Could Position Zero Be Your New Goal for SEO
The world of search engine optimization (SEO) is never dull. Just when you think you’ve got it areas like website SEO and Blogs mastered, Google will usually come up with something new to keep you on your toes. Google’s goal is to provide the absolute best user experience, and of course, provide data to advertisers so they can make profits. With both these objectives in mind, it is fair to say that user expectations are continually changing so is the search engine’s approach to keeping them happy. How many times have you carried out a Google search for a simple answer and wished the answer was there without having to click through to a website?
Good News, for a couple of years Google has been listening, not only have they introduced Google My Business but also improving what is called featured snippets or also known as position zero. As with most things, there are pros and cons to any goal. Consider this, you provide the answer to the search but get no click through to your website, so no SEO benefit or potential sales? However, are you being remembered in the mind of the customer for the future? The click-throughs are easy to measure, ascertaining if a customer has come to you, days, weeks, or months after being helped by your featured snippet is not so easy to measure.
Before embarking on the SEO challenge of achieving position zero, you need to look at your business growth strategies and the benefits of achieving position zero. Position zero can potentially give you massive brand awareness, assuming of course the searchers sees that you provided the information and not just reads the answer.
Understanding What Position Zero Means in SEO
You’re likely familiar with the concept that you want to rank as high as possible on page one Google’s search engine results. The higher, the better, but can you actually do better than the number one position? Yes, let us introduce you to position zero.
The goal of position zero is to answer a search engine user’s query right there on the first page. From Google’s perspective, this provides a high level of satisfaction to the user and keeps them inside Google. For many businesses, position zero is the ultimate way of gaining visibility and traction.
Featured snippets are displayed right above the number one ranked spot, which is why it’s called position zero. Keep in mind that the webpage that wins this coveted spot might not be the highest ranked for the query, it’s just the one that Google decided did the best job of providing an immediate answer to a user’s question.
For example, if a user enters the query “What are the best colleges on Vancouver Island?” a position zero listing might be a paragraph that describes a college that recently earned the distinction of being number one, or the featured snippet could be a bullet list of the top 10 colleges.
Getting to Zero
There’s an energized focus in search engine marketing to get to position zero, but achieving it requires a different set of strategies than merely ranking high in search results and they all revolve around content.
The first step is to realize that position zero features an answer to a question. This means that when you’re creating content, you want to focus on providing answers in a way that they can easily be pulled out and displayed. For example, short paragraph answers, lists and bullet points dominate position zero.
Secondly, we know this doesn’t come as a surprise, but keyword research is a must. The way users are asking questions to search engines is different than it has been in the past. Local SEO and the rise of the use of voice devices means that keywords need to reflect a more natural language pattern rather than a short, choppy string of words.
Consult SEO Experts
It is not something that the average business owner can normally achieve without support. As with any SEO marketing, by using experts in this field you will achieve where you want to go much faster.