Named after the bug-eyed inhabitants of Jim Henson’s popular TV creation, Fraggle Rock (under-30s may need to look it up, but they won’t be disappointed), SEO Fraggles are a combination of ‘fragments’ and ‘handles’ that Google ranks in its search results. The significance, female SEO expert Cindy Krum* points out, is that Fraggles are being indexed and ranked separately from long form content, meaning increased visibility for the nitty gritty elements of your articles or web pages. What’s more, if your site is already well-optimised for search engines, you don’t need to do a thing!

In the not so distant past, Google preferred content that was super specific to a user’s query. For instance, if you had published a blog post about hair care, you might not have ranked well for ‘curly hair’ if you also happened to mention ‘straight hair’ and ‘wavy hair’. Since the introduction of The Knowledge Graph, however, Google takes far more notice of fragments that may be relevant to a search. This is why you now see ‘Featured Snippets’: short pieces of information that appear at the top of Google’s search results as a quick answer to your query. (If you’re not familiar with The Knowledge Graph, it’s basically the phrase Google uses to describe its enormous library of stuff from across the internet. Take a peek at our article: A Quick Guide to The Google Knowledge Graph for more information.)

Optimising Website Content for SEO Fraggles

Unlike Featured Snippets, when clicked, Fraggles take the user directly to the relevant section of long form content. They are usually shown in Google as part of a carousel of possible answers within the search listing (see below). Not only can there be more than one per page, but Fraggles also occur in video content, highlighting the exact part of the video that is relevant to the search query.

Krum suggests that Fraggles play an important role in how Google populates its Knowledge Graph. This means that, although you can’t tell Google what to show on it’s search results page, you can give it a nudge in the right direction by organising your code and content appropriately.

#1 Use Jump-to Links / Anchor Links where relevant

The jump to process consists of two elements:

1. An ‘id’ tag (at the start of the content fragment)
2. The link that jumps to the id tag (usually placed in a contents list at the start of the article/page)

If you are familiar with HTML, Richard Baxter offers a useful guide to jump-to links here: https://builtvisible.com/implementing-named-anchors-to-improve-your-serps/

#2 ALWAYS use Heading Tags

The number of websites I see that still fail to use H1 and H2 tags is ridiculous. Even if you don’t understand the concept yourself, make sure your content writer or web developer understands what they are doing. If your website has been built well, it should be impossible to go wrong. Try to make headings relevant to what your users might search for or need to know, and conduct keyword research if you can. The basic rule is:

• H1 – the main concept
• H2 – subheading / question to answer / natural break in content
• H3 – subheading or similar within the H2 section
• H4 – unless you’re writing an academic article, this will be pretty underused
• H5 – possibly too much information
• H6 – zzzzz

Your H1 tag is the most important, so make sure that it speaks out above the noise. If your main heading is crap, your click-through rate will be low and Google is unlikely to rank it highly.

#3 Consider how you organise information on the page

Krum notes that focusing on a Q&A structure or focusing on specific questions can be a good strategy, and this is the case for both search engines and human users. If a real person can find content quickly and easily, then it’s guaranteed that Google will find it quickly and easily too. Think specifically of the problems you are trying to solve and lay out information on the page to make the process easier.

If you have a good relationship with your web developer (they are generally lovely people, even if you don’t understand what they’re talking about) then have a chat about how consistently your website is coded and whether there is anything they can do to help you improve both site and page structure.

#4 Make the most of speakable Schema

Google also makes use of speakable Schema, which if deployed correctly can help to make content Fraggle-worthy. There are currently three different kinds of speakable Schema: ‘Q&A’, ‘FAQ’ and ‘How-To’ . This Schema property identifies sections within an article or web page that are most useful for audio playback using text-to-speech (TTS). Adding these kinds of Schema will help Google to understand it better and you may even appear in the ‘people also ask’ section of the SERP.

Schema is a way of adding data to web pages that is recognisable by almost all search engines, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex. It points them to specific information on the page such as your organisation name, address, telephone number, email address and any products or services you provide. See https://schema.org/ for more information.

#5 Add chapters or ‘stop’ points to video content

When uploading your video to YouTube, did you know that you can add chapters or ‘stop’ points? This can help Google to find specific pieces of information in your video. Adding a transcription can also help with this, although it is worth editing any auto-transcribed text to ensure it is accurate. You can read more here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9884579?hl=en-GB.

Fraggles Aren’t Rocket Science

Fraggles fit into Google’s mission “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and seem to go hand in hand with the introduction of its Link to Text Fragment feature in 2019. As Krum notes, Google is increasingly lifting content from across the web and presenting it in search engine results pages (SERPs) in a variety of formats and Fraggles probably contribute to this process. She believes that, “top-performing Fraggles will become Answers and Featured Snippets that can rank visually or be spoken in a voice search result or even translated, as part of the Knowledge Graph”. The important thing for smaller marketing teams or solo marketers is that optimising a website for Fraggles is not rocket science – ANYONE can give it a try.

For SEO nerds, Cindy Krum explains SEO Fraggles and her research into Google’s use of Fraggles in depth at https://mobilemoxie.com/blog/what-the-heck-are-fraggles/. You can also listen to a fab interview with Cindy on Target Internet’s Digital Marketing Podcast #231 at https://www.targetinternet.com/digital-marketing-podcast-episode-231-what-are-seo-fraggles/ (I could listen to her all day).

* As a woman who recently posted a question on an SEO forum and received numerous derogatory responses, I can assure you that being female and considered an SEO expert is a BIG deal.