The document outlines the importance of featured snippets for driving organic traffic and boosting credibility by appearing at position zero in search results. It shares research methodology and results, highlighting that featured snippets can lead to significant traffic increases for websites. The document also provides tips on earning featured snippets, such as analyzing keyword opportunities and creating strategic content formatted for questions and answers.

1. DEEP DIVING INTO
FEATURED SNIPPETS:
How to earn more and rise to the top of the
SERPs

2. WHY FEATURED SNIPPETS?
They represent a valuable opportunity to drive organic
traffic for sites that are capable of getting them.
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3. MAXIMUM AUTHORITY.
Appearing in a featured snippet gives your content a
big credibility boost in the mind of the searcher.
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4. LEAPFROG THE COMPETITION.
By appearing in a featured snippet, you’re effectively
ranking at position zero. Above all other organics.
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5. HUGE TRAFFIC VALUE.
Sites are seeing 20 - 30 percent increases in organic
traffic to URLs that appear in featured snippets.
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6. WHAT’S ON THE AGENDA?
• Explain the research methodology
• Share the results of the research
• Provide tips for securing your own featured snippets
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7. THE DATA
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8. FIRST, COLLECT 1,000,000 QUERIES.
We took the 1 million queries with highest CPC from the
GrepWords database by Russ Jones @ Moz.
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9. NEXT, COLLECT 1,000,000 SERPS.
We used STAT to grab the 1,000,000 SERPs for each
query in our list.
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10. Here is an example of a featured snippet.

11. Not to be confused with a knowledge graph snippet.

12. 93,832 FEATURED SNIPPETS.
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13. COLLECT ON-PAGE & OFF-SITE DATA.
We collected the top-10 ranking URLs for each SERP
where we found a featured snippet. This added up to
346,643 unique URLs!
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14. FINALLY, WE ANALYZED IT ALL.
Tableau and Excel were our tools of choice.
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15. MANY TYPES OF
SNIPPETS. MANY TYPES
OF SERPS.
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16. FEATURED SNIPPET FORMATTING
TYPE OF SNIPPET % OF TOTAL SNIPPETS
Paragraph Snippets 81.95%
List Snippets 10.77%
Table Snippets 7.28%

17. This is a paragraph featured snippet.

18. This is a list featured snippet.

19. This is a table featured snippet (with an image).

20. FEATURED SNIPPETS & IMAGES
TYPE OF SNIPPET FREQUENCY OF IMAGES
Paragraph Snippets 28.40%
List Snippets 26.30%
Table Snippets 17.70%

21. FEATURED SNIPPETS & UNIVERSAL RESULTS
RESULT TYPE SNIPPET SERPS ALL SERPS
Places 0.00% 13.20%
Video 24.50% 20.50%
Images 13.90% 15.60%
News 5.40% 3.40%
Shopping 4.00% 1.70%
Twitter 0.00% 0.50%

22. FREQUENCY AT WHICH SNIPPETS ARE
SOURCED FROM EACH RANKING POSITION
0.00%
7.50%
15.00%
22.50%
30.00%
RANKING POSITION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12+
0.65%0.16%0.84%1.03%1.53%2.18%
4.02%
10.42%
12.88%
16.24%
20.46%
29.60%

23. INFLUENCE OF CPC
0.00%
3.00%
6.00%
9.00%
12.00%
CPC RANGE
$9.55+ $10.20+ $10.95+ $11.88+ $13.11+ $14.60+ $16.57+ $19.57+ $24.61+ $34.89+
7.65%
9.28%9.54%9.62%9.64%9.71%9.60%9.37%9.25%9.19%

24. INFLUENCE OF SEARCH VOLUME
0.00%
4.00%
8.00%
12.00%
16.00%
RANKING POSITION
10 20 30 40 50 60-90 100-140 150-320 330-27M
15.20%
12.60%
11.10%
10.10%
9.30%
8.70%
8.20%
7.70%
5.90%

25. INFLUENCE OF WORD COUNT
0.00%
7.50%
15.00%
22.50%
30.00%
RANKING POSITION
1 2 3 4 5 6+
24.54%
12.19%
7.58%
6.66%
9.26%
10.49%

26. WORDS THAT TRIGGER
FEATURED SNIPPETS
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27. HOW WE CALCULATED FREQUENCY
WORD TOTAL OCCURRENCE SNIPPET OCCURRENCE SNIPPET FREQUENCY
lasik 3 2 66%
surgery 2 1 50%
age 1 1 100%
for 1 1 100%
seattle 1 0 0%
cost 1 1 100%

28. “math” or “finance” words like [salary].

29. FINANCIAL AND MATH WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
average 77.71%
salary 76.84%
many 72.06%
much 69.95%
deductible 60.32%
cost 50.64%

30. “time” related-words like [often]

31. TIME WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
often 73.38%
years 69.42%
deadline 60.11%
last 48.06%
when 47.89%
age 44.44%

32. “health” & “healthcare” related-words like [symptoms]

33. HEALTH & HEALTHCARE WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
psychologist 55.85%
eat 50.00%
symptoms 47.10%
burn 45.61%
hurt 45.53%
calories 45.21%

34. “general questions” & “transition” related-words like [definition]

35. GENERAL QUESTIONS & TRANSITION WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
forming 75.00%
does 79.94%
become 63.46%
cause 61.57%
definition 60.41%
removing 54.00%

36. “DIY process” related-words like [faucet]

37. DIY PROCESS WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
faucet 62.50%
fixing 59.26%
replacing 58.78%
clogged 58.55%
recover 56.05%
remove 55.99%

38. LOCATION WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
san 0.56%
vegas 0.55%
diego 0.50%
denver 0.43%
austin 0.38%
las 0.34%

39. SUBJECTIVE WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
free 1.58%
rankings 0.92%
comparison 0.19%
review 0.14%
good 0.05%
best 0.00%

40. IMAGE/VIDEO WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
videos 1.78%
photo 1.77%
picture 1.50%
pictures 1.20%
photos 1.10%
logo 0.88%

41. ON-PAGE FACTORS
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42. USE OF <TABLE> TAGS
0.00%
12.50%
25.00%
37.50%
50.00%
featured snippets regular results
33.87%
41.23%

43. USE OF <OL> TAGS
0.00%
12.50%
25.00%
37.50%
50.00%
featured snippets regular snippets
30.97%
43.85%

44. MATCHING QUERY IN <H1> or <H2>
0.00%
2.50%
5.00%
7.50%
10.00%
featured snippets regular results
7.11%
8.62%

45. THERE’S JUST NOT ENOUGH TIME.
We also looked into social media and linking factors
that might influence featured snippets. Check the
white paper for that information.
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46. OK, SO HOW DO I EARN
FEATURED SNIPEPTS?
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47. #1: ANALYZE YOUR KEYWORD
OPPORTUNITIES.
Use tools like STAT, SEMRush, even Google Search
Console. Look for target keywords.
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48. #2: CREATE STRATEGIC NEW
CONTENT TARGETED AT SNIPPETS.
Refer to our data on which words trigger featured
snippets. Look for ideas that make sense for your
vertical.
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49. #3: BRING IN QUESTION AND
ANSWER FORMATTING.
When possible, devote a page to answering a single
question. Try to find ways to incorporate FAQs into
your content.
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50. #4: SLICE UP YOUR COPY WITH
SUBHEADS, LISTS & TABLES.
Well structured page sections makes it easy for
Google to determine what content is most relevant to
a given search query.
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51. #5: POLISH YOUR EXISTING
SNIPPETS FOR HIGHER CTR.
You can influence the display copy in an already
earned snippet to drive up your click throughs.
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52. THANKS!
Watch out for our white paper in your email.
Get the data at getSTAT.com/data/fs
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