By the conclusion of this year, a full 50% of all searches will be voice searches. Are you ready for that? Most small businesses have yet to try and optimize their sites so as to make it easier for potential customers to quickly find them with a voice search. Also, almost 25% of American households have an AI speaker from which they are making searches. Voice search is here and will come to dominate sooner rather than later.
Recent research done by Backlinko has revealed just how dominant voice search currently is and will become. They sampled ten thousand Google Home searches and the following results are taken directly from their published research:
- PageSpeed appears to play a major role in voice search SEO. The average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds (52% faster than the average page).
- Google prefers short, concise answers to voice search queries. The typical voice search result is only 29 words in length.
- Content with high levels of social engagement tends to perform well in voice search. In fact, the average voice search result has 1,199 Facebook shares and 44 Tweets.
- Simple, easy-to-read content may help with voice search SEO. The average Google voice search result is written at a 9th grade level.
- The average word count of a voice search result page is 2,312 words. Therefore, Google tends to source voice search answers from long form content.
- Content that ranks highly in desktop search is also very likely to appear as a voice search answer. In fact, approximately 75% of voice search results rank in the top 3 for that query.
- The time it took for a search result page to load completely (4.6 seconds) was significantly faster than most pages (8.8 seconds).
- Google’s voice search algorithm may use PageSpeed as a key ranking signal. In fact, the average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds (which is 52% faster than the worldwide average). Therefore, if you want to rank in voice search, make sure your site loads as quickly as possible.
- Google voice results tend to be very concise. In fact, the average voice search result is only 29 words long. So to optimize for voice search SEO, aim to make your answer snippets approximately 29 words long.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
