Rank Ranger Blog

To what extent do URLs share a Featured Snippet? What happens when Google uses more than one URL inside a Featured Snippet? Is there one URL that dominates the zero position box? What happens when Google oscillates between more than two URLs - how much visibility does each URL get?

Based on the results of our last Featured Snippet study, which analyzed how often Google changes a URL inside of Featured Snippets, we wanted to know what the market share of a Featured Snippet URL looks like.

Here's what we found.

This week we talked to the king of Local SEO SERP features the one and only Sergey Alakov!

• What role does proximity play when optimizing for local intent?
• Will Reserve with Google become a must for local businesses?
• Why might local be the optimal way to monetize voice search?

Plus, where do the richest SEO insights lay, Google updates or the Quality Rater Guidelines?

This week SEO guru Cindy Krum joins the podcast to discuss how mobile-first indexing might have more to do with entities than mobile! Go deep into some heavy SEO theory as Cindy shares how Google's focus on entities changes everything from how Google crawls the web to how Google is creating a more universal understanding of entities!

Welcome to an all-new year for the SERP News! To kick start 2019 Google gave us multiple changes to Featured Snippets while a bug has kicked AMP results off the mobile SERP! At the same time, we've added a new segment of local data to our SERP Feature Trackers that lets you see the scope of hotel Local Packs. Might I add that January also saw the first algorithm update of the year!

Let's dig in, shall we?

This week the CEO of the ClickGiant SEO agency, Jerry Cahalan, comes on board to discuss keyword and content strategy for small and mid-sized brands:

• What can these brands do to win the keyword war?
• Where should their focus be?
• How can small & mid-sized brands ensure their keyword research produces relevant content?
• How do you best measure your progress here?

Whether you score or compete with SERP features, it behooves us to know how stable they are. How consistent is Google with its SERP feature showings? Which features tend to display at consistent levels from one month to the next? Which features are subject to heavy amounts of display fluctuations?

This is your comprehensive look at SERP feature stability, volatility, and consistency. This is your look at SERP feature fluctuations in 2018!

In this episode we talk to Brodie Clark and delve into how businesses can best take advantage of Google’s Local SERP features:

• How can a business best leverage some of Google’s latest updates to the Local Panel and Local Pack? 
• Should you opt-in to the message feature in the Local Panel? 
• How can you capitalize on Google Posts and to what extent? 
• How should brands go about product placement in the Local Panel? 

Also, we look at some new and exclusive data on hotel local packs!

Scoring Featured Snippets is just one of those SEO topics that has become almost mythological. Getting your URL into a zero position box is the win of all wins. But while we're all talking about winning, Google is shifting URLs in and out of Featured Snippets much the way a disc jockey switches music tracks during a radio broadcast. This, of course, begs the question... how often does Google change URLs within its Featured Snippets?

This week we interview Andrew Optimisey and get his take on what small brands can do to compete on the SERP:

• What role does a unique selling proposition/point play when competing with a multinational brand?
• How can you keep up with the link building of big brands?
• Where does technical SEO fit into brand competition on the SERP?

Performing a technical site audit doesn't really have to be all that intimidating. To ensure it isn't we went ahead and created an all-new Site Audit Report aimed at simplifying the barrage of data normally associated with technical SEO audits. Here's how to use our new Site Audit to gain straightforward, clear-cut, helpful, and emboldening technical analysis and insights (so that you can breathe easier the next time you need to do a site audit).

This week on the podcast our hosts focus on both user intent and confirmation bias. Specifically,

• Determining Google keyword intent: 3 easy steps to getting a solid intent understanding Google or users?
• Who’s responsible when it comes to confirmation bias? 

What is the intent of a user when they enter a search term? Rather, what are the multiple layers of intent that Google sees in that query? What has Google determined to be important when showing results for a given keyword? Google has gotten far better at parsing search terms according to the multiple intents embedded within them.

But how are you supposed to determine how Google understands intent for a search term? How do you know what content Google thinks is relevant to users? How can you determine how Google understands intent?

Here's a simple method that's worked for me.