When you do a search on Google, you sometimes will see a box highlighting an answer to your question with the exact answer you were looking for. This is thanks to Google’s featured snippets.
Featured snippets are “answer boxes” of sorts which display a short bit of content from a webpage that includes information directly associated to your search. This can come in the form of a list, table, or paragraph.
As you see in the example of featured snippets below, Google is displaying a step-by-step process for changing a tire to the user without them needing to go to the webpage itself. 
You can see in the highlighted section that Google notes that this is a featured snippet, and clicking this area allows you to learn more about the feature. You can check out that featured snippet article in this link.
How to Get Featured in Snippets
The bad news is that there is nothing instant you can really do to make Google use your page content in a snippet. Per their help page mentioned earlier:
“How can I mark my page as a featured snippet? You can’t. Google systems determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet for a user’s search request, and if so, elevates it.”
However, there are various ways to optimize your website to encourage Google to choose your content to be highlighted above the top SERPs.
1. Have a Good Organic Presence
It makes sense that Google would likely already notice and appreciate your pages’ SEO before they would choose to use your content in a featured snippet.
And Ahrefs even says that most pages that are used in featured snippets rank in the top 10 for relevant keywords. So get to work boosting your site and you’ll have a much better chance at a featured snippet!
2. Have Content Google Likes to Feature
There is certain content that is used in featured snippets according to Moz. The type of queries that Google prioritizes includes:
- Do-it-yourself lists (ex: how to change a tire)
- Health questions (ex: what is the flu)
- Financial (ex: how to save for retirement)
- Mathematical (ex: how to do division)
- Requirements (ex: what is required for a passport)
- Status (ex: when is the new iPhone coming out)
- Transitional (ex: what events happened in 2019)
Additionally, Ahrefs recently created this handy guide on key phrases that brought up featured snippets. Give it a look for some ideas: 
3. Use Schema If Applicable
If you generate content such as recipes, blog posts, reviews, and more, investing in a schema plugin or adding schema markup to your site can help Google better read the content of your site.
How to Check Progress of Featured Snippets
There are a few tools you can use to see if you currently have any featured snippets or to track your future success in trying to appear in featured snippets. Here are some websites that offer software you can utilize:
