NEWSLETTER 10
New this week:
This week I’d like to share a new post I contributed to Lori Widmer’s Words on the Page blog. It focuses on SEO basics for freelance writers.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never actively looked to improve your search engine visibility, aren’t sure why you should, or your professional site simply needs an SEO refresh. You should find some tips here to help.
Get Even More Search Engine Visibility by Optimizing for Featured Snippets
To build on what I covered in that guest post, I’ll continue to offer more advanced SEO tips on the Freelance Writing Pros blog and here in the newsletter. Today, let’s take a quick look at featured snippets.
What are Featured Snippets?
Have you ever typed a question into Google and the results didn’t just include a list of links, but the actual answer displayed at the top?
That’s a featured snippet.
Ideally, you want your site snagging these featured snippet spots whenever possible. It’s a way for even small sites to outrank bigger competition, especially for longtail search queries like questions.
How to Optimize Your Professional Site for Featured Snippets
Here are some ways you can increase your chances of getting featured snippets in Google’s results (and potentially reaching more prospects in the process):
- Choose question-based longtail keyword phrases related to your client base using a tool like AnswerThePublic.com.
- Create pages or blog posts tailored to each of those questions your target clients are most likely to ask.
- Answer the question in short-form first before expanding upon it in the rest of your page or post. Remember, the rich snippet is just a small block of text (and sometimes a list or data from a table).
- Use headings (actual heading tags like H2, H3, etc. rather than just bold text) and bullet lists to highlight questions and step-by-step answers where appropriate.
The nice thing about featured snippet optimization is that you can do it right in your content itself. It’s not like schema (which we’ll talk about in a future post or newsletter) where you have to use third party plugins or hard-code things into your pages or template files.
Largely, optimizing for featured snippets is about making things easier on your readers; not just Google. And as professional writers, there’s no one better equipped to do that than you.
Jenn
