Ought to SEOs remorse specializing in featured snippets?
Remember when Google fiddled with their system to make it so you couldn’t double up on Featured Snippets / Instant Answers (Get a Featured Snippet and Rank on Page 1 of 10 Blue Links). Well, there are many people who are skeptical of the value of this particular search feature in this new world.
Were you right?
Have we all been tricked by Google into giving them free content for SERPs (Featured Snippets) which are great for you user and you product but bad for our Customers?
It wouldn’t be the first time Google caught us as an industry, and it won’t be the last.
Let’s examine this on a specific example, and if people are interested enough (or want to fight me on the mentions) then I can look at other Featured Snippets for other customers and discuss their relative worth with their site-specific CTR- Post curve.
Speaking of CTR curves, a lot of CTR studies out there, we’re only going to be using these from Ignite Visibility for better guidance, so we’re using the same numbers.
Here is a screenshot of a customer receiving a featured snippet (these position 1 are featured snippets, you just have to trust me)
Another example from a more niche request, the same website, over a period of time where they only hold the featured snippet
Dan, that’s 8 searches, who cares?
Well, first of all, this is a B2B SaaS company. So, if you don’t care about low or no volume searches, this is the place to go. 8 searches in a week for a highly qualified term is fine.
Second, SEO always talks about the value of featured snippets. While a traditional ranking at position 1 would be almost impossible in this case, are these featured snippets better than position 2 in 10 blue links? It’s hard for me to maintain a 7.8% CTR on a featured snippet when position 2 could theoretically get 4-5x the clicks the featured snippet gets (using Ignite’s CTR numbers).
Third, a thought experiment. Let’s say this customer is converting SEO traffic -> $$$ at a rate of 1% and the value of one deal made averages $ 50,000. That puts the value of a click at $ 500 (for projections, etc.). A 2 click difference between over 100 low volume, high intent searches like this one is a difference of at least $ 100,000. The impact of trading on a featured snippet for position 2 in the first example could bring in as much as $ 15,000 on a single highly qualified, low search volume keyword. So, Bob is your uncle whatever the revenue cap may be. Seems like a potential 7-8 digit win if you’re right. Much more for a Site / Vertical with more upside and million dollar queries.
Of course, your mileage may vary as the click rate curves vary depending on the industry and location. There may be an elusive branding win on the table here too, but it will likely be left to someone else to quantify that.
So who’s going to publish a guide on how to exchange a featured snippet for position 1 or 2?