Selected snippets in Google search results

What are the selected excerpts?

Selected snippets in Google search results are the answers that the search engine answers directly in the search results. The selected excerpts are often visible when the keywords you have written are of such a nature that they can be answered by a summary and satisfy the search intention already in Google’s search results. In English, these are called featured snippets.

Why are selected excerpts so important to your SEO strategy?

The selected excerpts often top the search results and therefore get very many views and clicks. As part of your SEO strategy, these are extremely effective in driving organic traffic to your website.

These are extremely valuable if you have difficulty topping the organic search results. They give you a chance to get many clicks and increase the chance of improving your organic placements for a keyword.

How do you optimize your posts for Google’s selected snippets?

To optimize your content for Google’s selected excerpts, you can try different tactics. But in short, it’s about understanding each keyword’s search intent and then offering the best summary answer.

Some tips on how to optimize your posts for Google’s selected excerpts:

• Answer a specific question, clearly, correctly, and concisely.
• The easiest strategy to get selected by Google for the selected excerpts is to answer specific questions. When you do a keyword analysis for your keywords, you will identify several queries that are related to your keywords. Your task is then to answer these questions in summary (about 2-3 sentences) and as well as possible.
• Examine whether the question or search intention is best answered through a text paragraph, picture, or table.
• Some keywords may be best answered in the form of normal sentences, while others may be best answered through an image, bulleted list, or table. Therefore, keep this in mind as you optimize and choose the method that best suits the particular keyword (or query) you are optimizing for. Remember that images should be marked so that Google understands their relevance. Therefore, include the keywords in the image’s alt tag and preferably also in the file name.
• Give the search engine clear indications that you have an answer to a question.
• For example, if you have to answer a specific question, such as: “What do organic keywords mean?”. Then you should preferably have this question marked as a heading with an h-tag (eg <h1>, <h2>, <h3>). Immediately after the question, you then answer the question with a short and concise answer to the question in a paragraph (<p>). Structured data is also important if, for example, you run an online shop.

These tips can help you in the process and increase your chances of being shown as a selected excerpt. What is shown in the selected extracts can often vary more often than the usual organic results? This means that a lot of optimization may be required for that position.