What are featured snippets? What makes them so unique?

Featured snippets give quick information to the user that is concise and direct answer to their question, without having to click anywhere on the results page. Featured Snippets appear in the organic search results below the ad box. There are three types of featured Snippets.

1. Paragraph
2. List
3. Table

Interesting facts about featured snippets.

• Majority of the times featured snippets are triggered by long tail keywords
• Start with a question type search query (How, why, what?)
• You can use a keyword research tool that immediately shows whether a query triggers a featured result.

Types of Questions:

Basic Questions (What is):

These kind of questions relate to defining a concept. They don’t contain lengthy explanation. People are searching about a quick meaning or explanation.

How to Question?

These include step by step instruction of how a particular task is done.

Adding videos to explain how a task is done can help you to increase CTR.

Branded Questions:

These questions are specific to a brand. It may include your competitors brand. These are typical ROPO queries. – Research Online Purchase Offline.

Below are the examples of branded questions:

• People asking how to buy your product.
• Navigation question
• Competitor research question. Ex: How is your product better than your competitor etc.

Featured snippets are playing a critical role in how google is providing results to your searches. Featured snippets is known to be position Zero as it is displayed above the organic search results. 

How do you achieve this position zero- The direct placement in google search box? In short, how do you get your website appear in google’s featured snippet?

We, at The Digital Shark, have run a variety of tests to achieve this position zero? We have boiled down to the four steps below:

1. Identify direct questions related to your business that people often ask.
2. Provide a direct answer to that question.
3. Offer value added information in addition to your answer.
4. Make it easy for google to search you on google.

Best Formula to increase online leads for small business owners.

Decode the formula to increase online presence for your local brick and mortar business. Follow the below 5 important guideline and increase the number of leads for your local business. 

1. Google MyBusiness Listing:

Google MyBusiness is a very important tool to help you to be found for the local searches. Google MyBusiness was formerly known and Google Places or Google Maps. Read more about how to create your Google Mybusiness Profile here.

It is very important to be as specific as possible when it comes to your google My Business Listing. For Example if you own a cake shop in Pune it is better to optimise keywords such as Cake shop in Aundh or cake shop in Kothrud rather than Cake shop in Pune. The reason being that people are less likely to travel more than 5 kms simply to buy a cake unless you are already a big brand.

Try to add as much media as possible to your Google Mybusiness listing. Businesses with more media are likely to be considered by google as more relevant and informative for local searches compared to businesses who have no or very few pictures and videos in their listing.

Get more reviews from your existing customers on your Google Mybusiness Listing. This will tell google that your business is more valid than your competition. Also reading reviews gives a conformity to the potential customers that others have used your product or service and are happy with it.

2. Blogging.

According to a study conducted by HubSpot on Lead Generation, it was found that local businesses that blog regularly are likely to get 69% more leads than their competitors.

For example if you run a cafe, you can write a blog or make a video showing how to brew a coffee of various flavours. This will make it more compelling for your potential customers to come and visit you at your cafe to tase the various flavours of coffee you offer.

3. Optimise your website with Meta Tags and Title Description:

Although Google has reduced the weightage of Title Tag and Meta Tag in ranking websites, it still has significant effect when it comes to relevance to users. If you have a title tag and a meta description optimised for keywords, google sees it as a relevant when people search for those keywords. Make sure you don’t stuff your meta Title and Meta Description with keywords. Google has a very strong penalty when it comes to keyword stuffing.

Moreover, when you stuff your Meta Title and Description with Keywords, users are less likely to click on your website when they see it in search results as they look at it as spam. This will not only reduce your website visitors but will also reduce your click through rate and thereby affect your ranking. Click through rate is another criteria which google considers to rank your website in its search results.

4. Be active on Social Media:

Google is continuously crawling various websites and searching for social media signals to check the popularity of your business. If you have more engagement in your social media, it will tell google that your are more popular and therefore google will start ranking you higher compared to your competition.

Find out which social media channels work best your industry and try to post more and more content to engage your customers there. It has been found that videos are more engaging than the pictures/photos and pictures are more engaging than text or link posts. On an average videos receive more clicks and views than the pictures and pictures receive more views than the text or link posts.

5. Opt in form or news letter subscription on your website:

Using pop ups or opt in forms when people visit your websites, will help you collect data such as email id from your customers when they visit you. This information can be used when you want to let your customers know about any new product or service you are launching or about any free events and workshops you have at your place of business.

For example if you have a cafe and if you are adding new items to your menu, you can always email the customers informing them about this new offering. Or if you are organising any event such as a stand up comedy or a music concert or simply a play at your cafe, you can invite your customers for these events through email. Emails are generally less intrusive compared to messages sent on phone and what’s app.

Email marketing should not be underestimated. It has a very good conversion rate and is considered as a cost effective marketing tool.