you can see this more easily in the Knowledge Panel on that page:
In the middle, you can see an entry for "CEO: Elon Musk." This isn't just a block of display text - each of these line items are factoids that exist individually as structured data in the Knowledge Graph. You can test this by running searches against other factoids, like "When was Tesla founded?"
While Google does a decent job of matching many forms of a question to answers in the Knowledge Graph, they can't escape the limits of human curation. There are also questions that don't easily fit the "factoid" model. For example, if you search "What is ludicrous mode Tesla?" (pardon the weird syntax), you get this Featured Snippet:
Google's solution was obvious, if incredibly difficult - take the trillions of pages in their index and use them to generate answers in real-time. So, that's exactly what they did. If you go to the source page on Engadget, the text in the Featured Snippet is taken directly from on-page copy (I've added the green highlighting):
It's not as simple as just scraping off the first paragraph with a spatula and flipping it onto the SERP, though. Google does seem to be parsing content fairly deeply for relevance, and they've been improving their capabilities constantly since the launch of Featured Snippets. Consider a couple of other examples with slightly different formats. Here's a Featured Snippet for "How much is a Tesla?":
Note the tabular data. This data is being extracted and reformatted from a table on the target page. This isn't structured data - it's plain-old HTML. Google has not only parsed the table but determined that tabular data is a sensible format in response to the question. Here's the original table:
Here's one of my favorite examples, from a search for "how to cook bacon." For any aspiring bacon wizards, please pay careful attention to step #4:
Note the bulleted (ordered) list. As with the table, not only has Google determined that a list is a relevant format for the answer, but they've created this list. Now look at the target page:
There's no HTML ordered list (
So, let's get to the tactical question - how can you score a Featured Snippet? You need to know two things. First, you have to rank organically on the first page of results. Every Featured Snippet we've tracked also ranks on page one. Second, you need to have content that effectively targets the question.
Do you have to rank #1 to get the #0 position? No. Ranking #1 certainly doesn't hurt, but we've found examples of Featured Snippet URLs from across all of page one. As of June, the graph below represents the distribution of organic rankings for all of the Featured Snippets in our tracking data set:
Just about 1/3 of Featured Snippets are pulled from the #1 position, with the bulk of the remaining coming from positions #2–#5. There are opportunties across all of page one, in theory, but searches where you rank in the top five are going to be your best targets. The team at STAT produced an in-depth white paper on Featured Snippets across a very large data set that showed a similar pattern, with about 30% of Featured Snippet URLs ranking in the #1 organic position.
If you're not convinced yet, here's another argument for the "Why should you care?" column. Once you're ranking on page one, our data suggests that getting the Featured Snippet is more about relevance than ranking/authority. If you're ranking #2–#5 it may be easier to compete for position #0 than it is for position #1. Featured Snippets are the closest thing to an SEO shortcut you're likely to get in 2016.
The double-edged sword of Featured Snippets (for Google) is that, since the content comes from our websites, we ultimately control it. I showed in a previous post how we fixed a Featured Snippet with updated data, but let's get to what you really want to hear - can we take a Featured Snippet from a competitor?
A while back, I did a search for "What is Page Authority?" Page Authority is a metric created by us here at Moz, and so naturally we have a vested interest in who's ranking for that term. I came across the following Featured Snippet.
In very short order, our changes had the desired impact, and we took the #0 position:
Featured Snippets can require a slightly different and broader approach to keyword research, especially since many of us don't routinely track questions. So, what kind of questions tend to trigger Featured Snippets? It's helpful to keep in mind the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) + How, but many of these questions will generate answers from the Knowledge Graph directly.
To keep things simple, ask yourself this: is the answer a matter of simple fact (or a "factoid")? For example, a question like "How old is Beyoncé?" or "When is Labor Day?" is going to be pulled from the Knowledge Graph. While human curation can't keep up with the pace of the web, WikiData and other sources are still impressive and cover a massive amount of territory. Typically, these questions won't produce Featured Snippets.
A good starting point is "What...?" questions, such as our "What is Page Authority?" experiment. This is especially effective for industry terms and other specialized knowledge that can't be easily reduced to a dictionary definition.
Keep in mind that many Featured Snippets appear on implied "What..." questions. In other words, "What" never appears in the query. For example, here's a Featured Snippet for "PPC":
Google has essentially decided that this fairly ambiguous query deserves an answer to "What is PPC?" In other words, they've implied the "What." This is fairly common now for industry terms and phrases that might be unfamiliar to the average searcher, and is a good starting point for your keyword research.
Keep in mind that common words will produce a dictionary entry. For example, here's a Knowledge Card for "What is search?":
These dictionary cards are driven by human-curated data sources and are not organic, in the typical sense of the word. Google has expanded dictionary results in the past year, so you'll need to focus on less common terms and phrases.
"Why... ?" questions are good fodder for Featured Snippets because they can't easily be answered with factoids. They often require some explanation, such as this snippet for "Why is the sky blue?":
Likewise, "How...?" questions often require more in-depth answers. An especially good target for Featured Snippets is "How to... ?" questions, which tend to have practical answers that can be summarized. Here's one for "How to make tacos":
One benefit of "Why," "How," and "How to" questions is that the Featured Snippet summary often just serves as a teaser to a longer answer. The summary can add credibility to your listing while still attracting clicks to in-depth content. "How... ?" may also be implied in some cases. For example, a search for "convert PDF to Word" brings up a Featured Snippet for a "How to..." page.
Once you have a question in mind, and that question/query is eligible for Featured Snippets, there's another piece of the targeting problem: which page on your site is best equipped to answer that question? Let's take, for example, the search "What is SEO?". It has the following Featured Snippet from Wikipedia:
Moz ranks on page one for that search, but it still begs two questions: (1) is the ranking page the best answer to the question (in Google's eyes), and (2) what content on the page do they see as best matching the question. Fortunately, you can use the "site:" operator along with your search term to help answer both questions. Here's a Featured Snippet for [site:moz.com "what is seo"]:
Now, we know that, within just our own site, Google is seeing The Beginner's Guide as the best match to the question, and we have an idea of how they're parsing that page for an answer. If we were willing to rewrite the page just to answer this question (and that certainly involves trade-offs), we'd have a much better sense of where to start.
Featured Snippets have a close cousin that launched more recently, known to Google as Related Questions and sometimes called the "People Also Ask" box. If I run a search for "page authority," it returns the following set of Related Questions (nestled into the organic results):
Although Related Questions have a less dominant position in search results than Featured Snippets (they're not generally at the top), they're more prevalent, occurring on almost 17% of the searches in our tracking data set. These boxes can contain up to four related questions (currently), and each question expands to look something like this:
At this point, that expanded content should look familiar - it's being generated from the index, has an organic link, and looks almost exactly like a Featured Snippet. It also has a link to a Google search for the related question. Clicking on that search brings up the following Featured Snippet:
Interestingly, and somewhat confusingly, that Featured Snippet doesn't exactly match the snippet in the Related Questions box, even though they're answering the same question from the same page. We're not completely sure how Featured Snippets and Related Questions are connected, but they share a common philosophy and very likely a lot of common code. Being a better answer will help you rank for both.
If you want to know where all of this is headed in the future, you have to ask a simple question: what's in it for Google? It's easy to jump to conspiracy theories when Google takes our content to provide direct answers, but what do they gain? They haven't monetized this box, and a strong, third-party answer draws attention and could detract from ad clicks. They're keeping you on their page for another few seconds, but that's little more than a vanity metric.
I think the answer is that this is part of a long shift toward mobile and alternative display formats. Look at the first page of a search for "what is page authority" on an Android device:
Here, the Featured Snippet dominates the page - there's just not room for much more on a mobile screen. As technology diversifies into watches and other wearables, this problem will expand. There's an even more difficult problem than screen space, though, and that's when you have no screen at all.
If you do a voice search on Android for "what is page authority," Google will read back to you the following answer:
"According to Moz, Page Authority is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engines."
This is an even more truncated answer, and voice search appends the attribution ("According to Moz..."). You can still look at your phone screen, of course, but imagine if you had asked the question in your car or on Google's new search appliance (their competitor to Amazon's Echo). In those cases, the Featured Snippet wouldn't just be the most prominent answer - it would be the only answer.
Google has to adapt to our changing world of devices, and often those devices requires succinct answers and aren't well-suited to a traditional SERP. This may not be so much about profiting from direct answers for Google as it is about survival. New devices will demands new formats.
After years of tracking rich SERP features, watching the world of organic search evolve, and preaching that evolution to our customers and industry, I'm happy to say that our Product Team has been hard at work for months building the infrastructure and UI necessary to manage the rich and complicated world of SERP features, including Featured Snippets. Spoiler alert: expect an announcement from us very soon.
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