How To Launch Your Content Into A Featured Snippet
Tips for writing helpful, Google-friendly copy.
Last winter, I took a hiatus from writing.
When I logged back in this week, I noticed something strange. My old flop article, How to Move to Europe from the USA, had racked up over 1.2K views in February and March. The majority of those views came from google.com.
What?
Given the Coronavirus outbreak and the current state of U.S. politics, I wondered if there was an uptick in “how to move to Europe” search queries.
To test this theory, I Googled it.
That’s when I realized that my old, viewless article had been chosen as a featured snippet!
When I worked as a technical writer, my responsibility was to write support content that ranked highly on Google and answered our customers’ questions. A couple of my articles were chosen as featured snippets, and these were always a cause for celebration. The less a user has to scroll to answer their question, the less likely they are to call IT Support.
Fortunately, the importance of writing clean, concise copy extends far outside of the tech sector. Here are my favorite tips for writing user-friendly copy worthy of a featured snippet:
