Google SEO & Voice Search

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

2019 was predicted to be a breakout year for Google SEO with new trends, most notably voice search. Google SEO for voice search will be the strategic approach that helps websites get found and operate more easily under the new algorithms Google has rolled out to support this voice search feature.

Why Do You Need Google SEO for Voice Search?

Voice search is the technology that lets users search the Internet by speaking their questions or search keywords into a phone, smart device, or computer instead of typing a query into a search box the traditional way. These searches are answered through the filters of search engines, just like regular searches. However, the difference between written and spoken language leads to differences in the results returned on the SERPs. That means updating your Google SEO strategy for this new feature is absolutely essential if you don't want to lose followers and potential customers to your competitors.

Voice search is not a recent development. The feature has been in development since 2010 and was introduced by Google in May 2011, but at that time few people used it because of language limitations — English was the only language available on the platform. Over time, however, the feature has grown to support around 60 languages. In particular, the arrival of the Hummingbird search algorithm in 2013, which placed greater emphasis on voice search and complex queries, forced the Google SEO community to adapt. Today, about 71% of respondents say they prefer voice search to typing. Meanwhile, 41% of adults surveyed say they use voice search at least once a day. By 2020, voice searches were expected to account for more than 50% of all online search queries.

How does the growth of voice search affect Google SEO?

The first change voice search brings to Google SEO is the average length of search keywords. When speaking a search, users tend to behave as they would when talking to a real person: most ask questions or use longer phrases than the short keywords typical of traditional SEO. The style and phrasing people use to make a request also differ from before. For example, instead of typing "top Google SEO companies," a voice searcher will ask "Which is the best SEO company in Ho Chi Minh City?"

To make sure your content is optimized for voice search, focus on long-tail keywords built from short, simple phrases. Research also shows Google favors shorter answers: the typical length of a voice search result is just 29 words. Although voice queries are longer than regular searches, the semantic complexity suitable for Google SEO hasn't changed, since easy-to-read, easy-to-understand content is still preferred. On top of that, content quality remains the decisive factor in ranking web pages on the SERPs. If your website has already built up a solid body of quality articles and ranks well for regular searches, you don't need to worry too much — most Google SEO results that rank highly in regular search also appear in top positions for voice search.

Featured Snippets Will Be Inseparable from Google SEO as Voice Search Rises

Featured Snippets are also one of the dominant trends in Google SEO in 2019. Pages whose content Google deems the most accurate answer to a searcher's query get a dedicated box at the top of all the SERPs. Appearing in a Featured Snippet is certainly very beneficial for your ranking in voice searches — proof is that 40.7% of voice search results come from Featured Snippets. We have a very detailed article on how to get your page into a Featured Snippet. If you're wondering what a Featured Snippet is, you can read about it here.

Editing content to suit Google SEO voice search

Statistics show that the words and structures that appear most often in voice searches include:

• True/false questions

• "What is..."

• "How do I..." / "How does..."

• "Best," "buy," "price"

That's why, when choosing a topic to write for Google SEO, you should pick one (or a few) questions and build your article around answering them. You can also create H2 headings using these queries and provide the answers in the body text. The answer to each question should be edited into a short paragraph or into formats commonly seen in Featured Snippets, such as lists and tables.

Once you've answered the main question, you can extend the article's length and richness by folding in other related search questions. This helps your website's article appear and rank for many variations of the same query at once. Of course, as with traditional Google SEO, once you've hit the top or become a Featured Snippet, don't forget to keep updating and refreshing your content regularly to hold the position you've earned.

In addition, content that is highly connected to social media pages performs better in voice search. In fact, an average voice search result has 1,199 Facebook shares and 44 tweets.

HTTPS-secured websites will dominate Google voice search SEO

HTTPS, short for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, is a secure text-transfer protocol through which all data exchanged between the website you visit and web browsers is encrypted. HTTPS is far better optimized than its predecessor HTTP at guaranteeing the high security of online activities and transactions, such as banking or online shopping.

This detail has always mattered in traditional Google SEO. Google itself acknowledges that HTTPS can give your site at least a minor boost in search results. The role of this factor in voice search is even more important than in regular search. Did you know that 70.4% of URLs returned for voice search use HTTPS — more than 20 points higher than the mere 50% of desktop search results? Although Google has not yet made any specific announcement about treating HTTPS as a ranking factor, if you want to improve your website's Google SEO, especially for advanced searches, HTTPS is certainly not a bad idea.

Google SEO Will Become More Localized Than Ever

Once voice search grows, searching itself will become more localized. A BrightLocal report shows that 58% of Internet users have used voice search to find local businesses and places. Most people use voice search as a tool to suggest where to go, or use it while walking or driving. So to optimize your Google SEO content for voice search, you should include your business's basic information in your articles — brand name, address, opening hours, and so on. Regional and local phrases describing where your business operates should be added to headings and tags in blog posts. Finally, don't forget to register your business name and website with Google My Business so customers can find you more easily.

User Experience Still Needs Improving in Google SEO

When it comes to Google SEO for voice search, many people still think optimizing content structure and keywords is enough, forgetting that whether it's voice, image, or regular search, user experience remains very important for Google to crawl and index data. While voice search will change the game for companies doing Google SEO, certain standards won't change no matter how search engines update or alter their ranking algorithms. One of them is satisfying users' needs as much as possible — for example, the fact that people always want an immediate answer to the question they ask.

Make sure your page is responsive and always works well on any type of device, especially smart mobile devices. Images, videos, and compressed files on the web must always be optimized to preserve display quality and loading speed — and, by extension, the overall effectiveness of your Google SEO. This becomes even more essential given that in 2018 Google launched the "Speed Update" — a new update to how the world's largest search engine indexes information on the Internet. From May 2018 onward, page speed officially became a ranking factor for mobile searches. Google also added that it encourages web developers and Google SEO practitioners to think more broadly about how a page's performance affects user experience across devices and under different metrics.

Good news for businesses that haven't yet entered the voice search space: in practice, the average page load time for voice search results is only about 4.6 seconds — 52% faster than the average web load time worldwide. So if you want to lead the Google SEO field with voice search, upgrade your server systems and web design to ensure the fastest possible browsing speed.

Google SEO Your Website with Strong Link Authority to Rank Higher in Voice Search

Those of us well-versed in Google SEO know that the backlink system is the foundation of the algorithms Google uses for both desktop and mobile search. When evaluating whether backlinks are effective for a website, each result is analyzed by its Domain Rating and Page Rating. The average result for voice search results is 76.8 — considered high in the Google SEO industry.

Conversely, the link authority of voice search result pages is much lower than other types of search — just 21.1/100. The explanation is that Google must be extremely confident that the answers it gives users are highly accurate. And to guarantee that accuracy, voice search algorithms may rely on domain authority rather than page authority. In other words, once Google finds a reasonable answer to any voice query on a highly trusted website, it no longer cares about the number of links on that page. So to make sure your website's Google SEO performs well in voice search, focus on strengthening your website's link authority!

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