Earlier this year, Brian Dean analyzed 10,000 Google Home voice search results with the purpose of determining what separates voice search from traditional typed search.
A Summary of his most interesting findings are as follows:
- 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).
- HTTPS websites dominate Google’s voice search results. In fact, 70.4% of Google Home result pages are secured with HTTPS.
- Google prefers short, concise answers to voice search queries. The typical voice search result is only 29 words in length.
- Schema may not play a key role in voice search rankings. 36.4% of voice search results come from pages that use Schema (which is only slightly higher than the worldwide average of 31.3%).
- Authoritative domains tend to produce voice search results significantly more than non-authoritative domains. In fact, the mean Ahrefs Domain Rating of a Google Home result is 76.8.
- 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.
- We found that very few voice search results had the exact query in their title tag. Therefore, creating individual pages for each voice search query doesn’t appear to be an effective voice search SEO strategy.
- 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.
- Appearing in a Featured Snippet may help you rank in voice search. 40.7% of all voice search answers came from a Featured Snippet.
These are very significant pointers that every marketer should start considering very soon if you want to be a player in the voice search arena. I will add more relevant findings as they become available, but make no mistake, voice search is here and it’s just going to grow more and more in the coming months.
With that, I now turned my attention to some quick tips to help you optimize your Google Ads paid campaigns, courtesy of our friends at WordStream.
Chances are your impressions, clicks and conversions aren’t distributed evenly across every keyword in your account. In fact, sometimes keywords can be so popular that they consume the vast majority of spend in a campaign, leaving little left for all the others to perform. This may not be a problem if the keyword is resulting in a high volume of conversions for a fair price, but more often than not you’ll want to take action! When you find a costly keyword, there are several options to help reign in spend…
Change the Bid
Perhaps you are paying more for clicks than necessary. When your cost-per-click is too high, that spend can add up quick! If you have a good average position (read: 2 or lower), try lowering your max CPC to recoup some of that budget.
Change the Match Type
Would the keyword still be effective on a more restrictive match type? Check out your search queries to determine how your keyword is getting matched. If you find your keyword is matching to a bunch of broad, irrelevant clicks, it may be time to move to phrase or modified broad match.
Pause the Keyword
If all else fails, you can always pause the keyword and let your budget redistribute to the rest of your keywords.
Finding Costly Keywords
Our MGR Digital Marketing Team typically reviews all campaign keywords once or twice a week if not more. It’s better to make adjustments as soon as you see any type of issues affecting your campaign, than letting your advertising dollars go to waste. One of our favorite exercises is reviewing the First Position CPC and Top of Page CPC, to see if our current Max CPC aligns with these columns. Or try sorting your keywords by Cost to see if there are any keywords spending a lot but not bringing in many conversions. These options will help to see if there are any opportunities to lower your extra monthly spend or decided if additional spend will continue to result in your desired ROI.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR).
Photo by Bence ▲ Boros on Unsplash
