3 Tools to Rank in Google’s Featured Answer OneBox

Since 2014 there has been a continuous debate in our marketing world: Are those Google’s quick-box results good or evil?

Most of us seem to agree that it’s probably evil because it steals clicks from the original site by serving the user with the immediate answer to their query.

But how does it matter?

The truth is, good or evil, it seems there to stay whether you like it or not, so your site is either in an answer box (earning more visibility and clicks) or below it (having even fewer chances to get at least any attention).

I already wrote a quite detailed article on optimizing your site for a quick-box answer results. Since then, I’ve come across a few tools that actually track one-box results which I was very excited about.

Google Webmaster Tools: Find Your Own Keywords with the Highest Potential to Rank in a One-Box Result

[Free]

Navigate to Search Traffic -> Search Analytics inside your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and click “No Filter” below “Queries”. There set a filter using a question word (I filter by “how”, “what” and “why”).

Step #1

Step #2

Download all the keywords, and create a nice spreadsheet:

• Whether this query already has a one-box answer and (if so) who is currently ranking there
• Which of your pages rank there
• What to do to improve your page rankings. Your first steps would be:
  • Tweak your current copy to better answer the question (learn from the competitor that currently appear in the box)
  • Link to the page internally. If you are on WordPress, use our internal linking plugin (It rocks!)

SEMRush: See Competitors’ Queries Triggering Featured Snippets in Google Search Results

[Paid]

SEMRush has recently introduced this awesome widget showing you all the “special” search results appearing for any keyword:

Clicking any link in the widget will filter the keyword rankings report to only show the keyword triggering that SERP feature.

Tip: You may want to sort result by “Position”: The higher your competitor ranks, the better the chances they have taken the one-box as well.

The same feature can be used to identify your own site best chances to rank in one-box (Similarly to what you can do with Google Webmaster Tools but better: More data!)

Furthermore, the same report is included into SEMrush “keyword difficulty” section which is pretty awesome!

SERPstat: See Keywords that Trigger Featured Snippets in Google Search Results

[Paid]

SERPstat is a newer keyword and competitor research tool with a huge potential. Type any word and it will come up with thousands of suggestions. Navigate to “Organic” section and you’ll see one or more icons representing different elements of Google’s blended results that appear in a page.

You can also use “Filters” to see only keywords with “Featured snippets” in the SERPs:

As far as you can see, like SEMRush, SERPstat supports all kinds of other Google’s page elements including blended results (image, news, local, video results), knowledge graph, etc.

Are there any other tools helping you to rank in Google’s one-box results? Please share in the comments!