Getting to the number 1 spot of Google’s organic search results is an uphill battle. But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you can’t win.

Even if you’re not occupying position 1, you can outrank it. How? Is that even possible? Yes, that is possible – by claiming a featured snippet.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss what featured snippets are, their benefits for your SEO, and how to optimize for them. Let’s get started.

What are featured snippets?

A featured snippet shows up as a block that contains the exact answer to your query. It is found right above the first organic search results, which is why it’s also called “position 0.”

CONTENT SOURCE: Mangools Blog

Let’s say we do a Google search on “how to clean silver.” Below is a screenshot of a featured snippet for this query:

Most of the time, Google includes an image in a featured snippet. The image source can be different than the source of the answer.

Featured snippets make people’s online search easier since they can see the answer they’re looking for at a glance. Google programmatically picks the best answer from a third-party website and features it in a snippet.

With the updated Google AdWords (currently Google Ads) interface, it’s no surprise Google launched new Keyword Planner following the same design standards. I took a closer look at the tool and found a couple of features both for SEO and PPC efforts you should try!

In case you are not familiar with the tool at all, I recommend going through our quick Keyword Planner guide.

The new UI itself is a big step ahead. The material design looks way better that the old version.

Historical search volumes

Now let’s talk about the new features. For me, the major improvement is the historical data retention of search volumes. The new Keyword Planner enables us to see a lot more than search volumes from last 12 months.

We can select our own time frame, pick one of the presets and get historical data even from 2014 (depending on the keyword)!

CONTENT SOURCE: Mangools Blog

Mobile search volumes

Another handy feature is the main search volumes chart now includes the mobile search volume share. You had to change the type of charts in the old version to see this.

When Google RankBrain was introduced in October 2015, all we knew was that an artificial intelligence (AI) would learn from search queries and their engagement rate to fit future search queries in a more suitable way.

Nowadays, we know that optimizing for RankBrain is the third most important ranking signal. However, RankBrain itself is not a typical ranking signal when compared to content or backlinks.

Contents:

1. How does RankBrain work?
2. How can RankBrain update the algorithm?
3. RankBrain understands keywords
4. Keyword research tactics for RankBrain

CONTENT SOURCE: Mangools Blog

How does RankBrain work?

The machine learning algorithm works something like this:

1. It’s not based on the hand-coded algorithm used in the past by Google developers and testers.
2. By tracking user’s engagement from searches and learning from it, RankBrain adjusts the algorithm.
3. If the updated algorithm leads to results with higher engagement, it’s implemented for future search queries.