If you were to Google “Who Was The First President” an featured snippet would show up on the SERP (search engine results page) with the answer in a box before the paid and organic results listing.
This is called Position 0 (zero), because it’s technically before position 1 on a SERP. This is a difficult position to achieve. Marketers can’t flag their page for a featured snippet; Google determines what to highlight.
The “rules” to earn Position 0 are vague at best. And, since the company I work for is a marketing agency for nonprofits, our target keywords are not ones with high search volumes. Figuring out a way to get us into Position 0 was like trying to figure out how to nail Jell-O to a wall.
Position 0 was always in the back of my mind as I applied SEO best practices to our website. I assumed 1st Position on a SERP would be the best we could achieve. Then one day I stumbled across a miracle.
One of our blog posts reached Position 0, providing the answer for “what are sustainer donors.”
Here are three things I learned from pursuing Position 0:
- It takes time to build strong SEO. This blog had been published about a year prior to showing up in Position 0.
- Sometimes success comes in the form of a brand new opportunity. This is the first time that there’s an answer box for this topic.
- It’s cheesy, but if you aim for heaven you might land among the stars. I didn’t think position 0 was within reach, but I grasped for it by applying best SEO practices across our website. You’ll notice that a different page from TrueSense shows up on the SERP as the first organic result.