Top 5 SEO Hacks to Start ranking for Featured Snippets

Who isn’t looking for SEO hacks, tips, and trends every day? With the number of algorithm updates that search engines roll out every week, it’s very important to keep yourself updated around them. 

One interesting way is to opt for an SEO course that teaches you the current trends along with preparing you on how to keep yourself at the front of the SEO game.

Read More: Top Benefits of SEO: A Comprehensive Analysis

In this blog, we’ve rounded the top SEO hacks that will help you rank for the featured snippets directly. What are featured snippets? They appear before the normal listing on SERP where a part of your blog is shown which answers the query of the user. 

Here’s an example of a featured snippet listing.

Now without further ado, let’s see how you can do the same with your articles. 

5 Simple SEO Hacks To Rank For Featured Snippets

• Do not stuff keywords

Yup. The biggest myth in SEO is that stuffing keywords into your articles is going to get you better ranks. It might boost your rankings for the shorter span, but the second Google’s bot catches the stuffing and finds no value in it, you’re going to get dropped. 

So to appear for featured snippets, avoid stuffing keywords. Keep it minimalistic and use only where necessary. The articles need to be on point and qualitative. 

• Keep headers conversational

Earlier, the trend was to use as lesser words as possible in the headings and give more matter and explanation inside. Now the trend has changed. 

Your headings need to be conversational and give out the basic meaning of what you’re trying to say. Because this makes it easier and faster for readers. 

To take an example, you can read the headers of this article itself. They’re quite self-explanatory which makes them user-friendly. 

• Structure your blog with Tags

By tags, we mean header tags – H1, H2, H3. By adding these tags in all your important headers hierarchy-wise, it gives a structure to your article. 

Now the user knows the important elements and can navigate easily. Secondly, while Google is crawling, it makes the process faster, easier and they know exactly what is there in the blog in order of importance. 

So always add your tags! 

• Add Tables

If you wanted to find out the different courses that are available, along with their fees and the best institute to pursue it from – what would be better? Reading an entire blog on it or looking at a table with all the details? Table it is. 

We’re not saying only tables. Add tables along with a detailed explanation of everything. And another thing to note is that adding HTML tables will make a better choice. Here’s an example of how tables get fetched for featured snippets. 

• Answer queries in fewer words

If I am looking for an answer on how many days does a leap year contains, I’d want to directly see the number 365 and not the logic behind it. So try cutting down any unnecessary information and have paragraphs in your articles that give direct answers to a user’s query. 

The more you save a user’s time and make his life easier, the more Google is going to prefer you. Here’s a copywriting course for the ones who want to write impactful sentences in lesser words. 

To Summarise, 

These were the 5 best SEO hacks to get you on the top of the SERP. If you notice, all the hacks are some way or the other focusing on the user’s intent. 

The search itself is evolving and getting more and more user-friendly. Thus, your top priority in SEO from now on should be quality for users. Also, check out this guide on improving your SEO if it’s stagnating. 

Hope it was an insightful read! Tell us in the comments section below about one SEO hack that you personally swear by! 

Author’s Bio

Karan Shah

Founder and CEO at IIDE

An ‘Edupreneur’ and the founder of IIDE – Indian Institute of Digital Education.

He is a passionate public speaker and teacher for over 10 years. He has trained over 1,00,000+ students and 25+ corporates in Digital Marketing via online and offline channels. He is a Harvard alumnus specialising in E-commerce. He is a TEDx speaker and is a visiting faculty at India’s top management institutes like the IIMs.