Google is constantly evolving its search page to better serve its users. Gone are the days of just the 10 blue links, we are now in the age of media-rich SERPs designed to satisfy our search intent more quickly and more accurately.
This article will focus specifically on the content related SERP features. By content, I mean the written word in this context. The reason I decided on this topic was due to the recent inclusion of another content-related feature. Therefore, I wanted to create an up to date article covering the different content-related SERP features.
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This article was kindly provided by Digital Next who provide SEO services to their clients across Australia, will also focus on the areas that the average website can benefit from. There are other content features but they are primarily geared towards the larger organisation with strong brand equity and a lot of weight online.
Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets appear at the top of a Google search when a search query is considered to be of informative attempt. For certain searches, a video will appear in place of a content-focused snippet. A featured snippet is pulled through by Google from a website that provides a section of content that can directly and concisely answer the search question.
Featured snippets can generate relatively huge amounts of exposure for a site, with studies confirming that a featured snippet massively increases click-through rates and revenue. Often considered as “position 0”, being the first organic listing, above the traditional “position 1” listing has huge benefits.
Ben Goodsell measured a 400% increase in CTR for a snippet over a standard listing. He also saw organic revenue rise by 677%.
This should alleviate some peoples’ fears that having a featured snippet reduces CTRs. Please read through the entire report as it is very insightful.
Different Types of Featured Snippets
There are three main types of content-focused featured snippets; Paragraph, List, Table. Each of the different types provided content in the format of the name type. So when you are attempting to acquire a featured snippet for your site, take into account the best format to answer the question.
Recent Changes To Featured Snippets
Previously and up until the 23rd of January, a website with a featured snippet also had a 99.58% of appearing elsewhere on the first page. Well, this percentage has now dropped to 0% with Google making the change to help users find more useful and diverse resources.
People Also Asked Section
The People Also Asked section, or PAA section is another excellent opportunity to promote your site’s content directly on Google’s SERPs. PAAs are structured like accordion drop-downs and help users find answers to questions directly related to their initial question.
Taking our previous query of “how to polish a boat” we can see that further down the SERP there is a PAA section. Consider each of the questions in a PAA section as a mini featured snippet, that offers the same benefit and is acquired through the same means.
Site Generated FAQs
Since mid-last year, Google has started pulling through the site’s FAQs directly on to the SERP. This is a fantastic opportunity for sites to increase their SERP real estate and provide a better user experience to a potential customer. They are structured similarly to PAAs, in accordion fashion, albeit smaller.
Looking at the above image you can see the massive amount of additional space FAQs add to a site’s listing. Solely, for this reason, it is worth the investment required to generate these.
How To Generate Site FAQs
As with a lot of advanced SEO features, we have to turn to some SEOs favourite, and others’ least favourite aspect of SEO, schema! Schema enables Google to better understand the reference element of a site. Google added FAQ Schema, which can be added to any page with a list of questions.
It is a great idea to add a list of FAQs to your service pages to help generate more clicks through to your money pages.
Well, there you have an up to date breakdown of the different content-related SERP features on Google. The SERP is constantly evolving and SEOs need to evolve with it!
