Scaling 1,200+ Featured Snippets with the SEO Testing Dashboard

The original SEO testing dashboard was built to scale title tests, but would you guess that we’ve been able to use the same SEO testing process to scale featured snippets?

Yep, that’s what I said! SEO testing to scale featured snippets.

There are no exaggerations here, just an application of the same basic SEO testing process that I designed at Tipalti for scaling title tags to boost Tipalti’s featured snippet count by upwards of 1,200 answer box results, which was ultimately net positive toward our program’s growth.

I’ve said a few times that “optimization” is a misnomer. 

If we optimize for a featured snippet, but fail to capture it, have we even optimized it? Riddle me that, will you?

Featured snippet testing, on the other hand, implies that we are not certain that the improvements we’re making will yield a positive outcome.

So it makes sense that we should be able to apply the same scalable SEO testing techniques to featured snippets that we’ve been applying to title tags.

The process I’ll share here is the process that we used at Tipalti to scale 1,200+ featured snippets over the course of roughly 12 months. 

In this post, I’ll be using Monday.com as an example domain for applying the process of scaling featured snippets with the SEO testing dashboard. And if you haven’t already grabbed your copy of the dashboard, feel free to grab that by clicking on the banner below… of course, it’s free.

Part One: Gather a list of all your domain’s featured snippet opportunities with Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords Report

This first step is the coolest part of the process imho. Did you know you can gather a list of ALL your site’s featured snippet opportunities and even identify multiple featured snippet opportunities per URL??? When my team discovered this, it just about blew my mind.

Here’s how:

1. Head over to Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords Report

2. Filter all keywords that have a featured snippet in the SERP

3. Filter to see keywords in positions 2-5

You can also check position 1 keywords to see which featured snippets you already own.

Important: Make sure the date comparison is set to “Don’t compare.”

4. Export to a CSV.

5. Pivot the data by URL + Keyword to see all featured snippet opportunities for each URL.

You can also copy the CSV data into your SEO testing dashboard if you’d like to keep your opportunities in one place. 

6. Separate the Keyword Opportunities and URL Totals into two tabs.

I also like to copy the pivot table into a separate tab so that I can filter out all of the URL rows that have “Total” in them + make a separate table with the “Totals URLs.” This way, I can have all of my keyword opportunities in one place + I can see the URLs that stand to gain the most clicks from multiple featured snippet opportunities.

Keyword Opportunities Tab

URL Totals Tab

7. Prioritize your opportunities by volume & business value.

Of course, it’s tempting to look at the URLs where our highest volume opportunities are, but it’s more effective to account for business value. Look for URLs where the total volumes are high, but also have the capacity to bring in higher intent, bottom-of-funnel traffic.

Part Two: Add your top featured snippet opportunities to the SEO Testing Dashboard

This is the relatively easy part (assuming you’ve already prioritized your opportunities). In the SEO testing dashboard, you’ll want to port over the URLs in Column A, the target featured snippet keywords in Column B, mark each as a featured snippet test in Column C, set a status in Column D, and record the control portion of your article that aligns with the current answer box result in Column E.

Here’s what that would look like if I were running a few experiments for Monday.com.

Part Three: Set up an SEO test for each featured snippet (or empower a writer on the process).

Many guides have covered the actual writing process for improving featured snippets (my favorite is this guide from Ahrefs), so I will skim over some of the exact writing techniques here and simply add an outline of the steps that I train people to take. 

1. Analyze the SERP to see which answer Google is giving the Answer Box to.
2. Use the -sitename.com search operator to see what Google’s 2nd choice is. Add more negative domains to see 3rd and 4th choices. If you’re near, this will also show you exactly which portion of your content Google is honed in on.
3. Locate the answer box content on your page and compare it to Google’s preferred answer.
4. Build a hypothesis for your new featured snippet variant.
   Considerations for writing a strong FS variant:
   1. Is my answer direct?
   2. Is my answer factually accurate?
   3. Does the character count of my answer summarize in ~300 characters or fewer?
   4. Is my answer formatted in the same style as the current answer box? (paragraph, ordered list, unordered list, table, video, etc.)
   5. Have I eliminated filler words?
   6. Have I mirrored the search query in my answer?
   7. What aspects of the current answer does Google prefer over my answer & how can I improve on it without duplicating the current answer directly?
   8. Is there anything missing in the current answer that I can include to create a superior answer?
5. Write the new variation & record it in the SEO testing dashboard.
6. Check back in a few days / weeks to see if your variation was a winner & record the result.
7. Report your successes.

Part Four: Repeat until you’ve dominated every search query on the face of the earth.

If you’ve read this far, you might as well keep going until you’ve obliterated all the competition.

ABT baby!