Google’s recent release of a new markup specification, the speakable schema, brings the digital technology to another leap. The term speakable currently points to the ability of Google Assistant and News to provide internet users with excellent results that fit their needs.
The new schema SEO is useful when asking for specific topics and news related to a particular brand or happening. The returned results are then read back by Google Assistant with speakable texts.
Google’s new feature is currently intended to provide users with a summary of a story’s key points but has a later possibility for expansion.
Available documentations from schema.org points out to the text to speech conversion of a news article and available online documentation supporting the new feature.
What is Google’s new speakable schema markup?
Current technology is heading towards speakable-friendly smartphones and gadgets supporting voice searches. Google’s speakable schema markup tool allows businesses to indicate content sections that support voice search technology.
This new Google algorithm will allow businesses to pick the most crucial information relating to their business, highlight such content, and give them better visibility to their intended audience.
This is similar to how featured snippets work only that the information is delivered via voice assistant that reads to your website content to the visitors.
The new Google speakable schema markup is currently in its beta version, which can only be accessed by news publishers. It also has a limited audience reach, exclusively servicing the US for now and only working with Google Home devices including the Google Assistant.
How does Google’s speakable schema markup work?
Similar to the traditional way we get our websites to rank, optimizing your voice searches require you to input significant information fragments featured in your SEO campaign.
It means sections of your campaign material can be optimized for voice search.
The schema helps Google’s algorithm determine the importance of your chosen content fragment with your specific niche, helping it rank in the SERP. Content that is found relevant by Google, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Home streamlines that information and finds a way of reading them back to your website’s intended audience.
The way Google pulls up that information is based on its sophisticated algorithm. News publishers, though, are solely responsible for selecting text fragments that they want Google to feature.
The search engine will determine how relevant the information is and how it relates to their user’s voice search queries before voicing it out.
The current setup of Google’s speakable schema is only accessible to news publishers, allowing them to highlight parts of a news feature in voice search optimization.
Though the technology is still in its early stages, news publishers have the option of presenting the most accurate answers to any internet user’s query.
In its initial state, Google’s speakable schema is a powerful way of obtaining information about recent news and current events.
There are several points to consider when having your content optimized for the speakable schema. Most of these requirements fall under the precepts of meeting the demands of current and possibly future inquiries.
- The topic should focus on one subject and storyline with understandable and relevant writing
- All the information presented in the publication must be accurate in all aspects and must be factual
- The text should not contain ad campaigns
- The content cannot contain vulgar words or hate speech directed towards a person or entity
- The news should include the author’s information, including the publication data and contact details
Speakable content is available to businesses creating content but is currently limited to news publications. The points highlighted are just some of the specifications for the new Google schema to ensure all new information meets industry standards.
How will the speakable schema affect SEO?
The tech industry continually shapes itself with innovations like the speakable SEO feature of Google to accommodate existing and future demands.
The rise of voice-enabled searches primarily impacts the search engine optimization landscape, making it more demanding for businesses to ramp up their website performance.
Speakable is still in its beta form, and there are currently no effects on a website’s SEO performance. But as the industry adapts voice searches, we can see speakability becoming one of the forefronts of ranking in the Voice Assistant tools.
As such, the speakable schema will have a tremendous impact on how we use the internet and search for information. This predicament will also be another burden for some companies as they start figuring how to provide better services to their customers.
More and more companies will fine-tune their website content, so it adopts the voice-friendly features of Google. It entails restructuring current content and shifting their market options to include voice-search enabled gadgets and devices.
How to prepare your business for the speakable schema markup?
In the meantime, speakable is still in its early stages. The tech giant continually tests and further enhances its speakable schema markup to strengthen its capabilities. Nonetheless, it won’t take long before companies, and their website starts feeling its effects.
Getting ahead of Google’s SERP race will give your company a better chance of landing the top spots considering your site is at par with the latest algorithm demands of most search engines.
Here are the best practices to implement so your website content meets with the future SEO demands or hire an SEO agency to make it easier:
- Create coherent and conversational statements on your website relevant to your business niche. This will help stay ahead with speakable-type technology and make it easy for you to determine which information effectively relays to your intended audience.
- Using short and understandable sentences makes them acceptable to your website visitors. Remember that most people have only a minute of attention span, and you want to capture your audience in that small timeframe to get their interests.
- Writing in a conversational voice tone is the best way to reach a broader scope of website visitors. You want your audience to get a full grasp of what you are offering, so a short, concise, and simple-worded statement will get them glued to what you are providing.
How do you use speakable markup?
To start using the TTS suitability of Google’s speakable schema, you need to follow four critical requirements set by the search engine.
- Following all guidelines, including the technical side, content, webmaster, and structured data protocol, is the starting point of enabling the audio playback capabilities of your website texts
- Include Google’s speakable structured data semantics into the code of your web page
- Test and approve your chosen structured data
- Submit the content for eligibility and onboarding process
What are the benefits of speakable schema markup?
There are a lot of undeniable benefits to using Google’s newest schema platform. Though the speakable SEO is available for an online publisher, for now, future expansions will include almost every business with a website.
Among some of the benefits of using the speakable schema include:
- There are better opportunities for improving SERP ranking positions
- A speakable schema improves brand recognition
- It increases the click-through-rates of your website
- Position your website for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa’s voice search
- Increase your website’s social media following
- Provide your audience with a sneak peek of what your content offers without looking at their device screens
Depending on your market niche, Google’s upcoming speakable schema offers your business with industry-related benefits. This includes getting more views for your music and videos, getting more job applicants on your page, or increasing the popularity of a specific product or service.
But all these benefits are what we can foresee in the future. The fact is, Google’s speakable schema is still in its easy concepts, and it is not clear whether the tech giant would put the feature outright. The Beta version of the new algorithm already allows news publications to read featured information off a webpage.
Conclusion
The future of speakable markup depends on how the general population will receive it. Adaption of the new schema would mean expansion outside of its current scopes to include all aspects of the web. Additionally, industry acceptance of this new schema will only be derived depending on how universally the markup is put to use.
And as voice search becomes an accepted method of looking for information on the web, we might see Google pushing the new schema into its existing ecosystem. Regardless if these search engine changes are seen as a threat to existing methods or an opportunity for advancement, we can look at it as an answer to the changing needs of internet users.
Emily Browne is a web content enthusiast with three years of experience in SEO writing. She can be found on Twitter @Emilyrownee.
