Google Updates How It Shows Featured Snippets in Search Results

Google recently rolled out a brand new update to how it shows featured snippets in search results. 

For those not familiar with featured snippets, they’re a prominently placed organic search result rich with additional details not seen with standard organic search listings and are often placed just below Google Ads and above all other organic listings sitting on page one of Google. 

The idea behind featured snippets is simple. They’re placed at the top of organic search results to answer questions based on user intent and can often be referred to as “answer boxes”. 

Here’s an example of a featured snippet for the search query “co occurring disorders”:

As you can see from the above image, PsychologyToday.com has a featured snippet sitting right there at the top of search results which is fantastic placement and can significantly impact impressions, click-throughs and conversions (depending on the search term and user intent, of course.) We’ve actually seen featured snippets triple and quadruple impressions, organic traffic and conversions for clients which can obviously have a significant impact on a center’s bottom line.

Historically, Google had featured snippets appear twice on page one of search results, but those days appear to have come to an end.

Google is now omitting the second listing of the same URL from page one which is now freeing up an additional spot in search for another relevant resource page which we think makes a ton of sense since having two of the same page listings on page one of search results seems a bit duplicative and takes away value from the user in terms of options.

Featured snippets are, without question, one of the more difficult endeavors a treatment center can pursue in an organic SEO marketing campaign, but it’s not impossible to achieve.

Rehab centers who have achieved placement in Google’s featured snippets in search results (which is a finite amount of time, btw,) all have the same ingredients included in their recipe for success:

• 100% unique and authoritative content and content length varies from snippet to snippet, but oftentimes are long-form pieces (paragraphs perform better)
• Quality internal linking to the page from within the site itself
• Quality inbound linking from third party sites back to the page
• Schema markup (heavily debated, but worth potential inclusion)
• A page already ranking in the top 10 of search results
• There’s more, but we’ll stop here :)

Get Increased Patient Inquiries With Help From Our Addiction Recovery Agency

If you’re curious about how your treatment center can attain prominent placement in featured snippets, give our addiction advertising agency a call at 855-876-7238. We’ve had success with several clients getting into this pinnacle of organic search placement and have seen it translate into significant increases in targeted traffic and patient inquiries.