Learn how to steal your opponents’ featured snippets with ChatGPT (prompts included)

Are you struggling to rank for featured snippets and lacking out on invaluable visitors?

I used to spend numerous hours attempting to optimize my content material, making educated guesses on win these elusive featured snippets. The method was time-consuming and really hit-or-miss. 

Now, I can harness ChatGPT – together with its understanding of search engine optimization and distinctive writing abilities – to generate near-perfect optimized snippets, saving me time and boosting my visitors.

Right here, I’ll share my seven-step course of for utilizing ChatGPT to optimize for the paragraph-style featured snippet. 

Whereas this course of doesn’t work 100% of the time, I’ve had a a lot increased success price in comparison with once I was doing this manually.

Earlier than we get began, if you happen to’re utterly new to featured snippets, I extremely advocate studying Chris Lengthy’s article, Learn how to get Google featured snippets: 9 optimization tips, which provides you with good foundational data.

Step 1: Discover a featured snippet alternative

Discover a key phrase you’re at present rating inside the high 5 positions in Google the place there’s a featured snippet and also you don’t rank for it.

The simplest method to try this is along with your rank monitoring software. In any other case, you’ll should manually discover these. Right here’s do it with two standard instruments:

Utilizing Ahrefs

Go to Website Explorer. Enter your area and filter key phrases that set off featured snippets the place your web site is rating in positions 2-5:

Utilizing Semrush

Go to Natural Analysis. Enter your area and filter key phrases that set off featured snippets the place your web site is rating in positions 2-5:

For the most important influence, discover a key phrase that has the best quantity and highest rating.

The upper your rank, the extra doubtless you’ll get the featured snippet.

Step 2: Establish current featured snippet-worthy content material

Now that you’ve a key phrase you’ll be able to probably rank within the featured snippet place, you could see if there’s any present content material in your web page that might rank for it. 

Do a search on Google in your key phrase and make sure that the featured snippet reveals up. Verify cellular and desktop.

As soon as you discover it, then learn the present featured snippet so you’ve a very good understanding of what it says.

Subsequent, open up your article and do a seek for the key phrase. Your objective is to determine an current sentence or paragraph that may very well be a featured snippet candidate.

Within the instance I’ll be displaying you, I’m searching for a definition of the key phrase.

For those who discover one thing, that is what you’ll work on optimizing. For those who don’t, then you definitely’ll first must have ChatGPT write one for you. We’ll get to that step quickly.

Step 3: Prime ChatGPT’s understanding of optimizing for featured snippets

Hearth up ChatGPT and choose the GPT-4 mannequin if it’s obtainable to you. I extremely advocate you’re employed with this one.

You’ll need to prime ChatGPT with optimize for featured snippets in order that it has this context in your chat to assist optimize for yours.

Paste on this immediate: 

“How do I optimize a paragraph to rank for the featured snippet in Google for a question?“

Step 4: Craft a featured snippet with ChatGPT

Now, let’s get ChatGPT to enhance or write your featured snippet.

Immediate: 

“I need to rank my article in Google for the featured snippet for the search question: [insert keyword]

At the moment, Google reveals a paragraph from my competitor’s web site within the featured snippet place for the search question. Right here it’s:

[insert your competitor’s featured snippet]

Under is my paragraph that I need to rank within the featured snippet place. Rewrite using characteristic snippet optimization recommendation in order that it’s higher than my competitor’s and Google is extra prone to rank mine: [insert your current paragraph]“

Various

For those who don’t have a present paragraph concentrating on the featured snippet for the question, then paste this into the immediate:

“Write a featured snippet for me to incorporate in my article so that it’s going to rank for this place as a substitute of the opposite web site. Use the rules above about optimize for the featured snippet place in Google.“

Step 5: Have ChatGPT consider your new featured snippet

You’ll be able to’t all the time belief that ChatGPT will output the very best featured snippet on the primary strive. For this step, you may need to have ChatGPT examine your new featured snippet in opposition to the present rating one to see which one it considers higher.

Begin a model new chat and paste on this immediate once more:

“How do I optimize a paragraph to rank for the featured snippet in Google for a question?“

As soon as it solutions, paste on this immediate:

“Which paragraph is extra prone to rank within the featured snippet place in Google for the search question: [insert your keyword]

Paragraph A:

[paste in your competitor’s current featured snippet showing in Google]

Paragraph B:

[paste in the featured snippet paragraph ChatGPT generated for your]“

It ought to say paragraph B. If it does not, then begin a brand new chat and repeat step 4 above, then come again to this part and check out once more till it selects your paragraph.

Tip: If you would like one other opinion on whether or not your featured snippet paragraph is healthier than your opponents, carry out this step in one other chatbot like Google Bard.

Step 6: Publish your featured snippet in the very best spot

Now that you’ve an optimized featured snippet, the final step is to publish it in the very best spot inside your article.

To determine the very best spot, go have a look at your competitor’s article and see the place their paragraph is for the featured snippet. Is it positioned increased up on the web page? Within the center? On the backside? 

At the very least put yours ready to match theirs whereas ensuring it flows with the content material earlier than and after it. 

If you wish to enhance your possibilities of getting the featured snippet, put yours increased up in your article than your competitor.

You will need to put your featured snippet in its personal paragraph proper beneath its personal heading, resembling an H2 or H3. The heading might be considered one of two kinds: an announcement or a query. 

Which one you utilize actually is determined by the question, the search intent and what your competitor does. I have a tendency to make use of extra questions than statements. You will need to check this for your self.

In our instance, I might construction it like this:

H2: What’s greenback price averaging?

Paragraph: Greenback-cost averaging is an funding approach designed to reduce the influence of market fluctuations by constantly allocating a hard and fast amount of cash in direction of buying shares, ETFs, or mutual funds over common intervals. This method ensures shares are acquired at numerous value factors, decreasing the danger of shopping for at a market peak and selling long-term monetary development.

Step 7: Look forward to outcomes, rinse and repeat

Relying in your web site’s authority, you may doubtless have to attend 1 to 14 days to see if you happen to’ve gained the featured snippet. 

It does not harm to manually paste your article’s URL into the highest of Google Search Console and click on request indexing.

However if you happen to’re optimizing featured snippets at scale, this would possibly not be very efficient. You will want endurance and look ahead to Google to crawl your article once more.

Last suggestions

For those who’re not having any success after a few tries, right here are some things you’ll be able to strive testing:

• Transfer your featured snippet content material to the highest of your web page and put it in a blockquote. Make it stand out to customers and Googlebot.
• Paste your featured snippet content material into the Hemingway Editor and make any enhancements it recommends. Grammarly is one other useful gizmo.
• In case your featured snippet title was a query, strive making it an announcement ending with a colon.
• Take away the featured snippet title and place the featured snippet content material proper beneath your H1.
• Give ChatGPT your and your competitor’s featured snippet content material and its surrounding textual content. Then ask it to judge the textual content for successful the featured snippet and rewrite yours. This extra context of the encompassing textual content could assist it produce higher content material for you.