6 Tips You Should Implement To Rank For Position Zero in the SERPs

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SaaS companies thrive on digital outreach which implies that their success relies greatly on their SERP ranking for which hundreds of companies are in a constant battle. According to SmartInsights, “the first organic search result in Google has an average click-through rate of 28.5% which drops dramatically to 15% and 11% for the second and third result”, it’s obvious that it’s a “Winner Takes A lot” situation if not “Winner Takes All.”

There is constant fierce competition between rivals to make it to the top rankings and although a magic button that miraculously takes you to the top spot would be great, unfortunately, you can win this rank battle in the world of Google by Abracadabra…

It takes creativity, dedication, and persistence to achieve this honor. Nevertheless, the top 3 spots aren’t the only way to rule the search engine results. There is, however, a secret passage that can help you outrank the top SERPs and help you to summit zero position. Featured Snippet.

What are Featured Snippets?

Upon searching for anything in Google, you might have come across a block that contains the exact solution to your query, well, that’s a Featured Snippet.

Also referred to as SERP position zero, these snippets can help you enhance your search engine rankings by taking up most of the space in a search result. For instance, if you searched for “How to start with SEO,” Google answers your question with a snippet that contains information about your question and places this link above all of the other links on the search results.

Types of Featured Snippets

Whether you’re ranking high or not, you will always have a chance to rank for featured snippets.

There are 3 major snippets:

How to Rank for Position Zero?

Being a SaaS website, you must have a “How to” section. It’s similar to the FAQ section. Developing a section devoted to addressing and answering questions will help you increase the traffic to your site and also might get you a chance to feature in the #0 position. For a “How to” section, you can try combining a couple of questions (closely related to each other) into one query and answer accordingly.

• Limit Paragraph Word Count to 40-50 words
• Outline your content before diving into the content
• Try to make the content as specific as possible
• Don’t make your content boring by adding unnecessary information in that, stick to the point
  

Conduct Keyword Research to Aim For Question-type Search Queries

Use Answer the public to find relevant questions and then try to answer them.

“Answer The Public” will display several results for your query like:

For Questions:

Questions are most likely to bring up featured snippets, so you can try and answer how, what, when, where, etc.

For Comparison:

• Recipe
• Best
• Vs.
• Make
• Definition

So make sure you use them in your content.

Also, make sure that you do some keyword research before you start with the content part to make sure the words you’re searching for are SEO-friendly.

Proper Content Structure and Keywords Help Ranking For Position 0

You’re already familiar with the 3 major types of snippets, the only thing you need to decide is What type of snippet do you want to rank for? Once you’re clear on that you can structure your content accordingly. Here’s how you can format your content for a snippet:

• Use header tags H1, H2, and so on
• Format your article in chronological order
• Use numbered lists, bullet-pointed lists, tables, etc properly within your content
• Add relevant images along with the snippet query
• Use keywords in the title, and meta description
• Use titles beginning with “how-to” or “what is” and try to use the targeted keywords in the meta description as well
  

Find Competitors’ Snippets

A thorough competitor analysis can reveal a lot of important details. For this, you can use SEMrush where you can check the featured snippets of your competitors in the “Featured Snippet” option under the “Organic Research” section. With this, you can also optimize your content for the same words and topics. 

Using High-quality Images and Videos

Since it’s scientifically proven that people remember 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see, leveraging this fact can help you keep the ball in your court. Using good quality images and videos can play a key role in ranking for position #0.

• For good-quality images, you can use Canva, Pixabay
• For videos, try using Magisto, Hyperlapse, and don’t forget to add a transcript of the whole video
  

Check The “People Also Ask” Box

Apart from researching keywords and finding relevant questions “Answer The Public”, the “People Also Ask” section usually beneath the featured snippet can also help you a lot.

When working on a blog post, try to answer as many questions as you can.

Conclusion

For SaaS companies, it’s not just about driving traffic, but also about being experts in your market niche to the extent that whenever your potential customer faces any issue, they know they can rely on your content.

Top rankings are essential for the success of SaaS companies and if you want to drive traffic and be the Wikipedia of your market, ranking in featured snippets is a great opportunity, even if you weren’t able to rank for position #1.