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How to Get Your Trade Association’s Content in Google’s Search Position Zero

February 22, 2021 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

In recent years, Google has been trying to find ways to get people the answers they are looking for without having to leave the Google search engine results page (SERP). One way they use to achieve this is the featured snippet. These can appear with traditional Google searches or voice searches which are growing in popularity. Featured snippets are boxes of text that answer a query and appear above the coveted top three results on the SERP. This has come to be known as “position zero”. These featured snippets pull the answer to the query from a content piece on a website and post the “snippet” along with a link to the full piece in a box at the top of the page. This allows people to get the answers they are looking for quickly without having to go to any website, but if they wish to know more, they can follow the link to the full piece.

While there is no exact science to getting your association’s content into featured snippets, there are things you can do to greatly improve your chances.

Understanding What a Featured Snippet Is

Before you can begin to think about trying to earn a featured snippet, you should know a few things about them. Featured snippets are usually answers to who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. Google ranks websites and content based on the reputation and factualness of the content and from there pulls answers to feature in the snippet. For example:

If you search “Why join a trade association?”

You will see this featured snippet appeared at the top of the page. This particular snippet was pulled from www.americanbusinessmag.com and features a basic answer to the question “Why Join a Trade Association?”. It also gives the user the chance to follow the link to learn more, thus increasing chances of someone visiting your website.

Snippets can appear in different forms including paragraph snippets like the one above, numbered or bulleted lists, and tables. Which snippet type that your content is featured in will depend on the type of content you create.

How to “Own” the Featured Snippet

As previously stated, there is not an exact science to winning the featured snippet, but there are steps you can take with your association’s content to increase your chances.

Find out what people want to know

For this first step, you really have to think like your audience; this could be existing members or potential members. Think of the questions you receive and try to focus strong content around answering those questions. Again, featured snippets are answers to who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. Keep this in mind when brainstorming potential audience questions. A good resource for finding what people are asking is www.answerthepublic.comwhere you can search specific terms and see what people are searching for regarding that term.

We searched “trade associations” and you can see a part of the wheel we got as a result. This image includes the who and how results. One popular question is “what do trade associations do?” so that may be a good topic for content for you to focus on.

Research Snippets in Your Industry

A good way to find opportunities for snippets for your association is to go to Google and begin typing the questions that you came up with. This will allow you to see if there are existing snippets or if there is an open opportunity for you to own the snippet. Even if there are existing snippets, if you tailor you content right, you can still take control of that snippet. Also be sure to pay attention to the “People also ask” section that appears further down the SERP. Below is the “People also ask” box that appears when we entered the question “What is a trade association?”

This section also pulls from existing content online so there is also potential to have your content featured as an answer here as well.

Strong Website, Strong Content, Strong SEO

One of the most important factors in having your association’s content chosen for the featured snippet is making sure your website is optimized, easy to navigate, and functioning well. This is one of the first things Google looks at when determining whether your page should appear on the first page of the SERP or in the featured snippet. If your website is slow and not user friendly by Google’s terms, even if your content is outstanding, you may be overlooked when it comes to the featured snippet. Not only that, but your website will get pushed further back on the SERP making it hard to find and less likely to be visited.

Also, devoting time to keyword research and using popular keywords in your content will help not only win the featured snippet, but also rank you higher on the Google SERP. Using backlinks, cross-linking, and releasing content consistently and regularly can also go far to increase your ranking and raising you up on the search engine results page (SERP).

You Can Do It

It takes work, but you can earn the featured snippets and even improve your position on Google’s search engine results page at the same time. There are many other factors that improve your chances for securing snippets and improving your SEO. If you would like further information or help with your association’s website or content marketing, contact us here.

Content Marketing and Social Media Training for Georgia Movers Association

November 2, 2017 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

Arc 3 Communications recently conducted a content marketing and social media training program for the Georgia Movers Association as a part of their annual conference. The program was attended by hundreds of moving company executives from across the state of Georgia. The annual conference was held at the Idle Hour Country Club in Macon.

Arc 3 Founder Patrick Burns provided insights on what is content marketing and why it is important for a moving company’s marketing efforts. Participants were provided insights into how to incorporate a content marketing process inside their business and the fundamental elements for developing and implementing a content marketing program.

The Arc 3 Communications team also provided insights regarding the major platforms in digital marketing today – Facebook and Google. Session included strategies on how moving companies can utilize Facebook advertising to market their business using tools like the Power Editor for targeting and Facebook Pixel for re-targeting. Tips for sharing timely and informative posts and how to leverage Facebook’s live video feature were also provided.

Session attendees were also provided tips for “Keeping Google Happy”. Practical and helpful website tips in the areas of security, page speed, local SEO, caching, optimizing images, accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and inbound links were shared. Finally, insights into Instagram Stories and Snapchat and trends that may lie ahead in marketing were presented.

The training session on content marketing and social media stimulated conversation among the moving company executive attendees on the types of content and marketing tactics members were using to help them to achieve their business goals.

Arc 3’s content marketing and social media training seminars are customized for trade associations and have been very valuable to their members. Content marketing and social media are changing everyday with new platform updates, tools, shifting audiences and techniques. Through our research, lab work and networking we keep up with the latest trends in content marketing and social media.

Want to talk about a customized content marketing and social media training program for your association? Contact us here or via Facebook Messenger. Or sign up for our newsletter to get the latest tips here.

This Week in Digital and Public Affairs: Elastic News, Snapchat and Facebook

March 16, 2016 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

Digital and social media are changing how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations are communicating and marketing to their key audiences.

Below is a roundup of key stories in digital and public affairs that matter at the top of the week.

Content, Digital and Social Media

Emily Bell of the Columbia Journalism Review discusses how Facebook has swallowed up journalism, devouring news outlets that were born before the digital age. Bell notes that media outlets have lost control over the distribution of their product to Facebook and other social media companies, and that this has resulted in social media companies becoming extremely powerful in terms of controlling who publishes what to whom, and how that publication is monetized.

The BBC reports on their lab project to explore elastic and atomized content structures for news stories. A key aim of the project is to create news stories for people with limited time available to view stories when on mobile and on the go. The goal is to present news in a quick snappy format while providing the opportunity to explore a deeper understanding of a topic. Content can be created utilizing a set of different content types (photos, text, video) and linking them together with metadata descriptions of their association and relationship. The BBC believes that the growth of Snapchat among millennials has brought about the need for news stories that are in snackable format.

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

At DigitalGov, Tryus Manuel writes on how the quality and quantity of your content can impact your search engine rankings and how that content appears on search engine results pages (SERPs). While one of the ways Google measures quality is whether or not content is updated regularly, Google also penalizes websites for automated content, pages with little or no content, and SEO tricks such as hidden words or link schemes. Manuel encourages the creation of engaging content that’s rewarded by Google through the creation of audience personas. The creation of audience personas helps you in developing content that those readers are looking for on search and in the creation of metadata descriptions. In addition, Manuel recommends that creation of content pillars in which you build various content types – photos, images, blogs, video, infographics around a specific piece of quality content.

Ernie Smith of Associations Now discusses how Associations are producing more content than ever before, but they are wasting their time if their content is not optimized properly for their members. Smith discusses how optimizing your content for your audience involves analyzing data properly and creating audience personas to target your specific content to.

Campaigns and Elections

Business Insider reports that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has issued a memo encouraging candidates to incorporate Snapchat into their Senatorial campaigns. The NRSC memo highlights how Snapchat has reached over 8 billion views a day and is a platform that is in the same league as Facebook, Twitter and Google in its importance.

These were some of the reads that matter to us for the week in digital and public affairs. What do you think? What are your favorite stories? We’d love to hear from you.

Storify and the Power of Content Curation

October 2, 2012 By Patrick L. Burns 1 Comment

Storify is a powerful tool for content curation. In today’s digital age of social media and mobile devices, everyone is now a content producer as the 24 hour news cycle yearns for instant reporting of news events. Storify is a platform upon which individuals can aggregate tweets, posts, photographs, videos and links from social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, Reddit and Flicker to create powerful stories on any subject matter. Storify creates a new layer above the social networks that helps users create a coherent story that is interactive and dynamic.

Started in 2009 in San Fransico, Ca. by founders Burt Herman and Xaxier Damman, Storify currently has well over a million and half individual users. News media outlets from the Wall Street Journal to ABC News have reporters and editors that are using Storify to curate content from the social web. Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama also utilize Storify in their campaign efforts. Team Romney has created 145 stories while President Obama’s campaign has created 78 stories on Storify. The Romney campaign was able to obtain over 38,000 views of a Storify story regarding a bus tour that coincided with Romney’s announcement of Paul Ryan as his pick for Vice President. President Obama’s campaign used Storify to highlight First Lady Michelle Obama’s trip to the Olympics in London to draw attention to her visit.

Our founder and President of Arc 3 Communications, Patrick Burns recently used Storify to curate content from social media to tell the story of his experience as a Delegate from Ga. to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. Patrick was able to use Storify’s bookmarklet to drag and drop status updates, photos and videos from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube and Instagram to bring together the social media elements that best illustrated his experience as a Delegate in Tampa. Storify not only allowed for the collection of elements from social media, but also allowed for the writing of a headline, introduction and text inside his story. As one who utilized social media and pitched traditional media at the convention, Storify was an excellent vehicle to assist Patrick in pulling together all the elements of his trip and better communicate his experience. Upon completion of his story, Storify also allowed Patrick to share his story with his social networks, and notify all the people quoted in his story such as comedian, Dennis Miller; RNC Chairman, Reince Preibus; Mitt Romney; Chris “The Fix” Cillizza of the Washington Post, Erik Erickson of Red State.com and Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner. Storify’s platform also allows readers to interact with the social media elements of Patrick’s story and share it with their followers.

Below is a link to Patrick’s story in Storify regarding his experience as a Delegate as told via the many social media networks that were prevalent at the RNC Convention.

http://storify.com/PatrickLBurns/arc-3-founder-serves-as-delegate-to-republican-nat

What is your Klout Score? How Your Social Media Influence Matters

September 12, 2012 By Patrick L. Burns Leave a Comment

What is your Klout Score? Your Klout score is a two digit score that measures your social media influence. If you have a Twitter account in which you are doing public updates you have a Klout score. You can supplement your score by adding Google Plus, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Tumblr, Instagram, Blogger, WordPress, LastFM or Flickr to your Klout account. While Google has an algorithm that measures page rank, Klout has developed an algorithm to measure social media influence. Google has an algorithim that ranks the relevancy of every webpage, while Klout is working to measure the influence of every person online. Klout scores are calculated using variables that can include number of followers, frequency of updates, the Klout scores of your friends and followers and the number of likes, retweets, and shares that your updates receive. Interacting with someone who has a high Klout score also helps to increase your score.

The Klout Score algorithm was created by it’s founder, Joe Fernandez in 2008. Klout’s algorithm was little changed until October of 2011, when the algorithm was tweaked, most likely to more greatly account for Facebook as tool of influence. This caused a considerable uproar among technologists, who heavily dependent on Twitter, saw a dip in their scores. Many technologists clamored that Klout simply no longer mattered and was meaningless.

However, with the most recent change in the Klout algorithm last month, technologists are giving Klout a second look and liking what they see. Prominent tech blogger, Michael Arrington (formerly of TechCrunch) liked what Klout was doing so much that he proceeded to invest in the company. The new Klout algorithm takes into account more real world influence — through a combination of bringing in 12 times more data points everyday, and taking into account things like Wikipedia pages and weighting LinkedIn profile data higher.

The new Klout profile page for an individual also is a timeline of recent social media interactions — specific Tweets, status updates and Instagram photos that have resonated with people. It’s no longer just about how many Retweets an individual gets, but who Retweeted them, and how they did it. Did they add their own commentary? Was it a “via”? Or a straight RT? Some 400 factors play into the new score. It’s less a number, and more a social resume on one page. The new version of Klout is focusing not just on the number of measurement of influence but also shows which clever tweets or posts by an individual resonated the most with their followers.

Does your Klout score and the social media influence that it represents truly matter? The answer is indisputabley yes. Klout scores are entering into our everday lives, especially for those who travel and conduct business on the road. Airlines, hotels and retailers are starting to evaluate ways in which they can use Klout scores to identify brand evangelists of whom they wish to keep happy. Individuals with higher Klout scores will get aisle seats on airplanes, more spacious hotel rooms, and special discounts at big name retail stores. The enterprise software giant Salesforce.com has a service that lets companies monitor the Klout scores of customers. Those with higher Klout scores will get more attention and quicker service from customer service representatives determined to keep them from tweeting or posting negative comments to their many followers. Klout has nearly 2 billion API (application programming interface) calls per day from some 8,000 partners – frequently from customer call centers who want to know exactly who are the customers that are calling in.

Some of the most influential brand customers with Klout scores of 50 or higher are eligible for perks and gifts ranging from free smart phones to all expense paid trips to weekend test drives of automobiles. Klout has done 400 “Perks” programs that have given some 750,000 influencers special deals with no quid pro quo– only a hope that they’ll say something nice about a brand. Brand rewards for Klout scores are a reflection in the social media age of the special treatment that brands have given out for years to high profile names, the press, and individuals who have spent lots of money on the brand. Klout has democratized influence.

Beyond the perks, Klout is rating and showing people’s online influence on various topics so that others can learn from them. In addition it rewards individuals for their social media efforts by helping them to feel listened to on certain topics. In this way, Klout’s ranking system is working to build a better online community. In today’s social media age, those that push out interesting content are the new influencers, and after several attempts, Joe Fernandez and Klout appear to be on their way to develop a rating system for measuring social media influence that is accurate and matters.

How to Get Your Trade Association’s Content in Google’s Search Position Zero

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