Struggling to rank for featured snippets and missing out on valuable traffic?
I used to spend countless hours trying to optimize my content, making educated guesses about how to win those elusive featured snippets. The process was very time consuming and very successful.
Now I can leverage ChatGPT, including their SEO understanding and exceptional writing skills, to generate near-perfect optimized snippets, saving me time and increasing my traffic.
Here, I’ll share my seven-step process for using ChatGPT to optimize your Paragraph Style Featured Snippet.
While this process doesn’t work 100% of the time, I’ve had a much higher success rate compared to when I was doing it manually.
Before we get started, if you’re completely new to featured snippets, I highly recommend reading Chris Long’s article, How to Get Google Featured Snippets: 9 Optimization Guidelines, which will give you a good primer.
Step 1: Find a featured snippet opportunity
Find a keyword that you are currently ranking for in the top 5 positions of Google where there is a featured snippet and you are not ranking for it.
The easiest way to do this is with your rank tracker. Otherwise, you’ll have to find them manually. Here’s how to do it with two popular tools:
Using Ahrefs
Go to Site Explorer. Enter your domain and filter keywords that trigger the featured snippets where your website ranks in positions 2-5:
Using Semrush
Go to Organic Search. Enter your domain and filter keywords that trigger the featured snippets where your website ranks in positions 2-5:
For the most impact, find a keyword that has the highest volume and highest ranking.
The higher your rank, the more likely you are to get the featured snippet.
Step 2: Identify content worthy of existing featured snippets
Now that you have a keyword that you can rank for in the featured snippet position, you need to see if there is current content on your page that can rank for it.
Do a Google search for your keyword and make sure the featured snippet appears. Check mobile and desktop.
Once you find it, read the current highlight to get a good idea of what it says.
Then open your article and search for the keyword. Your goal is to identify an existing sentence or paragraph that might be a candidate for a featured snippet.
In the example I’m going to show you, I’m looking for a definition of the keyword.
If you find something, that’s what you’ll work on optimizing. If you don’t, you’ll need to have ChatGPT write one for you first. We’ll get to that step soon.
Step 3: Prime ChatGPT’s understanding of Featured Snippet Optimization
Enable ChatGPT and select the GPT-4 model if it is available to you. I recommend working with this one.
You want to prepare ChatGPT with how to optimize highlights so that it has that context in your chat to help you optimize yours.
Paste this prompt:
“How do I optimize a paragraph to rank for the featured snippet in Google for a query?”
Step 4: Craft a featured snippet with ChatGPT
Now, let ChatGPT enhance or write your featured snippet.
warning:
“I want to rank my article on Google for the featured snippet of the search query: [insert keyword]
Google is currently showing a paragraph from my competitor’s website in the featured snippet position for the search query. Here it is:
[insert your competitor’s featured snippet]
Below is my paragraph that I want to rank in the featured snippet position. Rewrite using the function snippet optimization tips so that it’s better than my competitor’s and more likely for Google to rank mine: [insert your current paragraph]”
alternative
If you don’t have a current paragraph targeting the query highlight, paste it into the request:
“Write a featured snippet to include in my article so that it ranks for this position instead of the other website. Use the guidelines above on how to optimize your featured snippet position in Google.
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Step 5: Have ChatGPT evaluate your new featured snippet
You can’t always trust ChatGPT to come up with the best possible snippet on the first try. For this step, you’ll want ChatGPT to compare your new featured snippet to the current ranking to see which it thinks is better.
Start a new chat and paste this message again:
“How do I optimize a paragraph to rank for the featured snippet in Google for a query?”
Once it responds, paste this prompt:
“Which paragraph is most likely to rank in the featured snippet position on Google for the search query: [insert your keyword]
Paragraph A:
[paste in your competitor’s current featured snippet showing in Google]
Paragraph B:
[paste in the featured snippet paragraph ChatGPT generated for your]”
It should say paragraph B. If it doesn’t, start a new chat and repeat step 4 above, then return to this section and try again until you select your paragraph.
advice: If you want another opinion on whether your featured paragraph is better than your competitors, take this step in another chatbot like Google Bard.
Step 6: Publish your featured snippet to the best place
Now that you have an optimized featured snippet, the last step is to publish it to the best place in your article.
To identify the best spot, go to your competitor’s article and see where their paragraph for the featured snippet is. Is it located higher on the page? In the middle? Background?
At least put yours in a position to match theirs while making sure it flows with the content before and after.
If you want to increase your chances of getting the featured snippet, place yours higher in your article than your competition.
You want to put your highlight in its own paragraph right below its own title, such as an H2 or H3. The heading can be one of two styles: a statement or a question.
Which one you use really depends on the query, search intent, and what your competitor is doing. I tend to use more questions than statements. You’ll want to try this for yourself.
In our example, I would structure it like this:
H2: What is the average cost in dollars?
paragraph: Dollar cost averaging is an investment technique designed to minimize the impact of market fluctuations by constantly allocating a fixed amount of money to the purchase of stocks, ETFs or mutual funds in regular intervals. This approach ensures that shares are purchased at different prices, reducing the risk of buying at a market point and promoting long-term financial growth.
Step 7: Wait for results, rinse and repeat
Depending on the authority of your site, you’ll probably have to wait 1-14 days to see if you’ve earned the featured snippet.
It doesn’t hurt to manually paste your article URL at the top of Google Search Console and click request indexing.
But if you optimize the highlights at scale, this won’t be very effective. You will need to be patient and wait for Google to crawl your article again.
Final tips
If after a couple of tries you are not successful, here are some things you can try:
Move the content of the featured snippet to the top of the page and put it in a blog quote. Make it stand out to users and Googlebot. Paste the content of your highlight into the Hemingway editor and make any recommended improvements. Grammar is another great tool. If the title of the highlight was a question, try making it a statement that ends with a colon. Remove the title of the featured snippet and place the content of the featured snippet right below your H1. Give ChatGPT the content of your featured snippet and your competitor’s and surrounding text. Then ask him to evaluate the text to win the featured passage and rewrite yours. This extra context from the surrounding text can help it produce better content for you.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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