How URLs Earned Multiple Featured Snippets (Uncovered)

Recently, we featured pieces of practical advice from experts on how to Increase Your Chances to be Featured in Knowledge Cards. On this post, we will look into a huge study where SEMrush partnered with Ghergich & Co., and they uncovered what makes up real mobile site pages that earned multiple snippets - multiple meaning at least 20 to thousands - including a boring category page. In the study, they analyzed ten million mobile keywords and thoroughly put into scrutiny roughly over a million featured snippets on Google.

We will mainly focus on the top performing mobile sites which have earned featured snippets or which they called Featured Snippet Hubs. The study reveals interesting facts about the structure of actual site pages that earned multiple featured snippets to a single URL. With less guesswork, you can concentrate your efforts on optimising your mobile site using practices that already worked and succeeded. They featured an example of a hub URL (https://www.healthline.com/health/raised-skin-bump) which earned close to 3,000 individual featured snippets. After here’s what they’ve discovered.

On the average, the top performers used 22 headers and subheaders for their long-form content. Headers and subheaders make content scannable and readable on mobile. Check out this guide to headers and subheaders and how to use them effectively.
A big chunk of the featured snippets hubs (83%) has already adopted HTTPS. In a goal to make the web more secure, Google has included this criterion both for ranking in SERP and getting featured in the featured snippets.
Most sites that made it were written for the average reader, which means that the content is easily understood and consumed by a vast majority.
Aside from simple text, a good mix of visuals into text content was observed on featured snippets hubs. The images cut through chunks of text to make content both interesting and quickly absorbed or understood.
Most pieces of content were backed up by evidence, using an average of 33 external link citations to back up statements or claims.
Most of the pages that performed well had an average mobile friendliness and mobile usability of 95%.
The well-optimised architecture also contributed to earning featured snippets. For example, the page https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/early-symptoms-timeline started with the broad topic of /health/ and more specific folder for the topic /health/pregnancy/ and create themed content that can be linked to related topics. On the early-symptoms-timeline article, a table was used to present symptoms and the timeline within the period of pregnancy. The page also includes related links to similar topics.
Aside from the site construction, the top performing hubs are found to be linked with other pages, weaved smartly into the overall architecture of the site.
Most of the featured snippets hub used anchor menus with buttons that float regardless of the page you are reading. This menu is useful for jumping and exploring other pages even if you are navigating a large site.
Questions, comparisons and prepositions comprise the majority of the featured snippets results among the 1.3 million base number, with 52.57% accounting for questions. Check out the detailed breakdown of featured snippets question on this link and how they were optimised to perform their best. Content is optimised for paragraph featured snippets by going for a range of 40-60 words (roughly 350 characters). To optimise for long lists, go for eight items. For shorter lists, include longer descriptions. The key is to achieve truncation and encourage users to click your link for further reading.

Now that we have uncovered insights into how featured snippets hubs were optimised, you can focus your efforts on applying which the practices are appropriate to your type of content and increase your chances to earn featured snippets for your mobile links.