How to fix most of your Featured Snippets Problem

[nodyguy]

Hey guys,

I will try to make it short and simple, sorry if I have some writing/grammar mistkaes as I'm not native.

We all encoutered featured snippets somewhere in our SEO journey, and nope I'm not talking about how you gonna rank "How to install pc" keywords, it's not the purpose.
What we are focusing at are money keywords, keywords like "best gaming pc" and "gaming pc reviews".
Most of those type of keywords have featured snippets showing up for them , which is extremely important as those are the big money keywords.

Now, some people prefer featured snippets never existed for those keywords because they can't rank it and then their competitor which is #5 takes the featured snippets and around 30% of the traffic from them.
But like every aspect of the SEO world, we need to adapt and focus on learning how to rank it.

Before we start, lemme tell you a personal story.
I had an affiliate site ranking featured snippets for great keyword ("best X"), generating $2k/month on autopilot. But then, someone took the featured snippets from me and from $2k/month it went to $500/month or even lower. See how important it is?

I started to testing the feautred snippets and it took me 5 months of testing to rank those keywords back, but oh boy I learnt so much in this time. I'm not going to expose everything as I believe people should test themselves but I have some short tips that will help you getting started and do your own tests easily.

1. Check if your site even eligible to Featured Snippets
Google is smart yeah, but if it can't understand your code, same with rich snippets for example, you're screwed. I was using some very popular plugin specific settings that made me to lose the featured snippets for the WHOLE website. It took me so long to debug it and understand why it is happening.
So please, try to run your site through Semrush and see if you have ANY keywords that rank featured snippets, even if it is small non-profitable keyword. You need it to make sure your whole website code isn't messed up.

2. Use the Site: Operator, Please!
Aight, so this trick was already explained in some places but honestly I figured it out by myself (in accident).
Let's say you have a page about "best gaming pc", if you want to make sure your page is structured right and Google can pull the featured snippets out of it, google your keyword and add site:domain.com (with your domain ofcourse)
If everything is working correctly, you should see yourself ranking the featured snippets.

Example: If you have a bike site and you have an informative article about "how to ride a bike", and even with the site operator you don't see the featured snippets, there is a problem.

Tip: This feature is crazy for testing, use it.
Tip2: If you are already ranking the featured snippets without the site operator and you will try to do it, you may see your site without the featured snippets.

3. It's Not All About Caching
People thinks it's all about caching so when google cache your page it means the featured snippets should rank/not rank according to your tests. well according to my own tests it isn't.
I lost the featured snippets couple of times after changing something in the article, and when I checked google cache the changes weren't even cached yet. Same for the opposite, I ranked the featured snippets all of the sudden even without google caching my site.

So maybe they don't update the caching times right away or whatever, but anyways it isn't a factor you can really trust.

Tip: Run a test, wait couple of days, check your ranking, that's all.



That's all guys, hope it will help you with your testing as we all know how important the featured snippets is.

Goodluck.

 

[bobojonathan]

Thanks buddy for th guide.

 

[wayne1977]

Hey guys,

I will try to make it short and simple, sorry if I have some writing/grammar mistkaes as I'm not native.

We all encoutered featured snippets somewhere in our SEO journey, and nope I'm not talking about how you gonna rank "How to install pc" keywords, it's not the purpose.
What we are focusing at are money keywords, keywords like "best gaming pc" and "gaming pc reviews".
Most of those type of keywords have featured snippets showing up for them , which is extremely important as those are the big money keywords.

Now, some people prefer featured snippets never existed for those keywords because they can't rank it and then their competitor which is #5 takes the featured snippets and around 30% of the traffic from them.
But like every aspect of the SEO world, we need to adapt and focus on learning how to rank it.

Before we start, lemme tell you a personal story.
I had an affiliate site ranking featured snippets for great keyword ("best X"), generating $2k/month on autopilot. But then, someone took the featured snippets from me and from $2k/month it went to $500/month or even lower. See how important it is?

I started to testing the feautred snippets and it took me 5 months of testing to rank those keywords back, but oh boy I learnt so much in this time. I'm not going to expose everything as I believe people should test themselves but I have some short tips that will help you getting started and do your own tests easily.

1. Check if your site even eligible to Featured Snippets
Google is smart yeah, but if it can't understand your code, same with rich snippets for example, you're screwed. I was using some very popular plugin specific settings that made me to lose the featured snippets for the WHOLE website. It took me so long to debug it and understand why it is happening.
So please, try to run your site through Semrush and see if you have ANY keywords that rank featured snippets, even if it is small non-profitable keyword. You need it to make sure your whole website code isn't messed up.

2. Use the Site: Operator, Please!
Aight, so this trick was already explained in some places but honestly I figured it out by myself (in accident).
Let's say you have a page about "best gaming pc", if you want to make sure your page is structured right and Google can pull the featured snippets out of it, google your keyword and add site:domain.com (with your domain ofcourse)
If everything is working correctly, you should see yourself ranking the featured snippets.

Example: If you have a bike site and you have an informative article about "how to ride a bike", and even with the site operator you don't see the featured snippets, there is a problem.

Tip: This feature is crazy for testing, use it.
Tip2: If you are already ranking the featured snippets without the site operator and you will try to do it, you may see your site without the featured snippets.

3. It's Not All About Caching
People thinks it's all about caching so when google cache your page it means the featured snippets should rank/not rank according to your tests. well according to my own tests it isn't.
I lost the featured snippets couple of times after changing something in the article, and when I checked google cache the changes weren't even cached yet. Same for the opposite, I ranked the featured snippets all of the sudden even without google caching my site.

So maybe they don't update the caching times right away or whatever, but anyways it isn't a factor you can really trust.

Tip: Run a test, wait couple of days, check your ranking, that's all.



That's all guys, hope it will help you with your testing as we all know how important the featured snippets is.

Goodluck.

Thanks buddy for the guide. And just a few days ago I posted a thread about a few (4 - 8) snippets that I saw my site generated and I don't know how this happened.
But what I can confirm is the fact that all my featured snippets is review post. Best blah blah blah 2017 / Best Blah Blah Blah review

I also noticed to be featured in a snippet your post should be on the first page for that keyword.
And your page should be optimized for that keyword.