There are 7 tips that I have to share with you, are great ways to boost your organic traffic that converts, using featured snippets.
Many local businesses feel that there is far too much competition in their niche to make their website rank high, that their budgets are lower now given the pandemic dipping so deeply into their profit margins these past few years, and you’re running out of ideas to create fresh content for your website.
And then there are those who are working to improve your website’s ranking and you have discovered that those improvements have not driven more organic traffic or the increase is nowhere near what you had hoped for.
Without traffic, your goal conversion suffers.
Obviously, you need something that will address all of these issues, and that is where featured snippets come in, as most of these challenges will be addressed once you have earned a featured snippet.
First, you need to understand your desired audience and their behaviour.
And, depending on your industry, you need to remember too, those conversations take time for your newest audience or potential customers to pay attention to.
Example: Let’s say that you want a coffee and then you spot a new coffee shop that you’ve never been to before. And, you most likely will enter that shop and order a coffee.
However, it would be a much different challenge for you, let’s say, if you wanted a new look and you spotted a new hair salon that you never realized existed before. Most of you are not so apt to attend and trust that stranger to provide you with your new look, right?
Plus, most customers might tend to forget about you if they don’t see your business mentioned somewhere after their first visit.
So, now you have another issue to keep in mind that needs to be kept in mind.
And, if a person finds your business sharing valuable insightful tips every time they research your industry, they will soon learn to trust your business.
So, what good are featured snippets, despite having too many controversies?
Simply this…
It helps in brand recall when your business appears again and again in featured snippets.
…and…
In my example screen prints above, who do you think that a person with a leaky faucet will go to for help fixing their leaky facet?
This is why it is so important that you understand your audience’s behaviour.
If you are a local plumber, you could have EASILY gained those featured snippets for your own business… and, you STILL CAN!
Gaining those important featured snippets within your industry will improve your click through rate, which means more relevant traffic to your business website.
Now I hope that you understand better the importance and value of getting those featured snippets.
7 Tips to Gain Featured Snippets to Boost Your Organic Traffic into Conversions
1.) Plan your monthly budget, balance it out, and then…
- Give serious consideration to optimize your website content
- Update your NAP using the proper standards
- Update your Google MyBusiness …now known as Google Business Profile
- Creating new, relevant content / updating old content
- Address any technical issues, such as problems with your website layout
Depending on your budget, you can then decide which of these or all of these that will get your attention.
Sometimes it may only be a matter of updating your existing content, and then other times it may be that you need new content created.
Your budget and time available to make these changes will be your determining factor.
2.) Identify the question keywords with informational search intent, while considering your blog keywords
Using my previous examples of featured snippets above, below you will see an example of informational search intent that I found when seeking examples of the previous queries.
Once you have identified YOUR blog keywords that can bring in more traffic, then you need to be sure to include question keywords as well as block keywords.
Block keywords would be as shown in the screen print below…
In this way, you will be able to gain traffic for BOTH the question and the “block” keyword.
3.) Plan the topics for creating your content
Example shown in the screen print below.
Feel free to download an Excel 2016 template for your use in planning your content (the FS means For Sure!).
4.) Optimize the content written to include your media, such as graphics, tweets and any other social media posts that you can embed, videos hosted on video hosting sites, etc., to act as interactive content.
Your content must have title tags.
No more than one H1 tag (most WordPress themes provide this tag for your post and page titles), and any number of H2 and H3 tags that include your target keywords, for easier readability… and, so that search engines like Google, understand your intent.
Plus, you need to utilize Meta Tags, such as title tags, description tags and image ALT tags properly. Do NOT stuff your keywords here.
Then you need to be sure to add a proper mix of relevant internal and external links. According to etraffic.com, that ratio is 1:1. See screen print below as proof…
5.) Publish and follow your content distribution strategy
This helps search engines to analyze how people are experiencing the information you have shared (either they are liking it or not, are they clicking on your links, etc.) when you bring traffic to your content through different distribution activities, such as social media, email notifications, etc.
6.) Create content for branded terms and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Types of content from branded terms
- [your business name] vs [your competitor’s name]
- How is [your product name] of [your business name] different?
Conversion Rate Optimization
- Improve your site’s bounce rate by paying close attention as to how your website visitors are behaving on your website.
- Learn how to identify and resolve gaps at every stage of your marketing to drive conversions and improve your revenue. One gap example might be resolved as simple as offering a full money back guarantee if they are not satisfied.
7.) Use the Monitor -> Optimize -> Monitor approach
| Analytics | What to do? |
| Not getting any impressions | Optimize to make it more user friendly, get more internal links and distribute it |
| Getting impressions | Optimize content with your keywords to gain clicks |
| Getting a few clicks which could mean your content is either on page 2 or 3 search results | Optimize content with graphics, improved Meta Tags, and add more keywords |
| Content reaches page 1 | Rewrite the Meta Tags, add more internal links |
| Content reaches rank 5 | Add more internal links, optimize content using H2 and H3 headers |
As Himani Kankara says, “publishing content is only 20% of the task [at hand]. The rest of the 80% is optimizing your content in order to get those featured snippets” that your competitors might now be enjoying.
Got a question about Featured Snippets that wasn’t addressed here, then please leave your question in a comment below and we can discuss this further.
Source
How to Boost Organic Traffic That Converts Using Featured Snippets – by Himani Kankara at missivedigital.com
Credit for Header: Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay
