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When Backlinko released its analysis of 10,000 Google Home voice queries — we were fascinated.

After all, we do spend a good chunk of time around here thinking, talking, and writing about voice search. Heck — I even filled my home with three different smart speakers to see which one worked best. And when it comes to the future of SEO, I believe that voice search will only continue to play a fundamental role in how we not only seek and consume information, but also, how Google ranks and surfaces it.

So, the question remains: As this horizon continues to evolve and shift, how — oh, how — can sites be optimized for voice search?

That’s what Backlinko set out to answer when it conducted this study. Using what the team believed to be 11 potential ranking factors — things like PageSpeed, Schema markups, and the enabling of SSL — founder Brian Dean reported key takeaways on the most significantly factors of voice search SEO.

Now, our experts have weighed in on what we have found to be the most compelling of those findings.

Our Experts Weigh In: Key Findings on Voice Search Ranking Research

1. Page Speed

“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).” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say: Victor Pan, Head of SEO

When it came to page speed, our SEO experts actually believe it might not play a major role in voice search optimization. “PageSpeed is probably not a [direct] factor in voice search,” says Pan. “But sites that are well-optimized for user experience tend to rank highly, and voice search results tend to come from top-ranking results.”

That said, it would be interesting to conduct further research to determine if these same faster-loading sites — the ones that receive better voice search rankings — also have higher search engine results page [SERP] rankings. “Drawing conclusions without proper experimental setup is something our industry tends to do,” admits Pan, “though I’m for faster sites, all the time.”

2. HTTPS and SSL

“HTTPS websites dominate Google’s voice search results. In fact, 70.4% of Google Home result pages are secured with HTTPS.”  – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say 

Each night, Moz tracks the most significant SERP features and ranking factors in its MozCast Feature Graph — and, as of writing this post, HTTPS results (sites with enabled SSL, or the Secure Sockets Layer technology that encrypts your website connection so hackers can’t intercept your data) accounted for 79.8%.

Source: Moz

In other words, Pan explains, Moz tracks the SERP for 10,000 keywords, nightly — and of all the sites ranking for those 10,000 keywords, within the top 10 results, 79.8% of them are HTTPS.

“If we believe in Mozcast’s keyword sampling methodology, 70.4% of Google Home results pages being in HTTPS discovered during Backlinko’s research is actually on the low side,” says Pan, especially when you consider “not all of those queries tested by Moz necessarily lead to voice search results.”

So, when you compare Backlinko’s voice search HTTPS results figure (70.4%) with Moz’s (79.8%), it actually suggests HTTPS is not a ranking signal for voice search, Pan explains.

“If it was,” he says, “the number from Backlinko would be higher than the average reported by Moz.”

3. Answer Length

“Google prefers short, concise answers to voice search queries. The typical voice search result is only 29 words in length.” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say: Matthew Howells-Barby, Director of Acquisition

“This makes a lot of sense to me,” says Barby. “Google is likely taking a very similar approach to sourcing voice responses as it does to Featured Snippets.”

That was the same conclusion we drew when it was announced Google would soon be incorporating more than one Featured Snippet in the SERP for more complex queries.

And that display of more Featured Snippets in the SERP could indicate a higher barrier to earning clicks, especially if the snippets answer the query sufficiently enough the user doesn’t need to look — or click — any further.

Marketers, for their part, would benefit from preparing for that outcome. “Content creators should be adding voice-ready — and featured-snippet-ready — snippets into their content,” Barby explains, “to make it as easy as possible for Google to surface the answer they need.”

4. Schema Markups

“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%).” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say

Here’s another finding that doesn’t come as a shock to Barby.

“Similarly to the length of answers being pulled into voice responses, the lack of reliance on Schema markup doesn’t surprise me,” he says.

He points to a recent HubSpot study that found the same thing to be true for Featured Snippets.

“It seems like Google prefers to rely on its AI to surface the right result,” he says, “rather than the creators of content.”

5. Authoritative Domains

“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.”  – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say

For reference, the Ahrefs Domain Rating measures “the strength of a target website’s total backlink profile (in terms of its size and quality)” on a scale of 0-100.

That scale is what Ahrefs calls “logarithmic,” which means the room for growth between Domain Ratings of 77 and 78 is much larger than one between 27 and 28. So, the higher the Domain Rating, the more difficult it becomes to gain another point or two.

The reason behind this high Domain Rating of Google Home result pages is smart speakers like this one only provide one answer to your question, rather than the SERP’s list of several.

“This means that Google needs to be extremely confident that they’re giving you accurate information,” the Backlinko report explains. “And to help ensure accuracy, the voice search algorithm may rely on domain authority over page authority.”

But that doesn’t mean small businesses who are still building backlinks and authority should give up on optimizing for voice search, Pan says.

“As someone who worked on SEO for the Fortune 500 companies, these large companies simply had the budget and talent to spend millions in content creation,” he says. “I suspect that sheer quantity of content — which is helpful for users — leads others to link to these big brands they trust.”

That doesn’t mean those brands are authoritative in their domain, per se, says Pan — and that the wider-spread brand recognition might be behind this “advantage in winning voice search,” he explains, which “is what’s causing the average voice search result to have a high Ahrefs Domain Rating.”

6. Social Sharing

“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.” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say

“I think that this is a classic case of simple correlation,” says Barby. “Google doesn’t use social shares to rank content. They’ll use social shares to improve crawling — just share a link on Twitter to see that — but not to determine authority.”

“The reality is that most content that gets large volumes of backlinks tend to also get large volumes of social shares,” he continues. “The backlinks will be the element that is moving the needle for ranking is search — not the social shares.”

7. Linguistic Simplicity

“Simple, easy-to-read content may help with voice search SEO. The average Google voice search result is written at a 9th grade level.” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say: Padraig O’Connor, Associate SEO Marketing Manager

When we prompt voice assistants to answer a question, we don’t exactly expect (or want) to be read a novel in response. That’s why Google Home, for example, often reads excerpts — or snippets — best summarizing the answer, then leaves a link to the full page in its corresponding app.

It would make sense, then, that Google Home selects the most concise answers that are easiest to read and hear, to allow for optimal listening comprehension. “Simple and easy-to-read content is ideal for voice search,” says O’Connor.

It goes back to the idea of growth within the idea of conversational marketing: the type that uses natural language to engage with users, even if there isn’t an actual human being responding to queries. 

“Most people converse in a language that’s easy to understand,” O’Connor adds. “Google wants to do the same with the searcher at the other end of Google Home.”

To address that, he recommends marketers write copy accordingly. “Marketers should ensure that their content is written in a language similar to the way people converse and search.”

8. Title Optimization

“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.” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say

“At HubSpot, we’ve found that optimizing existing content for new Google SERP features is much more effective than creating a net new piece of content,” O’Connor says. “Our best advice to publishers is to tailor their existing content for voice search, rather than create brand-new articles for voice search alone.”

You might be familiar with HubSpot’s historical optimization project, in which the type of work O’Connor describes is done internally. But he cautions against optimizing for a single type of search. While voice queries might be rising in popularity and volume, many still use other methods of discovering information.

“Ultimately, you want to solve for all types of search,” he says, “be it desktop, mobile, or voice — and not pigeonhole yourself to one particular type.”

9. Parallels Between Desktop and Voice Search Results

“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.” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say

Aha! So, O’Connor was right. Even though we expect to see a continued increase in voice queries, desktop still matters.

It goes back to what I noted earlier about the simplicity of any query answer that comes in the form of an excerpt or snippet. That’s one of the things Google has used to determine how to float and rank results: the combination of quality and relevance, even if it means displaying more than one Featured Snippet in the SERP.

As for Barby, these findings don’t come as a surprise.

“Ultimately, Google is still going to be relying on its core ranking factors to determine which of the many relevant results it should surface as the voice result,” he says. “The big difference in voice search is that there’s no longer a ‘page 1 of Google’ — it’s one simple result or nothing.”

10. The Featured Snippet: Full Circle

“Appearing in a Featured Snippet may help you rank in voice search. 40.7% of all voice search answers came from a Featured Snippet.” – Backlinko study

What Our Experts Say: Brittany Chin, Growth Marketer

Backlinko’s discovery of a correlation between the Featured Snippet and voice search responses is somewhat similar to its findings on positive outcomes for brevity and listening comprehension. As I noted before: That’s why Google Home, for example, will often read an excerpt — or snippet — that best summarizes the answer, and then leaves a link to the full page in its corresponding app.

Chin’s research corresponds to this finding. “In a majority of cases, Featured Snippets are there to answer question-based queries in the SERP,” she says. “Google is trying to surface the best and most direct answer to the question right within the results page, which is the same thing it’s trying to do with a question-based voice query — but only get one shot at the answer.”

Chin also notes the goals of the Featured Snippets and voice queries are essentially one in the same: “to answer a question.”

“As for Marketers and SMBs,” she continues, “the strategy for both is fairly similar –continue creating helpful content that answers your audience’s questions in a simple and understandable way.”

Featured image credit: “Google Home device in front of closed blinds” by NDB Photos, used under CC BY / Cropped from original

To understand how Instagram’s algorithm works, it’s important to consider the purpose behind it: the algorithm aims to delight you. If it doesn’t show you interesting and engaging content, you’ll exit the app.

The algorithm needs to keep you scrolling.

Prior to 2016, Instagram’s algorithm was pretty straightforward: posts were ordered chronologically, regardless of engagement. If I posted a picture of a vanilla latte 10 minutes after my friend posted a picture of her engagement ring, my picture showed up first.

But in March 2016, Instagram implemented a major change to the algorithm, pivoting away from the chronological feed and moving towards an experience based more on user engagement They explained, “People miss, on average, 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it has become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.”

The chronological algorithm couldn’t ensure you’d be continuously delighted. To keep you engaged, the algorithm started to take into account factors like which accounts you like best, which posts you engage with the most, and which posts were attracting the most likes and comments from your friends.

To help you better understand how Instagram’s current algorithm selects posts to display at the top of your feed, let’s take a look at the specific factors taken into account. Hopefully, this information will equip you to deliver higher-quality, more visible Instagram posts.

It’s All About Engagement

First off, let’s take a look at what happens the moment you post a picture on Instagram. Why do some of your posts stay at the top of your audience’s feeds for hours, while others, seemingly identical in quality, disappear from everyone’s feeds within minutes?

The answer is engagement.

How Instagram’s Algorithm Uses Engagement to Evaluate How Many People See Your Post:

1. When you first post a picture, it’s shown to a small percentage of your audience.
2. Instagram measures how quickly that photo is engaged with, commented on, and liked.
3. Instagram will compare the engagement your picture is getting to other posts you’ve shared at similar times and days. For example, is this Monday 10 a.m. post getting more or less traffic than last Monday’s 10 a.m. post? It would be unfair of Instagram to assume your post is less popular if it compared your post to another one you posted at a more popular time of day, so it compares similar times to ensure accuracy when it’s evaluating the quality of your post’s engagement.
4. If your photo is attracting a lot of engagement, Instagram will show it to a higher percentage of your audience, and maybe even surface it on the Explorer Pages.
5. If your post continues to attract a lot of engagement, your photo will stay at the top of your audience’s news feeds and reach more people.
6. If your photo doesn’t attract a lot of engagement initially, it will get pushed further down the page, and less of your audience will see it.

Relationships Play a Big Role

Now that we’ve explored how Instagram’s algorithm uses engagement to determine what percentage of your overall audience sees a post, let’s examine the factors that influence the order in which posts appear on a user’s feed.

Not only is this good to know from a business’s perspective, but it’s also interesting to know as a user. If you think you’re suddenly seeing too much of one person or one company on your feed, here’s why:

The Five Factors Instagram’s Algorithm Evaluates When Deciding How High Your Post Will be on Someone’s Feed:

1. Your relationship with the person. If you regularly comment and like a person’s posts, Instagram will understand you have a stronger relationship with this person, and will make sure you keep seeing this person’s posts.
2. Timing. Although your feed isn’t quite chronological, for reasons like “relationships,” it still wants to show you new and relevant posts; it won’t just keep showing you your best friend’s posts from three weeks ago.
3. Likes and comments. Although Instagram does not want the algorithm to become a popularity contest, it will consider how many likes and comments a picture has when deciding what to show you.
4. Direct shares. If you’re sending posts to your friend, it’s a sign you really like those posts, so Instagram will show you more in the future.
5. Profile searches. If you search for someone’s profile, Instagram has a clue that you want to see this person’s posts.

How to Get Your Posts Shown Higher on Your Audience’s Instagram Feeds

We’ve covered how Instagram’s algorithm works and which factors Instagram considers when deciding which posts to show you. Finally, let’s take this information and explore how you can use it to get your posts higher on your audience’s Instagram feed.

Tips for Getting Your Posts Shown Higher on Instagram:

1. Post your pictures when you know your audience is on Instagram (try using Squarelovin to figure out when your audience is most active).
2. If you have a business account on Instagram, check out your Instagram Insights page to see which of your posts are most popular. This is a good indicator of which types of posts you should replicate, and even which time of day attracts most engagement.
3. Create “human” posts your audience will enjoy and get value from. Instead of creating an advertisment for your business, consider what your audience will engage with.
4. Make Instagram Stories. Instagram takes note of this engagment, too (for example, if someone replays your story, comments or shares it, or votes on a poll, your business could show up in his feed next time).

There you have it! A full rundown of how Instagram’s algorithm works, which factors Instagram considers most important, and how to take all that information and use it to promote your brand in a stronger, better, more engaging way.

Every marketer has a story about getting penalized by Google.

Although many websites have evidently been punished (not just by big algorithmic updates, but also by one of the 400,000 tiny manual actions Google takes), the average marketer or webmaster hasn’t noticed when they have. According to Kissmetrics, only 5% of penalized websites are submitting a reconsideration request every month to recover their rankings.

Since we’re all reliant on search engines for traffic, we have to stay informed of the latest algorithm updates — and make changes if we’re subject to a Google penalty. Not only is it good practice to keep abreast of the latest patches, but it gives you a competitive advantage if you can optimize your content faster than other web domains.

Thankfully, there are plenty of tools and insights out there to help even the busiest marketer watch out for these silent traffic killers. Keep reading to learn about the latest Google search criteria, a handy Google penalty checker, and how to know if you have a Google penalty against your website.

Step 1: Review These Recent Google Algorithmic Updates

Google has a 15-year history of updating its algorithm, not just to reward the internet’s best content, but to deliver the most appropriate content for a given search query. For a glimpse of this intruiguing timeline, check out this infographic that breaks down the history of algorithm updates.

Below are some of the most recent and significant updates to keep in mind if you think your content is getting hit with a Google penalty:

Panda (2011)

There were updates before Panda, but this was the first massive pain in the neck for websites. Its purpose: to crack down on websites containing poor/error-laden content, excessive ads, and possibly primitive design.

This was rolled out in stages, and released its last patch in July 2015.

Secure Update: (2014)

As website hacking becomes more sophisticated and people are more aware of the risks, it is important to assuage those doubts by motivating webmasters to invest in SSL security, which affords domains the “HTTPS” at the beginning of the URL (as opposed to “HTTP”). This is critical if you require personal and financial details from your online visitors.

If not, Google may intercept a user with an “are you sure?” page if he or she clicks on an unsecured search result.

Mobilegeddon (2015)

Preference is given to websites that are “responsive” in design — or scalable to mobile devices. Unsurprisingly, having a website that is readable and navigable on a handheld device as well as desktop is preferred by visitors.

This update sounds more aggressive than Pengiun and Panda, but it’s super helpful to publishers who put mobile first.

Penguin 4.0 (2016)

Penguin first launched in 2012 as a way to combat genuine spam rather than sites that are legitimate but poorly made. Penalties focused on keyword stuffing, cloaking, link building … basically, any method you’ve heard of referred to as “black hat.”

As of 2016, its fourth version punishes bad links instead of the entire site — helping rehabilitate web domains that might still have good intentions behind them.

Intrusive Interstitial Penalty (2017)

Google opened 2017 by doubling down on its commitment to mobile. This update punishes websites with interstitial ads and other pop-out content that can hinder a page’s functionality on a mobile device.

Not every ad-heavy website will suffer, but those that severely affect the user experience can be the next to lose their rank.

These updates are not one-offs. They are reinforced every year to keep up with copyright violations, unwanted content campaigns, and similar black-hat techniques — and to make sure their searchers are increasingly satisfied with their results.

Step 2: Audit Your Website for These Black Hat SEO Failures

I know you don’t have time to examine every manual action Google has ever performed. I also know if you’re reading this, you probably want your users to have a good user experience.

With that in mind, here’s a brief list of things that might cause low website traffic due to a manual action Google took to further enforce its search criteria. Any one of these could help you determine if you have a Google penalty against your website:

• The majority of your content contains pop-out ads.
• Your content is keyword-stuffed.
• You have short-form content, often unedited for quality and errors.
• You haven’t localized site content that caters to global visitors.
• You’ve engaged in bad link-building practices to increase page authority:
  • “Cloaking” keywords across your page so users can’t see them.
  • Buying excessive backlinks to your website.
• Your content has inherited backlinks from adult, gambling, or otherwise low-quality pages.
• Your website doesn’t have a legitimate security certificate (HTTPS).
• You’ve republished content from other websites without permission.
• Your website has a high load time or poor appearance on mobile devices.

Step 3: Find Out If You Have a Ranking Problem

First of all, diagnosing the issue is key. Without knowing what Google penalty you’ve been hit with, you can’t optimize against it. Back in October 2014, for example, most people thought they were dealing with a Penguin update, but it was in fact an extended Panda update.

Here are a few tips to help you properly diagnose the issue:

Use a penalty indicator tool to find out what’s happened to your website in the past, and if you have yet to recover from it.

A fast and simple tool to drop this knowledge bomb on you is this succinctly titled Website Penalty Indicator.

This Google penalty checker from FEInternational can show you which of the major Google penalties hit you and at what point they reached your website. (Of course, to be cheeky, I tried out “www.google.com” to see what would happen.)

However, you’ll notice that this tool focuses on the most significant algorithm changes, and not all of the little manual ones in between. To examine those updates, you’ll need to follow the next step.

Use tools like SEMrush to find out if you’ve been penalized by one of Google’s updates.

By using tools like SEMrush, you can perform a complete site audit and check how your position has changed in SERPs, check your backlinks, and analyze your content.

Step 4: Identify the Google Penalties to Optimize Against

This section was contributed by Elena Terenteva, Content Strategist at SEMrush.

The best thing you can do for your website is to avoid penalties in the first place. Website owners who break SEO rules risk manual penalties or being seriously harmed by algorithm updates. When a website is hit with a penalty, it’s more than likely due to one of the following reasons:

• A lack of knowledge on behalf of the SEO specialist
• A purposeful violation of basic SEO principles
• The use of various black-hat techniques

But if you have been hit by a penalty, how you’ll figure out the root cause will depend on what kind of penalty it is.

If a website gets a manual penalty, the owner will be notified through Google Webmaster Tools and receive a letter explaining the reasons for its failure. This means the website owner will at least have an idea of how to recover and can begin working on the suggested changes.

If your website is hit by an algorithm change, the situation becomes slightly more difficult. You need to find a correlation between Google’s last actions and your website’s losses.

Don’t forget that website position and traffic losses can be caused by general problems and may have nothing to do with algorithmic changes. If you do find that you were harmed by a specific algorithm change, get all the information you can about that update so you can start to resolve the issue.

Of course, all of us want to avoid being hit by a penalty in the first place. If you want to be prepared, I recommend consistently running SEO audits. Here are a few things you can do:

• Remove or disavow unnatural or spammy links manually.
• Be sure that your anchor text is diversified.
• Get rid of all duplicate content.
• Create non-keyword-stuffed, quality content.
• Keep an eye on UX.

You can also see some of these tips for avoiding a penalty visualized in this infographic.

Remember that the best strategy is to avoid penalties before Google even crawls your content. SEO isn’t just about trying something new. It’s about constantly monitoring the success of your historical efforts.

Although avoiding penalties may seem like building a house of cards that may collapse at any minute … well, that’s kinda the way it is! That’s why it’s important to ensure that your website is up-to-date, helpful, and trustworthy.