Have you heard of SERP features? Those are the special boxes Google adds to organic results to simplify the search.
Are they essential for your business? The answer is yes.
Ranking for SERP Features willboost traffic to your website and CTRs and allow people to quickly find relevant information they were searching for.
We will list the eight most popular SERP features in the text below.
Direct answer box
When people ask a question with an immediate answer, the direct box appears. These boxes contain short pieces of information. The quick answers are from the following categories: Weather, Calculations, Dictionary, Sports, Unit conversions, and Quick Facts.
Google doesn’t credit the information in this box as it is deemed to be common knowledge. For example, if someone types in “What is the coldest month in London?” they will get a direct answer box that says “February.”
Featured snippets
Featured snippets are information boxes placed at the top of the search results. They are pretty similar to direct answer boxes, only they provide more information and are linked to the information source.
Featured snippet content is pulled from pages that are indexed by Google automatically. The most common forms are definitions, steps, lists, and tables.
For example, lists are extracted from unordered or ordered lists on a website, anchor links placed at the top of a page, or the header tags. That is why using the correct semantic HTML is so important.
Rich snippets
Some rich snippets also include star reviews for the company’s products/services or cost information.
Knowledge graphs
Knowledge graphs display information, images, and facts about a specific topic. Google gets the info from external sources and its data. These boxes are usually next to the organic search results or paid ads.
People also ask section
When people search for information, they collect a list of relevant websites. There is a “People Also Ask” section within these results. This section lists similar queries that people ask about the same topic.
By clicking on these links people can learn or explore more information about the topic.
Paid results
Paid search results appear in search queries. These are PPC campaigns, and business owners pay to have ads featured at the top of the search results. These ads may also show up at the bottom of the page.
Many companies use PPC ads and help people find their business first. They are always tagged with the “ad” word to indicate paid content.
Video carousels are video results pulled from YouTube.
These results used to be a static set of 3. You can click the little arrow button and see more video results today.
Local Packs are also known as “The Map Pack.” Local Pack is a set of 3 local results that come up for a query that Google finds “local.”
For example, “Hair salons” or “Hair salons near me”.
