3 Local Marketing Tips to Lock Up the Local SERP

For small, regionally focused businesses to run effective PPC accounts, a local search marketing strategy is key. While it might seem counterintuitive to limit reach with geographic parameters and keyword modifiers, in truth you’re mitigating the power of national competitors with comparatively limitless resources. Don’t allow size to act as an impediment to advertising success: turn it into your biggest advantage.

Now, don’t get me wrong: the local SERP – that is, the search results pages shown for queries modified with specific locations – can be insanely competitive. But a lot of the time, this competition comes from those same national competitors who are blindly spending on broad, unfocused keywords and using bland ads. They’re leaning on brand recognition, not value proposition: an exploitable tactical error.

For example:

You’re a sartorial artisan forging custom sportcoats in Cambridge and you decide that AdWords would be the perfect way to earn new business. Maybe you check out a blog post or two before diving in.

You notice that when you bid on terms like “custom menswear” and “tailored jacket,” your ads are consistently buried beneath those of Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A Bank. You also notice these juggernauts seem to be using the exact same ad copy for both terms, and on mobile, too.

You’re quite astute, so you begin appending “Cambridge” “Boston” “Newbury Street” and the like to the tailoring terms you’d been bidding on. You deploy those same keywords in your compelling, locally-focused ad copy. And you use call-only ads to schedule custom fittings at your shop.

Yes, the volume is much lower, but the clicks you’re paying for are hyper-relevant and cheaper.

Quality Scores improve. Conversion rates improve. Revenue improves.

The gist? If you’re not operating nationally, doubling down on local is the key to thwarting your competition.

This is exactly what Firstline Locksmith, a (you guessed it) locksmith servicing the mid-Atlantic region, did. And the strategy continues to pay off.

Wordstream’s Managed Services team was able to scale Firstline’s PPC campaigns quickly and effectively. “They came onboard in December of 2015, with a goal of 50 calls a month from paid search at a $50 CPA. Since then, Firstline has seen 100+ calls each month at a $23 CPA,” says account manager Ashley Noel.

The significant jump in performance didn’t just excite the client: it was good enough to garner some hardware at the US Search Awards for Best Local Campaign. To celebrate this award-winning work, here are some of the techniques Ashley used to help Firstline Locksmith dominate the local SERP (along with how to implement the same techniques in your account).

Tip #1: Dominate Local Business Marketing with Call-Only Ads & Calls from Your Website

What WordStream Did…

The market for residential locksmith services is massive. It’s also hyper-local and uniquely almost entirely mobile. Consequently, our strategy for these campaigns focused exclusively on the mobile searcher. We started with call-only campaigns then, after our initial success, we continued to build out local search campaigns in ad groups focused on specific residential neighborhoods and suburbs.

These campaigns – complete with bid adjustments and mobile preferred ads – cater to the mobile market aggressively. When traditional mobile conversion rates proved to be low, we pivoted. Our goal shifted from driving quote completions to garnering more phone calls from landing pages. These calls were then tracked using WordStream’s keyword level call tracking software, which allowed us to optimize bids and ad copy for these leads.

How You Can, Too…

If your business operates within a vertical in which prospects are met with immediate needs like, say, being locked out in a flannel nightgown at 4am or having broken front teeth or finding his or herself in dire need of a dinner jacket, call-only ads could be right for you.

To create your own call-only campaigns, head to the “Campaign” tab and click the big red button…

 

Then, after naming your new campaign and selecting your desired network (Search), use the final radio button on the right to select “call-only.”

Structurally, call-only ads differ from standard and Expanded Text Ads because the headline is your phone number. This limits the amount of text you have to work with to the confines of the description lines.

Side note: I’m interested to see if/how call-only ads change once Expanded Text Ads become the status-quo. Structurally, I’m not sure how two headlines would work: maybe a phone number paired with a bolded CTA? Plus, the mobile-exclusive nature would guarantee truncation of any long, elaborate description lines. 

It’s important to remember that call-only ads are only going to show in the first two positions. To bring cost per click (which, in this case, is really cost per phone call) down, be sure to maximize Quality Score by utilizing the keywords you’re bidding on in the abridged space for ad copy.

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If, like Firstline, you’re trying to drive phone calls from a carefully manicured landing page instead of the SERP, you’ll need to set up call tracking software. It’s worth mentioning here that a developer (or, if you’re a WordStream client, our Implementation Team) could be extremely helpful in getting your call tracking to work.

To set up call tracking:

• Establish a pool of phone numbers to be used. The quantity of numbers needed depends on your site’s overall traffic levels.
• Replace the HTML phone number on your website with a snippet of JavaScript code.
• When a PPC visitor clicks your ad, the JavaScript code dynamically inserts one of the phone numbers from your pool of numbers where the old HTML phone number used to be on your website. That number stays with the visitor throughout her visit on your site, no matter what page she navigates to, and continues to stay with her for a predetermined time in case she returns to the site.
• The JavaScript code that was installed on the site captures the keyword that triggered your ad so you can tie the phone call back to the keyword.
• After a while the number gets recycled so you don’t have to keep adding new numbers to your pool

Learn more about mobile PPC strategy.

Tip #2: A Little (Local) Optimization Goes A Long Way

What WordStream Did…

Historically, Firstline had struggled to differentiate itself on the SERP alongside a number of “fake, spammy locksmith advertisers.”

To distinguish itself from competitors leveraging black hat tactics, we created a Google My Business listing for Firstline, which both helped with organic rankings and allowed for the use of location extensions in paid ads. We also curated real reviews from past customers and the Better Business Bureau to highlight the legitimacy of their listings with invaluable review extensions.

How You Can, Too…

To create a Google My Business page, click the link to the left and then click “Start Now.” This will take you to a map of whichever region you select. Simply complete the form, verify, and you’re done(ish)!

I would suggest taking the time to log into your Google My Business account and adding:

• Additional locations
• Phone number
• Website
• Hours (including special hours)
• Photos

It’s completely free, allows you to consume more real estate on the SERP for branded terms, and exists as a resource for future customers. Dominate local business marketing: create an account already!

 

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To add location extensions to your AdWords ads (a great way to reiterate the fact that your business is just around the corner), navigate to the “Ad Extensions” tab in the AdWords UI and select “Location Extensions.” if you’ve never added a location before, you’ll be prompted to sync your Google My Business account. Once completed and enabled, your ads will start looking something like this:

Learn More about local online marketing.

Tip #3: Geo Ad Customizers, Hyper-Specific Copy Without the Legwork

What WordStream Did… 

Our keyword strategy included building ad groups centered around different services for residential, auto, and business services as well as different cities, neighborhoods, destinations, and routes.

This allowed us to cater our ads and landing pages to speak to the local searcher’s specific needs.

Unfortunately, though, updating local ads frequently became a prohibitively laborious task. To speed things up while still maintaining that oh-so-important locality, we began using geo ad customizers to better speak to a user’s local search query and allow us to better manage our messaging.

Once we included location-specific language in our ad’s headlines, Firstline saw improvements to their CTR and Quality Score. 

How You Can, Too…

To create geo ad customizers in AdWords, you need to build a feed and upload it into the Business data section of the Shared Library tab.

Feed construction can be a pain, but as long as you include the fields you’re trying to modify, you shouldn’t have an issue. Here’s a template you can use to get started with customizer feed construction, and here’s a list of all of the possible targeting attributes you can include in your feed! 

Once your feed has been uploaded, navigate to a campaign in which you wish to implement geo-specific ad copy and create a new text ad:

The next step is similar to (read: the exact same as) using Dynamic Keyword insertion. Simply insert a bracket, like so ‘{‘, and a list of feeds will appear. Select the feed you’d like to reference and then choose the attribute for the values you will want to show in the ad (I’ll stop saying “feed” now, I promise).

While the text that’s displayed in the UI will look like a convoluted mess…

 

your prospects will be served an ad that speaks to both their needs and their location.

Remember: Character limits will apply when creating the ads, so keep the attribute values and ad text within the Expanded Text Ad limits.

Learn More about Geo Customizers!

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Leveraging the techniques highlighted above, Firstline Locksmith’s account manager Ashley Noel has incited a 30% increase in conversion rates and, perhaps more important, a vast improvement in call quality. Click here to learn more about WordStream’s Managed Services offering or schedule a free consultation today!

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The 4-Step Plan to Construct Your Own Keyword-to-URL Map

Posted by Carson-Ward

Knowing how to find and effectively use keywords is probably the most important skill for an effective search marketer. Smart keyword planning and tracking should also heavily inform content planning and strategy. Unfortunately, most keyword research is done on the fly as a new page is created. Rather than helping marketers find new opportunities and plan strategically, keywords are usually found and applied to existing posts and in-flight projects.

If you’re an SEO or content creator and don’t have a living, regularly referenced keyword map, this post is for you. We won’t discuss how to optimize existing pages. There are lots of well-done technical SEO posts around if the optimization process is new to you. But if the concept of a keyword plan is new to you, this post should walk you through the process completely. If you’re experienced, you’ll probably pick up at least one new trick or application for keywords.

If you’d like to follow along with a keyword research template I’ve created, feel free to make a copy of this Google doc. You’ll see images of it throughout the post that might make more sense if you open it up.

Finding and selecting keywords

Obviously the first step to using keywords is finding what people search for. While thorough and hopefully helpful, there’s nothing shocking or ground-breaking in this first section. The real magic is in how you use your keywords.

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Step 1: Build the “Big List”

Your goal in this first phase of keyword research is to gather every keyword that your business would want to appear for. You won’t achieve that goal, but set your sights high. Think outside the structure of your current site. Look beyond keywords you currently rank for and knowingly compete for.

Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a great tool, and I’m not just saying that because of Moz’s resident hypnotist. I must have missed its launch somehow, yet it’s quickly become my first stop for collecting lots of keywords quickly. The grouping function is great for finding head terms, and the sub-terms will be useful later on in either optimizing terms on existing pages or finding related pages worth creating.

Here I’m using the Moz keyword tool and excluding very low-volume keyword terms that I know I’ll be ignoring. Throughout this post I’m using our site, HighSpeedInternet.com, as an example.

Put in your known head terms and export them all using the “Export CSV” function. I’m impressed by the speed of the tool, and often use volume filters to avoid exporting terms I won’t actually use. That might sound small, but many tools force large exports prior to any estimation of search volume. Once you’re done gathering and exporting, you can remove duplicates and sort using Excel or a (slightly clumsier) Google Sheets script.

SearchMetrics

SearchMetrics is good for those who aren’t sure which keywords they want to rank for. We’ll need to input competitors’ sites to find keywords. For those who don’t know who competitors are, there’s a handy tool that shows likely candidates under “SEO research > Competitors.”

SimilarWeb (not shown) is also helpful in checking for competitors. If your site is new, simply plug in some of the queries you’d like to rank for and look those sites up. Once you’ve discovered some competitors, throw them into SearchMetrics and head over to the “Rankings” section under “SEO Research” and click “Long Tail.”

If this were a competitor’s site, I’d see a list of keywords they rank for and the potential traffic.

Other tools

• SEMrush has a tool that can find keywords with search volume by site or related terms. One of the better all-in-one tools for keyword research.
• UberSuggest spits out tons of related terms. It’s no longer a favorite, as many have found suggestions to be irrelevant or low-volume terms.
• KeywordTool.io is a good complement to a more full-featured tool. It’s reliably better than most tools at finding mid-tail terms that others don’t find.
• Google Keyword Planner offers free suggestions. One major downside is that your competitors will probably be using the tool the same way you do, resulting in lots of competition for the more narrow set of terms that Google suggests. Still, it would be fine to use this tool and nothing else if your tools budget is low.

There’s an almost unlimited number of keyword tools, but you really only need one or two. The more thorough your Big List process is, the more work you’ll save yourself later on. It’s usually worth it to spend a day or two gathering lots of keywords for a site you’ll be working on regularly.

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Step 2: Get keyword volume

Use Excel’s handy function or a Google Sheets script to remove duplicate keywords. For most of us the next step is to import/paste sets of keywords into the Google Keyword Planner, export the volume, and repeat. There’s a limit to how many keywords Google will allow you to run at one time, so pre-filtering bad keywords might be a good idea. For example, I often pull out competitors’ branded terms.

Work-around for “low-volume” accounts (+extra precision)

Google recently continued its creeping war against those who use Google products for free by returning ranges in the keyword planner for low-spending accounts. These ranges (as in the image below) are so broad they’re essentially useless for anything but pre-filtering.

To get around this limit, you can just click the nice “Add to plan” button on any one of your terms.

If you’re only curious about volume for a few keywords, you can just click the “Add to plan” button for multiple terms. It’s easier to paste them in the next step for larger lists. Once you’ve added at least one keyword, click the “Review plan” button.

Now you’re on a new page where you’ll need to be careful about avoiding the “Save to account” buttons unless you actually want to start bidding. Click “Add keywords” to paste your terms in, then save it to a new ad group.

Now click the ad group. You’ll see a large table that’s mostly blank. Fill in a $999 bid and set the range to monthly. I also like to try different match types, but I typically use exact-match.

So why is this cool?

• Impression count is more accurate, and not rounded like in the regular tool.
• You can set custom date ranges if you want a more accurate figure for forecasting purposes.
• You can play with match type again (which is something Google took away from the standard planner interface).
• It works for free accounts.

At the end of Step 2, you should have a simple two-column list.

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Step 3: Filter keywords

Notice I said we should filter keywords — not delete them. You’ll generally want to break keywords into three groups:

1.) Priority terms: Keywords you want to rank for immediately. A good priority term has the following attributes:

• Related to current and near-future business
• Implies a question you can answer well about a product you sell, OR implies a need you can fulfill
• High-enough volume to be worth the investment

2.) Secondary terms: We’ll want to go after these some day, but not before we have our priority keywords locked in with query-responsive, well-optimized pages. Secondary terms usually have the following traits:

• Doesn’t have buying intent, but has healthy volume and relates to what your site does
• Implies a question you don’t have the expertise to answer
• Low-volume terms that might convert

3.) Other terms: You might lay out some tertiary keywords (i.e those where you plan to expand the business), but you can generally stop there and label any others as keywords to “ignore for now.”

You’ll usually want to note why you are or are not pursuing a term so you don’t have to re-evaluate it every time you look for new keywords. Step three’s endpoint just adds a few columns:

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Using keywords effectively

Now that you’ve gathered keywords it’s time to figure out how to use them. Your ultimate goals are to 1) find new opportunities on existing pages, and 2) find keywords for which you don’t have a good landing page so that you can create or suggest a useful new piece of content. Before we can do either, we’ll need to map the keywords to pages on your site.

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Step 4: Map priority keywords

Just like you needed human judgment to determine priority keywords, you’ll need to use good judgment to map them to pages. You can skip the judgment steps and still come out with a final product, but it will ultimately be far less useful. Besides, this is why we have jobs that machines won’t be taking over for a while.

Scrape Google

First, scrape Google for your keywords and current ranking. Google frowns on rank tracking and SERP scraping, but consider it fair game for all the content they scrape and save. If you don’t want to scrape SERPs you can manually map each page, but it’s nice for larger sites to check yes/no rather than thinking through a list of potential pages every time.

There are tons of tools and services for this. AWR is probably the most common choice, as this is a one-time deal. You could also write a simple script with proxies or find a freelancer on one of a dozen sites. Moz Pro’s campaigns work up to your keyword limit, but the Moz tool is far better at helping after you’ve mapped keywords.

Mapping new & existing URLs

Once you have each keyword’s page and current rank, you’ll want to quickly check that the page matches the query.

• How does this page help the user? (Don’t confuse this with what the user does next.)
• Would the ideal version of that page do what you’d want if you typed this keyword into Google?
• Would a page about this keyword or set of keywords only serve the query better?

You don’t want to create new pages for every tiny keyword variation, but we do want to make sure the page feels tailored to the user question. You’re trying to close the gap between what people want from Google and what your site does, so it shouldn’t be surprising if the questions you ask yourself feel UX-heavy.

After asking these questions a few hundred times it’ll become second nature. You won’t rank at all for some terms, so you’ll have to either manually select a page or create a new one. For some pages (especially those 50+), Google will just be plain wrong and you’ll have to re-map them.

The hardest choice is often whether an existing page could be optimized to be a better fit, or if a new URL is more appropriate. As a general rule, anything that would augment an existing page’s core purpose can be added, but anything that would detract or confuse the core purpose should be placed elsewhere. Don’t worry if it’s not immediately clear what the core purpose of the page is. Part of the value in this process is refining page purpose with keywords.

If you have a page in the top 5 or 10, it’s usually best to assume optimizing the page is a better path than creating a new page. If you have sets of conflicting keywords (meaning optimizing for both confuses the page) ranking on the same URL, you can generally choose the higher-value terms and then link to a new page about the second set.

For example, if we had a page appearing for “internet providers by zip code” and “satellite internet providers,” these would be considered conflicting. Trying to talk about satellite Internet (which is available almost everywhere) and zip code-specific Internet at the same time would be confusing. We’d create a new page for satellite Internet, delete the existing satellite Internet content, and link to the new page from the ranking URL.

Building new pages

If you’ve identified new pages that have opportunity, well done! Ensure that the amount of effort is worth the reward, and utilize the opportunities in your production process. Keyword research done well comes with a built-in business case. If you can show keyword volume and argue for keyword intent, you only have to make some assumptions on click, call, or purchase rates to put a potential dollar figure on the project.

Once you’ve mapped keywords to a new page, you should also have scope settled at a high level. Knowing what questions you’re trying to answer and what the page should do gives everyone the information they need to contribute and determine the best way to build it.

Optimizing existing pages

Improving existing pages is usually easier and less time-intensive, but don’t simply optimize page titles and call it a day. Actually look at the page and determine whether it’s a good fit for what you’d want to see if you were the one Googling. Also consider the competition and aim to be better.

There will be a larger list of existing terms ranking below the top spot where optimization and improvement need to be prioritized. Here are a couple examples of prioritization helpers:

• Keyword opportunity: Find a click-through study, estimate the traffic you’re getting in your current position, and estimate how much traffic you’d get from the top spot. Consider both keywords and pages.
• Competitive opportunity: Combine the opportunity above with competition metrics (e.g. PA/DA in the SERPs).
• Crawl your pages to get titles and content, break the keyword into its individual words, and see how many of the words appear.

Use these figures as guides, and be smart about competition. It’s easy for analytical people to get too deep into a spreadsheet. Make sure you’re looking at your website and that of your competition, rather than making decisions on a pet formula alone.

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A word to skeptical content strategists/marketers

I understand if you think this looks like a post for SEOs. Content that comes from highly searched keywords tends to be evergreen, but the result of writing keyword-targeting content is rarely something your visitors will rush to share. It’s very rarely inspiring, timely, fun, or otherwise sexy. Keep some things in mind, though:

1. Depending on who you believe, organic traffic on average is 2–4x average referral traffic across the web. Don’t sell yourself short with a content strategy that only reaches half of your potential audience.
2. You don’t have to create content the way everyone else has. In fact, please don’t! See a bunch of dull articles ranking for the term? Maybe make it an interactive tool. Write something that’s not dull. Answer the question better than anyone else has.
3. You’ll drive more sales creating good content for boring searches than you will creating viral posts that get shared and linked to. Combine keyword hunting with shareable content for a truly business-changing organic/inbound strategy.

You don’t need an SEO’s permission to create useful content for things Google explicitly tells you your potential fans and customers are looking for. Incorporating a keyword strategy into a comprehensive content strategy almost feels like cheating.

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Getting started: A spreadsheet template

If all of this sounds a bit overwhelming, I’ve created a template in Google docs that you can begin using. Just choose “File > Make a copy,” read through the comments, and start entering in your own data once you feel comfortable.

Get your keyword mapping template

The Google doc does a lot of the boring stuff for you, like calculating keyword opportunity, title optimization (if you put in page titles), and organizing your keyword map by page and keyword with opportunity, volume, and more.

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When it’s time to automate

There are tools for doing much of what this spreadsheet does. The right tool will be worth the money as long as you keep some things in mind before you dive in and start paying:

1. It’s wise to know what you want a tool to do before buying it. Use the keyword mapping template, experiment with what you actually want and use regularly, and then you can start looking for tools to help you map keywords and optimize pages. Avoid tool clutter by using them deliberately.
2. Most tools will try to map keywords to pages, but none can reliably tell you when or how you should create new content. If you’re never actually looking at keywords with human judgment and asking, “Am I answering that query?”, then you’re probably over-relying on the tool.

For Moz Pro members, plugging in some keywords and playing around is a great place to start. Play around until you’re comfortable with rank tracking and page mapping, then look at some optimization suggestions. It’s now even better when combined with the keyword tool.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Getting Started with Google Advertising [Video Series]

We know there are a lot of people out there with questions about Google AdWords – what it is, how it works, and how to do it effectively. We know this because some of our all-time most popular pages on this site attempt to answer these questions – take our infographic on how the AdWords auction works, our guide to how much AdWords costs, and our industry benchmarks that show average click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, and cost per action in 20 different industries (for both search and display) so you can get a sense of how your performance compares.

We also know you’re all really busy! That’s why we decided to turn these popular guides into three quick one-minute videos. Each video provides a high-level answer to these three questions that are so common among new Google advertisers. If you’ve got three minutes, you’ve got time to learn a little about how Google advertising works!

How Does Google Advertising Work?

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How Much Does Google Advertising Cost?

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Google Advertising Performance Benchmarks by Industry

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More Google Advertising Resources

Want to dig deeper? Check out PPC University, our free resource for learning Google AdWords and pay-per-click marketing, from PPC 101 to Advanced PPC and Social Ads.

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Game of Featured Snippets: How to Rank in Position 0

Posted by larry.kim

Google’s Featured Snippets are amazingly powerful. We’re seeing more snippets than ever before for more search queries. You need them.

We know this thanks to some brilliant articles and presentations from some super smart people in the industry, including Glenn Gabe (see: The Power of Google Featured Snippets in 2016 and a Google Featured Snippet Case Study – also, an extra big shout out to Glenn for helping me answer some important questions I had when writing this article!), Peter Meyers (see: Ranking #0: SEO for Answers), and Rob Bucci (see: How to Earn More Featured Snippets).

But even after reading everything I could find about Featured Snippets, one huge question remained unanswered: How the heck do you get these damn things?

All of this leads us to today’s experiment: How exactly does Google’s algorithm pick which snippet to feature?

Obviously, Google isn’t manually picking them. It’s an algorithm.

So what makes Google’s Featured Snippet algorithm tick?

For example, if two competing domains both have great, snipp-able results, how does Google decide to pick one over the other? Take this one, for example:

Why does WordStream (in Position 4) get the Featured Snippet instead of Moz (Positions 1 and 2) or Search Engine Watch (Position 3) on a search for [what is link building]?

What we know about Featured Snippets

Before we dive into the unknown, let’s briefly review what we know.

We know snippets, like unicorns, come in all shapes and sizes. Your content must provide the answer in the “right” format, which will vary depending on the specifications in Google’s algorithm. Snippets can be:

• Text.
• Lists (ordered or unordered).
• Images.
• Charts.
• Tables.
• Knowledge Graph.

We also know that any website can earn a Featured Snippet. Large brands and sites have no advantage over smaller brands and sites.

Finally, we also know that winning a Featured Snippet lets you enjoy some spoils of war, including:

• You get more website traffic.
• You gain greater visibility in Google’s SERPs.
• You earn trust/credibility.

So that’s what you need to know about Featured Snippets. Now let’s dive into the unknown.

Important disclaimers

Featured Snippets pose a few problems that really complicated the analysis.

For one, snippets are finicky. You can do a search right now and see the snippet. But sometimes you can conduct the same exact search an hour later and the snippet won’t be there.

For another, we’re all working with limited data sets. We’re limited to analyzing just the snippets we have.

Finally, snippets impact your organic CTRs. Some snippets will increase the CTR to your site – for instance, if you’re ranked in fourth position but you have the featured snippet. But other times a snippet can actually decrease your CTR because the searcher already got their answer – no need to click through.

Google isn’t much help either. Gabe asked Google SEO PR spokesperson Gary Illyes and got this frustratingly funny reply:

@glenngabe speculation: ancient aliens? Or, we look at many signals for determining what should be featured @JohnMu
— Gary Illyes (@methode) October 23, 2015

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Theory #1: Snippets aren’t featured based on organic search ranking factors alone

This one is relatively easy to prove.

According to Gabe’s data, ranking position played some sort of role in whether you get Featured Snippets. Every single snippet was taken from a page that was good enough to rank in the top 10 organic positions.

If you look at Bucci’s data, however, he discovered that Google will take snippets from content that ranks on Page 2 of Google.

I found something a bit more incredible when I pulled a report of snippets – 981 in total – for my own website. Take a look:

• About 70 percent of the time, Google pulled snippets from pages in positions 1 to 3.
• About 30 percent of the time, the snippets “source” comes from positions 4 to as deep as 71 (wow!).

If Google’s algorithm were relying just on traditional search ranking factors (e.g., keywords and links), then Google would simply pick the first “snipp-able” content fragment from the highest-ranking piece of content every time. Google would never have to go to Page 2 or further (Page 8!) for snippets when other there are other perfectly nice formatted snippets to choose from which rank higher.

Clearly, this isn’t happening. Something else is at play. But what?

Theory #2: Having your content in a snipp-able format matters (but isn’t the whole picture)

Is it all about being the most clear, concise, and thorough answer? We know Google is looking for something “snipp-able.”

For the best shot at getting a Featured Snippet, your content should be between 40 and 50 words, according to SEMRush‘s analysis.

Without a doubt, format matters to Google’s algorithm. Your content needs to have the right format if you’re ever going to be eligible to be snipped.

But again, we’re back to the same question. How does Google pick between different pages with eligible stuff to snip?

Theory #3: Engagement metrics seem to play a role in snippet selection

To figure out what was happening, I looked at the outliers. (Usually, the best way to crack an algorithm is to look at the unusual edge cases.)

Let’s look at one example: [how to get more Bing Rewards Points].

This page shows up as a snippet for all sorts of queries related to “getting bing rewards points,” yet the source of the snip is from position 10. What’s crazy is that our page ranks behind Bing’s official site and all sorts of other video tutorials and community forums discussing the topic.

Why the heck is this happening?

Well, when I look at this page in Search Console, I notice it gets an unusually high CTR of 21.43 percent, despite a ridiculously low average position of 10.

This CTR is 10x higher than what you’d expect to see at this position.

The other thing I noticed was that the page had remarkably great engagement metrics. The time on site (which is proportional to dwell time) was an amazing 14 minutes and 30 seconds.

This time on site is considerably higher than the site average – by nearly 3x!

Note: This is just one simple example. I did this for more than 50 pages (unfortunately I was limited by data here because I was looking specifically for pages that rank poorly, yet generate snippets).

What I found was that the relative time on site for pages that were snipped from low positions on the SERP has incredibly higher time on page, compared to the site average.

Basically, what I think might be going on is something like this:

Supporting fact #1: Marissa Mayer said it worked this way

In addition to this data, there are a couple more reasons why I think engagement metrics may be playing a key role in Google’s Featured Snippet algorithm. These examples indicate that Google has long-held beliefs around good engagement metrics reflecting quality content.

Does the past hold some important secrets to our current plot? Let’s see.

First, we’ll head back to 2007 for an interview with Marissa Mayer discussing the OneBox and how features like news, maps, and products would get promoted above the organic results into the OneBox, based on click-through rate:

“We hold them to a very high click-through rate expectation and if they don’t meet that click-through rate, the OneBox gets turned off on that particular query. We have an automated system that looks at click-through rates per OneBox presentation per query. So it might be that news is performing really well on Bush today but it’s not performing very well on another term, it ultimately gets turned off due to lack of click-through rates. We are authorizing it in a way that’s scalable and does a pretty good job enforcing relevance.”

Supporting fact #2: Google used the same algo in paid search a few years back

OK, now let’s go back to 2008 – back when Google still had AdWords ads on the right rail. (Unfortunately, with the death of the right-side ad rail, all ads appear above the organic search results now – a moment of silence for the right-side rail).

Google would promote three ads to appear above the organic search results. How did Google decide which paid search ads to feature above the organic search results?

Here’s what Google revealed in an AdWords blog post, “Improvements to Ads Quality“:

“To appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, we may not have shown any ads above the search results. With this update, we’ll allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so. For instance, suppose the ad in position 1 on the right side of the page doesn’t have a high enough Quality Score to appear above the search results, but the ad in position 2 does. It’s now possible for the number 2 ad to jump over the number 1 ad and appear above the search results. This change ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions.”

What’s important to know here is how incredibly important CTR is in the Quality Score formula. By far, CTR has the biggest impact on Quality Score.

So here we have spokespeople from both the organic search side and Google’s own ad system telling us that CTR can play a vital role in helping Google ensure that a piece of content or an ad meets a high enough quality threshold to qualify to appear in the very prominent and valuable space above the organic search results.

That’s why I strongly believe that Featured Snippets work very much the same way – with CTR and engagement metrics being the key element.

What does it all mean?

Featured Snippets give us yet another reason to focus on engagement rates. This year we talked about how engagement rates:

• Impact conversion rates
• Impact organic and paid social media post reach
• Impact rankings

Any one of these alone is good reason to focus on improving your CTR. But wait, there’s more: I believe engagement rates also impact the selection of Featured Snippets.

So in addition to formatting your on-page copy to meet the snipping requirement, follow the guides on improving CTR and time on site.

A call to arms

One thing that’s hard about doing research and analysis on Featured Snippets is that we’re limited to the data we have. You need to have lots of snippets and access to all the CTR data (only the individual webmasters have this). You can’t just crawl a site to discover their engagement metrics.

Why don’t we team up here and try to crack this nut together?

Have you won Featured Snippets? What are your engagement rates like for your featured snippets – from the Search Console for CTR and Google Analytics for time on site? Do you see any patterns? Please share your insights with us in the comments!

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