Episode 610 – Featured Snippets
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with Episode 610 of Screw the Commute podcast? Today we're going to talk about featured snippets. So if you want to get on the first page of Google in a legitimate way, that costs nothing and puts you ahead of sites that are more substantial than yours. Well, you came to the right place. That's what this episode is about. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 609. That was a dozen more website tips that you can implement very easily to make yourself look good to your customers, your prospects, and to the search engines. That was episode 609. And of course, any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number. That one was 609. Today is 610, which I'm certain you'll want to refer back to so that you can implement this on your websites. Hey, our program to help persons with disabilities is still in full swing. People are these people. Two of the people are blind and they're doing great things. And we have a school teacher that's got mobility problems and she's doing great. So we're really excited about it. We'd love to have your help. So if you can go to IMTCVA.org/disabilities, of course that will be in the show notes and click over to the Go Fund Me account any little bit you help you know helps out fund their scholarships and also you can see video update videos from them and it's amazing the like I said, two of the people are blind shooting better videos than I do.

[00:02:05] So check it out. All right. And also pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree so that you can spend time making money, not fighting with your computer. And this there's so many cheap and free things that'll that'll just make you work lightning fast and give you more time to do what you want to do, make money and do other things.

[00:02:31] All right. Let's get to the main event. Featured snippets. What are they? Well, they are on the first page of Google and usually answer some specific question. If the search term is only a word or two, Google will offer up some frequently asked questions related to the search term. Now many people in the SEO world got mad when featured snippets came along. See, the reason they got mad was that Google took information from their respective websites and gave the quick answer to the question that was being asked. And they didn't really encourage the person searching to click through to the website where the answer came from.

[00:03:16] In other words, the webmasters that were mad were basically accusing Google of stealing their content. Well, this is a little short sighted in that these same webmasters may have been getting paid for months or even years to get on the first page of Google, and they couldn't do it. Now, with this method, Google is giving them a chance they never had before. And of course, they're complaining about it now when Google puts the answer on the first page. Your website and link to it are still there and more long sighted people like we are looking for the long game and making money in the long run. Will realize that if someone just wanted a quick answer, they might click through to your website, get the answer, and leave immediately. This gives you a high bounce rate and makes your website look worse in the overall search engine game. If someone reads the quick answer and still clicks through to your website, they are showing that they're more interested in the topic and though mostly than though most likely stay longer on your site. Exploring the topic now. This makes your time on site increase and makes your site look better overall to the search engine. So instead of getting mad about Google stealing your content, you should be thanking them for the opportunity to get on the first page.

[00:04:54] Also, getting on the first page increase increases the credibility and bragging rights for your site and helps make it a trusted authority site. So what's the method to have a chance to show up as a featured snippet? And I might add, you could have hundreds or even thousands of chances to show up, depending on how much work you are willing to put into researching what's being asked in your industry and creating answers on your website. Now I'd suggest you start with what is called long tail keywords. And, and those are keyword phrases of like five words or more. And frequently they're going to start with terms like why do and what are and why is and how to and and here's one I just made up. What is the what is is another one what is the best way to remove wallpaper from a wall? Because we're redoing the kitchen here and getting rid of the old dated wallpaper. Right? So that's why I'm thinking about it. So here's an answer that showed up. Mixing even amount of white vinegar and water in a spray bottle and get ready to soak the walls, spray an area generously, and watch the paper start to soak off and separate from the walls. After a couple of minutes, you can use your scraper to help lift and remove the paper.

[00:06:21] All right. So that was the answer that was there. And this is something that's going to be important in a minute. That answer was 53 words in one paragraph. All right. Now. If you're interested in this topic and want to do this, there are some snippets, featured snippets that will be removed or won't be put up at all if they violate Google's policies. So. And also people can report snippets that they think are shouldn't be there. So here's some of the things they want. They don't like dangerous content, deceptive practices. In other words, you're showing how to cheat people harassing content, hateful content, medical content, sexually explicit content, terrorist type content. Like if you were trying to tell people how to make a suicide bomb or something. Violence and gore. Vulgar language and profanity. All right. So, you know, probably people listening to this aren't any of those things. All right. Now, another thing, videos can come up, too. So using your YouTube channel can also be very effective. So I typed in, How do I clean the carburetor on my lawnmower? Four videos came up and YouTube. And these features sync segments from Google because YouTube is owned by Google, even segmented the videos into what they called key moments. That was to make it easier on the searcher to quickly find exactly what they were looking for based on what they searched on.

[00:08:07] Now you can have tables and lists and a list of steps to complete a task. Graphs and other content can also show up. And just just like in other ways, which I. I won't mention here longer is better. And why? Why is that? Well, because Google will truncate your lists and big tables and graphs where the person searching has to click through to your website to see the entire answer on your website. Again. We don't want them to bounce immediately when they hit your website. So make sure you have other compelling content on there so that they stick around for a while. All right, so here are some of the techniques to give you the best chance of showing up. And first, as I always preach. Make sure your site is substantial. One these pages with one long home page that's got everything, including, you know, your your grade score, your kindergarten transcripts is not going to cut it. One page sites look spammy to the search engines and your chances of success are slim. Make sure your site is substantial. A good blog is good because every blog posting. Is technically a page. And so every time you make a blog posting, you're adding a page to your site, making it look more substantial. Next check to see if there are already featured snippets on the search query you are working on.

[00:09:47] It's much easier to jump on the bandwagon than to have Google start an entirely new obscure featured snippet. So make sure there's already stuff out there. It's same as I teach with products. If there's no products in what you're trying to make a product you know that nobody ever heard of. Well, guess what? There's two things that could happen. Either you just hit the lottery, you're going to sell millions and millions of this product nobody ever heard of. But more likely as nobody could make any money with a similar product. So that's why there isn't a. All right. So in this case, you want to make sure there's already featured snippets in what you're considering doing. All right. Focus on long tail questions of five or more words. Because less and less people are focusing and making Web pages based around long tails. That's a really good tip and technique for anything you do with your website because you get less traffic, but it's very targeted in much higher quality traffic. All right. Now, if you're going to have a text answer, make your and remember I told you that 53 words was going to come into importance. We'll make sure your text answers are 40 to 60 words in a single paragraph. And put a heading to or a heading three tag and make the question a subheading. Right before you put the 40 to 60 word paragraph.

[00:11:23] Then if you don't know what headings two and three tags are, we'll learn about it. We'll be glad to teach you and my mentor program. All right. But any geek worth his salt that knows what they're doing, knows what these tags mean. If you get a web designer that doesn't know what a heading two or heading three tag is, that is not the person you want. That was an out of work graphic artist. It's clueless about anything that's going to do you any good on a website other than make it look pretty. So you and your mother and your sister can look at it all right? Because nobody else is going to see it. All right. So anyway, make your text answers 40 to 60 words in a single paragraph. Put heading two or three tag around the question. All right. And you could have many of these in a frequently asked question section of your site. All right. And another good tip here is make sure your answers are pretty objective opinions. Don't cut it in this method. Know there's plenty of room for you to have opinions on your site. But this is not the place. Now, if you happen to be doing a step kind of list, like step one, step two, step three. Well, steps and numbers denote order. Like if you just have a random list of things, you can make bullets.

[00:12:45] But if you have to do step one before step two in this particular way to do things and featured snippets, identify each step, step one, boom, step two, boom. And they have to be in order. Oc whenever possible. Make sure your title tags again. If your webmaster you don't know what a title tag is, you've got bigger problems. All right. You're going to you got to learn some stuff here. But anyway, make sure your title tags of each page closely match the long tail question you're trying to rank for. All right. Another tip for you. See, your images can show up as a feature in a featured snippet. You can even your image can show up in somebody else's featured snippet. How do you like that? Of course, there's can show up in your featured snippet, too, but you want to give the best chance at your shows up. So make sure you have named your images with keywords. I've taught this in many other places during these episodes. Name your images with keywords and also use keywords and phrases in your description. Again, if you don't know what an alt description is, you're clueless about how your website operates, and especially if you have persons with disabilities and people are getting sued because of this nowadays and you can't get government contracts if you don't have your alt descriptions on your images filled in know.

[00:14:20] So but you can use keywords and keyword phrases in them that helps you with these featured snippets and speaking images. They should be in landscape format. I keep saying if you don't know what landscape format is as opposed to portrait, you're clueless. You need to really up your game a little bit. None of this is hard, but if somebody teaches you about it. But anyway, minimum of 600 pixels wide and an aspect ratio of four by three. And again, you just have to know these simple things. If somebody would just point them out, you'd say, Oh, that's what that means. Oh yeah, that's what we do around here. So if you want help with all this. To get on the first page of Google. Now, of course, I'm not guarantee it. That's what all the scammer SEO people do. I'm just saying that this is a technique and method that's at your disposal that's legitimate, that actually works. If you do what you're supposed to do, you'll increase your chances exponentially of showing up on the first page of Google. Again, I'm not going to guarantee something like all the scam or SEO people know, but I'm just telling you, this is a thoroughly researched, great technique that you can implement and it's not bad. Even if you didn't show up for any other visitors you have.

[00:15:42] It really helps them and makes you look like the expert makes your site look credible. All kinds of good things. So if you want help doing this and that's just a primer on it, there's a lot of more details to it. But now that you know about it, do the darn thing on your website and I'll be glad to help you get in my mentor program. This is what we do all day is help people not try to figure it out on their own, make mistakes, get discouraged and quit. No, you have somebody that's on your team that cares about your success. Because of the nature of how my mentor program is structured. I don't get my big money unless you make big money and you're not stuck with me forever. Once you become an expert at this, which I will help you become and me and my whole team. Well, and there's all these other great things with the retreat center and the TV studio and the school, everything. All this great stuff that nobody else will give you. All right, so check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and then start noticing these featured snippets in your industry and start collecting ones that you think you want to develop. And this is a primer on how to do it. All right. We'll get you on a next episode. See you later.