Hey Siri: How do I get my content to show up in voice search?

Ever since this little thing called Siri was launched, voice search has been a game changer for online marketing. Now two in five adults use voice search at least once a day. In 2020 experts estimate half of all searches will have shifted from the keyboard to the microphone. So, what does this mean for SEO? How does your hard-working content reach these folks using voice search? Conveniently, the smartest folks in the game recently came out with a study on voice search and current SEO ranking factors.

The results below are from SEM Rush. This research is not ours, but we’ll sure as heck use it to our advantage.

The study had two objectives:

1. Understand the parameters Google Assistant uses to select answers to voice search queries.  
2. Compare and understand the differences in answers obtained from different devices.

So, in case you don't want to read the textbook style breakdown, we’ll wrap it up for you in a pretty little bow: To have your content that is used to answer voice search questions work hard to be in the top three in organic results, having featured snippets would be a big win, making sure your page speed is ridiculously fast will help, and using internal and external links is a solid strategy. Now get out there and dominate the voice search game!

Here is what they found…. drum roll, please:

1. Close to 80% of theanswers returned were from the top three organic results (for Android Phones,72%)
2. 70% of all answersreturned from voice searches occupied a SERP feature (with 60% of thosereturning a Featured Snippet result)
3. When analyzingbacklinks, Page Score and TrustScore were slightly higher for answers’ URLs regardless of thedevice.
4. Backlink anchors andkeywords within a title matching the voice search query are present in overhalf of answer URLs for Google Home and Home Mini.
5. Text length of theanswers returned was nearly the same for every device (around 41 words onaverage).
6. Text complexity needsto be simple and understandable for the average reader (ranking around 8 on theFlesch Kincaid Grade.
7. Pagespeed is veryimportant for all devices — for a majority of questions, the answer chosen byGoogle loads faster than the average page speed for all other results in thesame SERP.
8. Well-linked pages(internally and externally) are favored within Google Home and Home Minisearches.
9. Over a third of theanswers do not use schema. Different schemas are used, with Article andOrganization being the most popular, with low percentages. In non-answers, theuse of schema is more prominent, but still no single type dominates.
10. HTTPS and URL depthseem to be irrelevant for Google Assistant's selection (because there was notangible variance between answers and non-answers).

Still here after reading through that list? Impressive.

Look, we get that most of that looked like Greek, but that's why we're here. We have people who understand what all that actually means and that can help guide you through the process of making it work for your business. Voice search is here to stay and your search rankings can no longer afford to act like they aren't. Dig in, write great content, and ask Siri for some help. And yes, we "wrote" this whole blog via voice command.

Eric Van Cleave is the Co-CEO and Digital Marketing Director for TIV Branding

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TIV Branding is a boutique branding firm in Sonoma County, California. We specialize in building brands by using traditional, social and digital channels in unison. If you would like to discuss a project or find out more about how we do what we do, please email us at info@TIVbranding.com.