Guest post by Michael Jean. (Want to guest post? click here)
The chances are big that you’re familiar with SEO, as it plays quite a big role in marketing nowadays. The real question is whether you know what Google Voice SEO is? I bet you don’t otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article.
So, are you ready to find out what Google Voice SEO is and how you can use it to your advantage? Then you’re in the right place and you should definitely continue reading so you can learn.
What is Google Voice SEO?
You know what SEO is, it stands for Search Engine Optimization, which basically means that you use specific keywords in your websites, blogs, articles and other writing to make it more findable by search engines such as Google.
Now, what is Google voice? It’s something that is relatively new and it is what many of us will know as Siri or Google now. Google voice is how many people are using search engines nowadays.
One big example is Google Home, a new device that has come on the market and through which people can use their voice to search the internet.
Every day there are more people that use this kind of technology for searching the internet, which means that you should also be adapting your writing in such a way that it can be found through these voice searches.
You may think that using SEO in your writing ensures that they will be found equally through regular search engines and through voice searches, but research has found that this is actually not the case.
If you want to make your web pages more findable through voice searches then you need a specific kind of SEO, which we know as Google Voice SEO. In short, Google Voice SEO is optimizing your writing for being found through voice searches.
Do you think it matters?
You could argue that Google Voice SEO is not important enough to spend your money and attention on, but let me convince you of the opposite.
First of all, I have a fact that no one can argue with and that is that back in 2014, which is four years ago already, 55% of all adults used Siri every now and then. That is more than half the population, that are a lot of people who are using voice search.
Another fact is that voice search is only becoming more and more common, so if you don’t jump on the wagon now it might be too late and you’re left behind.
Now you could also argue that Google voice SEO is really not that different from regular SEO, so you don’t need to treat it separately.
Once again I beg to differ. Research that companies have been doing showed that people use different keywords when using voice search in comparison to searching from their desktop.
On top of this, sometimes what we say isn’t what the device searches for. Siri will not always perfectly understand you and will search for something that is different from what you said, which is also something that you need to take into account when using Google Voice SEO.
How do you use Google Voice SEO?
For regular SEO the rules are pretty clear, you need to know what keywords people are using in their search engines and you need to incorporate these keywords into your writing, but what is the difference between SEO and Google Voice SEO?
You might think that SEO has everything to do with the words you use, but this is not quite the case. One example of Google Voice SEO that seems to be really important is the speed of your page.
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Devices that work with voice search tend to load the page within an average of 4.6 seconds, which is 52% than the loading speed for the average webpage. In other words, your website won’t be loaded when it’s too slow. Improving your page speed is vital if you want to be found by Google Voice devices.
Having an HTTPS website will also help enormously with the Google Voice SEO. It turns out that over 70% of all the websites that are shown by a Google Home, which is one kind of voice search device, are HTTPS websites.
Your website will be found a lot sooner when it carries the HTTPS mark.
Another feature that is very important for Google Voice SEO is the engagement on social media regarding the article, page or website. The average result from a Google Voice search has been shared more than 1100 times on Facebook, so it’s smart to make it a goal to get a lot of shares on social media from your content.
Now we’ve named all kinds of features that have nothing to do with words, but this doesn’t mean that words don’t matter.
The average page found by a voice search has roughly 2000 words, which aren’t very long pages but they are not incredibly short either. You can do with this information what you want.
Another way language usage can affect your Google Voice SEO is the complication of the language you use.
As it shows, simple content that is easy to read will be found a lot sooner by a Google Voice device than content with a lot of difficult words and complicated sentence structures.
Therefore it may be better to do aside with all that difficult language and fancy words, for optimal SEO you should keep it simple.
Featured snippets
One aspect of Google Voice SEO that I want to address in a little more detail is the featured snippet.
Google has been creating more and more featured snippets, they are the fragments that are presented at the top of the search results as the answer to a direct question.
Apparently a lot of people who use Google Voice ask direct questions because more than 40% of all the results given by such a Voice search came from a featured snippet.
The featured snippets used to all come from Google itself, but now they are also using information from other websites.
There are a couple of ways that can increase your chances of making your webpage a featured snippet. The first thing is that you should literally the question you’re answering in the content.
On top of this, you want the answer to be detailed, but not too long-winding. You have probably seen the featured snippets so your webpage should contain something like that.
Related: Here’s more info about winning the Featured Snippet.
Now there is a difference between regular SEO and Google Voice SEO, but if your webpage does well with regular SEO then the chances are bigger that it will also do well with Google Voice SEO.
Google Voice SEO is something that you can focus on, but I do recommend you to put regular SEO first, as regular SEO has more effect on Google Voice SEO than the other way around.
Hopefully, you now understand what Google Voice SEO is, why it is important to you and how you can use it for your web pages.
Google Voice SEO might not currently be the most important kind of SEO out there, but it will become more and more important in the future. Therefore I do think that it’s important that you put some attention towards it and learn the ins and outs.
Now you shouldn’t forget completely about regular SEO as this is also an important part of Google Voice SEO and will also always remain important. The best thing you can do is focus equally on both kinds of SEO to get the best ranking results.
When you do this you are sure to have your web pages found and read by a lot more people than currently. And we know that more traffic is always a good thing that will boost your blog, business or whatever you have web pages for.
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