Recently, in a Webmaster Central Hangout, John Mueller from Google discussed content optimization for voice search and Google Assistant, and answered queries related to the same. He classified good and bad content, and suggested what’s not a good fit. He advises to avoid over-optimizing and provided examples of what might be perceived as a spam.
Some time back, Google launched Google Assistant for speakers and cars. They sent notice to publishers suggesting them ways to upgrade their content to be more visible on Google Assistant. Currently, the feature is applicable only to a handful kinds of content, which would surely expand to other types of content. Thus, understanding content optimization for Google Assistant would be an important aspect of search marketing in 2018.
Use Structured Data
Gary Illyes, at Pubcon Las Vegas in November, 2017, mentioned Google coming out with new features in 2018 which would involve structured data and websites, thus suggesting publishers to integrate the two of them.
John Mueller, regarding this, said “what we try to do is to understand your page and to figure out with which type of voice queries match those pages. So that’s something you can help us with using structured data on the pages so if you tell us a bit more about what this page is about.”
Consider Voice Snippets
Mueller hinted at bringing in Voice Assistant and suggested to frame content considering how it would seem in a voice snippet. How organized the content is would also matter in the context of voice snippets.
Make User-Friendly Content
It has always been suggested to create content that is easy for the users to read and understand. However, it becomes more important now with voice searches coming into picture.
Don’t Over Optimize for Voice Search
Mueller warns web publishers against picking up the approach of over-optimization as it won’t work well in the voice search context.
Natural Content
Mueller encourages for writing a more natural and clear content. He said “if you write naturally and you write in a clear kind of language that’s consistent across the type of queries you want to target then that’s the type of information that we could pick up for voice as well.”
