Voice search optimization must be a part of your SEO strategy as it’s one of the most crucial digital marketing emerging trends. Voice search optimization is the process of optimizing the info on your sites so that it will appear in voice searches as well, as opposed to only written searches. 71% of people love to find the answers to their questions via voice instead of typing. That’s why it’s essential to optimize your site for voice search as it has become popular and common among users. With the technology advancement, voice search is becoming more trustworthy. The first three positions on search engine results pages are usually occupied by voice search results which is crucial for SEO.
Today, we are here to speak about voice search optimization tips that can help you rank higher and have a leg up on your competition. Let’s begin!
6 Voice Search Optimization Tips
Every month, 40% of consumers utilize voice search to purchase something. So, it’s not a secret that voice search optimization is a current trend that can help you drive more traffic, increase sales, boost brand awareness, and rank higher in search engine rankings. But how to do SEO for voice searches? Let’s dive into 6 voice search optimization tips to hit the jackpot.
1. Use Long-tail and Conversational Keywords
You must know that the person who types something into Google search and the other person who uses a virtual assistant to ask a question have different needs and behaviours. The first one has some time to conduct proper research to find the solution, while the second one needs an immediate answer to their question. So, you need to satisfy both types of people. However, today we’ll focus on those who use a voice command or speech to search for something.
The first strategy to rank for voice search results is by using conversational keywords, as your visitors use their everyday language for their queries. Marketers should consider incorporating a voice search strategy into their websites and focusing on conversational high-quality content to meet the current expectations.
Users commonly ask a whole question to their virtual assistants, instead of just one or two keywords. For instance, you may say “Hey Siri, how do I make a lava cake at home?” instead of saying “lava cake recipe” (which you may use when typing). So, users speak with their devices as they’ll do with their family members and friends. Also, users may be more directional to instruct their search devices what to perform (e.g. show me how to make a lava cake).
Consider what kinds of questions your customers may have about the content on your pages. For instance, other questions that your customers may ask are, “What do I need to make a lava cake?”, “What’s the best way to make a lava cake?”, and so on. If you are not sure what other questions your users may ask, you can type a question on Google and then look at the section of ‘People Also Ask.’
Digi-Tip: Customer insights and real-time data can help you delve deeper into knowing your clients and their behaviour, how they use voice search, and on what devices.
2. Make Your Website Mobile-friendly and Speedy
If you want to appear in mobile search results, you must provide a good mobile experience. In terms of voice search optimization and SEO, the mobile experience is essential for the success of your website. A mobile-friendly website helps you rank higher and generate more traffic. The majority of voice searches are done through mobile devices where it will take people to a website that matches their query. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, users will visit it and instantly leave since the page does not function properly on their device. Also, this is a clear indication to Google that your page isn’t worthy of being ranked.
Let’s see three essential tips on how to do SEO for voice search:
- Create a website that is mobile-friendly and check to see whether your site passes the mobile-friendliness test. Make sure your website is responsive, which means it can adjust to whatever device someone is using.
- Optimize website loading speed. Voice searchers want instant results, therefore if your website is slow to open and takes an age to load, your content will not be used to answer voice questions.
- Integrate relevant keywords for voice searches.
3. Optimize For Direct And Rich Answers
Google’s attempt to give speedy, precise responses to searchers’ inquiries without having them visit a website is known as a rich answer which is essential for voice search marketing. The featured snippet is displayed in a box at the top of the search results and they are designed to provide users with an instant answer. So, whenever your user asks “What do I need to make a lava cake,” you should give a precise answer, instead of explaining every small detail.
4. Optimize For Local Search
The next step to ranking for voice search is focusing on your local SEO. Local SEO is already an important aspect of digital marketing for many companies. It makes your company more prominent in Google’s local search results. You must regularly tell others that you are a local business and build local presence. People use voice search to find local companies. Your content must be relevant to your local area and you need to use local keywords. For instance, instead of using “lava cake cafe,” you can use local keywords such as “lava cake cafe in Toronto” or keyword “near me” in meta descriptions, internal links, anchor texts, title tags, etc. You can consider area dialect when choosing keywords.
Digi-Tip: For Google voice search optimization, open a GMB profile, where you can put all your company information, including your working hours, phone, address, etc. to help users easily locate your business when using voice search.
5. Optimize Content For Voice Search
How to optimize content for voice search? As voice search is more conversational than conventional searches, you need to examine your content to make it more voice search-friendly. As previously stated, you must utilize long-tail and conversational keywords, respond to inquiries directly, and more. Our content is better ranked when it is written precisely and at a normal reading level. Most importantly, you need to use Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on your product pages and blogs because they contain question keywords and are relatively brief. Both of these elements are necessary for voice search ranking. Google can easily grab content from your website and present it as a rich snippet thanks to the FAQ-style format.
Another voice search recommended practice is to use pointers to separate your information into little parts, which aids in higher ranking.
6. Have Structured Data
Whenever you use voice search to find an answer to something, your virtual assistant starts to read out the answer out loud. However, the information may be very long, so why does your voice assistant read only that specific part? Structured data or schema markup comes to the rescue. Schema markup is a type of code that you may add to your website to assist search engines to deliver more useful results to visitors. Rich snippets benefit from schema markup. The goal of schema markup is to help search engines find your site easily. This HTML add-on aids search engines in comprehending the context of your content, allowing you to rank higher in general searches and be more relevant in voice search inquiries. You can opt for voice search optimization services whenever you want to get the most out of your voice search SEO if you don’t have professionals in-house to do the task instead.
To conclude, use voice search optimization to enable greater exposure on search engines. You need to implement voice search optimization services in your digital marketing strategies so as not to stay behind your competitors.
Digilite’s dedicated and professional SEO experts are always here to provide the best SEO services and help your business have higher rankings and boost organic traffic. Get in touch with us today!
