Use your performance in universal result types to guide optimization prioritization
Google uses a variety of universal result types—from Answer Boxes to Videos—to provide what it considers the best, most helpful results for a queried keyword.
Understanding what types of results appear for your tracked keywords is an important part of your content strategy. By optimizing your content to target particular content types to which Google assigns universal result types, you can be in the best position to appear on search engine results pages.
Using Conductor's Result Types and Keywords reports can show you which result types appear for the keywords you track, and how well you perform for those result types.
- In Conductor, go to Result Types↗️.
- If necessary or useful, use the Select Keyword Groups filter to find the top-priority keyword group you created. Doing so filters the data in the report to show only information for the critical keywords you identified.
- Review the data in the report:
- Review the summary bar, which provides an overview about the result types that appear most frequently for these keywords. Consider if there are any commonalities or themes among these keywords. Finding themes across keyword groups can help you discover whether Google favors certain types of content for the topics represented by the keywords in a specific group. For example, if you see your "kitchen" keyword group has many video results appearing for your keywords it's a good indication that both Google and your audience prefer video content to satisfy the query. In this case, consider creating videos to rank better for those keywords.
- Review the table below, which shows you all the result types that appear for each keyword. You can use this list to determine whether your web property owns the universal result types that appear for the keyword. Just look for whether there is a green check mark that says You in the column for each result type. Reviewing this data can help you prioritize optimizations for the result types you don't already own.
- Using the Ownership filter on the left, select Not Owned. Doing this shows you all the keywords for which you do not own universal results. If the keywords you track appear with universal result types on search engine results pages, and you don't own one of those result types, consider optimizing your content to target those specific result types. For example:
- Answer Boxes, also known as featured snippets, and People Also Ask results are trusted resources in the search results for answering customer questions. Optimizing for this type of content is a great way to introduce yourself to customers who may not be familiar with your brand.
- Additionally, because of where they appear on results pages, owning Answer Box results can provide you with a great opportunity to appear above other organic results and provide your audience with a direct answer to their query.
- Images and videos are an ever-growing presence in search results. Following SEO best practices for images—such as having quality alt tags, load speeds, responsiveness, and more—will become more critical as the popularity of visual search grows. This attention to visual media is also important to your video marketing and video SEO.
- Identify a highest-priority keyword (one with high monthly search volume or one with the highest importance to your business).
- For this keyword, select the blue arrow to see which of your competitors owns the result type.
- Click on your competitors' URLs to navigate to their pages. See how they structure their content to better understand what Google sees when it ranks their content well. Consider creating or adapting your pages with this type of content to compete for the universal result types your competitors' pages rank for.
- Repeat this research for other keywords to build a full strategy to address the landscape of result types.
What's next?
With a better understanding of where and when various universal results appear for your tracked keywords, you’re equipped with some helpful details that can help you prioritize your next steps with the best return on your effort. Ready to optimize? Refer to the Draft new and existing content with Writing Assistant article.