Diving Into

Rich Answers

What Your Business

Needs to Know

Google Rich Answers

Internet users come across Google rich answers in their search results on a daily basis, but

many have no idea exactly what they are. Businesses should, however, because obtaining a

rich answer for your website can dramatically increase traffic, and ultimately, leads and

customers. Below, we go over what exactly a Google rich answer is and the steps you can

take to obtain one for your website.

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What are Google Rich Answers?Google rich answers refer to search result pages that give users direct answers to their

queries, as seen in this example of a search for “What is inbound marketing?”:

Rich answers often (but don’t always) show up at the top of search result pages and serve to

help users more quickly access the information they’re searching for. But these types of

answers often make webmasters uneasy as it becomes even less likely that a searcher will

click a third party website link if Google provides them the answer directly on the search

results page.

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What are Google Rich Answers?There are a variety of rich answer types that show up in Google’s search results, including:

Featured snippets (results extracted by Google from third party websites, as shown in the

above example)

Charts

Tables

Maps

Forms

However, a study by Stone Temple highlighting Google rich answer growth from February –

July 2015 shows that while rich answer results featuring sliders, charts, tabs, images, tables,

and forms have increased, results showing maps and lists with ellipses have declined.

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Can Your Website Be Selected For Rich Answers?The same study by Stone Temple noted that websites that obtain featured snippets see

increased traffic, so how can you see that same success on yours?

Stone Temple shared the results of their own test to obtain featured snippets for their site,

which saw some success. First, they created videos that answered specific search questions

but included additional information and published them on their site. Along with the videos,

they published video transcripts where a clear response to the main question was provided.

They shared a link to the page via Google+ and submitted it in Google’s Search Console, and

three days later, two of their pages showed a featured snippet—a 40% success rate.

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Can Your Website Be Selected For Rich Answers?They determined the following four steps that you can take on your own website to increase

your chance of obtaining a featured snippet for your webpages:

Identify a simple question

Provide a direct answer

Offer value added information

Make it easy for users and Google to find it

It’s safe to assume that Google pulls its rich answers from sites based on their search

authority, with Wikipedia being a leading example. But Stone Temple shows that in reality,

over half of the sites referenced in Google’s rich answer results have a Moz Domain

Authority of 60 or less—and some have even less than 20. This means having a low domain

authority doesn’t necessarily mean that Google won’t use your site to generate a rich

answer.

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Website: www.sevenatoms.com | Phone: 415.513.0435 | Email: info@sevenatoms.com

Though Google’s use of rich answers can be disheartening to webmasters looking for more referrals to their webpages, they seem to be here to stay. Design your content accordingly and start taking advantage of the branding and site traffic benefits for your business.

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