Does Providing Audio Version of a Text Post Impact SEO?

In a Google Search Central SEO hangout episode, John Mueller has discussed whether providing an audio version of a text post impacts search ranking.

Recently, publishers have been adding audio recording to written posts, and that’s not surprising.

Adding an audio version of a text post is an accessibility feature for visually-impaired readers. Besides, it gives your reader another part of yourself — almost like having a conversation with you.

There’s also a belief that accompanying your written post with an audio version could improve search performance. So, the question popped up in a recent episode of Google Search Central SEO hangout.

The question to Mueller reads:

“Would adding an audio version of a page’s content help with search in any way? Other than the obvious accessibility improvement.”

In other words, does an audio version of a text-based web page improves SEO?

Here’s Mueller’s response.

Mueller on how Adding Audio Version of a Text Impacts Search Ranking

According to Mueller, providing an audio recording of your article doesn’t improve its performance on Search.

He went on to suggest that Google doesn’t process audio content separately. At most, the search engine might treat it as a piece of video content that could result in a video snippet.

Mueller explained:

“As far as I know we don’t do anything with audio versions of content. We also wouldn’t see that as duplicate content, so it’s not that you have to avoid that.”

Mueller was about to move on to another question when an SEO, Robb Young, asked again.

Young wanted to know whether adding an audio recording doesn’t do anything for SEO. “Is a page not seen as higher quality when it has text and audio as compared to just text?”

Mueller remained firm on his answer. He noted that Google doesn’t judge a page’s quality based on its multiple content types.

He said:

“I don’t think we would look at that and say: “oh there are different kinds of content here, it’s a better page because of that.”

However, Mueller noted that adding an audio recording of your text could encourage users to share your page.

Finally, the webmaster trend analyst hinted that adding images and videos to your page helps SEO. And that’s because these content types rank independently.

Meanwhile, audio content has no separate search ranking.

Read More: Google’s Mueller on Whether Tags Impact Search Ranking