Just What Are Snippets and Why is Google So Interested?

Jan 16,2018 1 Comment By Admin Support

First of all I am writing this article because I am as interested in finding out more about this topic.

I figure if I am interested then I know there are many other Affiliate Marketers out there interested as well.

What are SNIPPETS?

Snippets are bits of text that live below the links of various search results from search engines.

This is why at the Affiliate Mastery Institute we advocate you use up to 160 characters in your description box on your all in one SEO page.

This is where the search bots, crawlers and search engines in general will extract this text from.

This text has always been a basic key-worded phrase, that give a description of your site. Now this is where it all gets a bit interesting...

Search Snippets have recently been confirmed to be increasing in length and will soon be more dynamic.

The user-friendly blocks of text that describe how a page relates to a given query are currently restricted to 160 characters.

Under the altered state, however, these snippets have grown to roughly 230 characters, on average.

What does this mean for us as Affiliate Marketers?

It is time to be great in 2018!

Go through all your websites, SEO pages and make sure your description meets these guidelines of up to 230 characters.

Do not worry that WordPress will place a red mark on this. WordPress will update to this information in due course.

The important thing now, is to get ahead of the pack, keep your websites on the top of search engines.

Here is a good example:

As you can see from the screen shot above, in the Google.com search over 280M searching for the combination of these words, our site is top 5 places on the page of Google!

The first snippet is 160 characters, currently, but will be beefed to a more descriptive 230 characters.

Example 2:

This is a different site of ours. Shadow Face Art, 149M searching for the combination of these words and we are number one on the Google.com search!

Again, the snippet meets the current guideline but will be changed to meet the new standards.

I cannot express the importance to you that a simple thing like this will make such a difference,

WHO BUYS FROM THE 1^st PAGE SEARCH?

When your sites are in that position your followers, conversions and money in your pockets goes up!!

BONUS: Gain More Knowledge About Affiliate Marketing Right Here!

Now, here is an extract from Google’s Keyword Blog, the company stated:

“Today, we’ve added more images and related searches inside select Featured Snippets to help you learn even more about your topic, or to discover new things related to your interest.”

In addition to expanding certain Featured Snippets, Google will also be augmenting its Knowledge Panel to incorporate related content or searches:

“For example, while looking at the Knowledge Panel about skiing, you’ll see related searches for sports such as snowboarding directly inside the result.”

FEATURED SNIPPETS

Featured Snippets, for those who are unfamiliar, is the block at the top of the SERPs that provides an extracted answer from a given webpage.

They differ in that Google pulls the information from one of the organic listings on the first page of search results, and Google gives that website credit via a link.

Types of Featured Snippets

Generally, featured snippets fall into one of three formats: the paragraph, list, or table snippet.

News Bulletins

Let’s review what these look like in the search results, and what types of queries are best suited for each.

The Paragraph Featured Snippet

This is the quintessential featured snippet we all know and love.

Google extracts text from a page in an attempt to answer the searcher’s question.

The way to make this kind of snippet help, instead of hurt, your click-through rate, is by answering the question immediately, and then including additional information that sparks the searcher’s interest and encourages them to click through.

FAQ pages are perfect for answering multiple short questions at once, while dedicated blog pages are better for more complicated questions.

You’ll see paragraph snippets for questions like:

How to do/get…
Who is…
Why is…
What is…

The Numbered List Featured Snippet

These featured snippets often list out steps that explain how to do something, such as recipes.

What’s great about the example below is that it’s instantly clear that this will take you through the process step by step, but searchers are likely to click through to see accompanying photos or read the extra details.

You’ll see numbered list snippets for:

Recipes
DIY tasks
How to…
How do I…

The Bulleted List Featured Snippet

This is one where content managers and SEO pros can both rejoice.

List articles are made for these types of featured snippets, whether you’re ranking items or simply listing them.

The Table Featured Snippet

Table snippets are surprisingly popular, making up 29 percent of all snippets. Google really likes to show off its capabilities with these.

It doesn’t just pull the information and spit it out the way it’s formatted – it can pull the specific information the user is looking for, and recreate its own table, as in the example below.

This website actually shows a sortable list of the top auto brands, according to 2016 and 2015 sales, % change year over year, and market share in 2016

and 2015.

But because I searched for “2016 car sales,” Google scrolled to the bottom of the table to pull just what I needed and created its own table listing the aggregate numbers by brand for 2016.

The above example is a sortable, dynamic table, but you don’t have to be fancy for your table to rank as a featured snippet.

The information Google pulled for the following snippet is a simple, static, non-sortable table.

Featured snippet tables can also be more than one column, so don’t feel limited by the amount of information you show.

Featured snippet table with more than one column

In fact, when aiming to rank for a table featured snippet, remember that size can work in your favor: make sure your table has more than four rows to

increase the chance of people clicking through to your site.

You’ll see table featured snippets for:

Lists
Pricing
Rates
Data

The YouTube Featured Snippet

When you think of featured snippets, think beyond your website. Google pulls these from YouTube as well, so ensure you’re optimizing your videos to get chosen. Google may show a specific clip from the video itself:

Or answer the searcher’s question using text from your video description:

You’ll see YouTube featured snippets for:

Any type of query that merits a featured snippet, with the exception of tables (which are hard to illustrate via video)

The Two-for-One Featured Snippet

Sometimes Google pulls from more than one site to answer a person’s question, as in the example below.

The text is from Cosmopolitan Magazine while the image is from YouTube.

By doing this you Increase your chances of ranking for a featured snippet by including helpful, illustrative imagery with your content.

You’ll see two-for-one featured snippets for:

Any type of query that merits a featured snippet and could be better illustrated with a table.

Stay tuned as our next post which is all about How to Win at Featured Snippets (Coming Soon!)

I want you to learn from me, and my mistakes.

Affiliate Mastery Institute, doesn’t want you learning the ‘hard way’.

We hope you've been able to learn more from our SNIPPETS today.

BONUS: Gain More Knowledge About Affiliate Marketing Right Here!

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