In the past few years, the way people search for information on line has shifted significantly from text-only searches to an increasing numbers of voice searches.
Nowadays, people are increasingly using voice search using their phones, voice assistant, tablets, etc.
Today, most of the searches are performed using mobile devices, and many of those searches are done via voice search. If you are a marketing professional, you need to optimize for voice search or risk falling behind.
Table of Contents
What is Voice Search Optimization?
Voice search optimization is a method of optimizing your pages to appear in top voice search results. It is becoming very popular, and this search technique seems to be more natural and conversational in tone. Voice search is most often used on mobile devices than any other devices.
Voice search popularity is rising because of the following reasons-
- Makes searching the web quicker and more efficient
- Offers the ability to perform multi-tasking
- Makes searches easy for people
- Gets answers and information to users’ queries quickly
How To Optimize for Voice Search?
Voice search optimization is the same as a search engine optimization technique. The optimization methods vary, but the intent remains the same.
Follow these techniques to make voice search optimization successful.
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Keywords Research for Google Voice Search
Find out the keywords that can be posed as a question in the search box and target your business’s services and products. Because while searching via voice assistant, users think as they interact with a human and not a search engine.
Target long tail keywords because people don’t use short keywords for posing a question. They use longer, more natural phrases.
The keywords selected are more about real speech and less about the keywords we used to target in SEO. Think and try as many different long-tail keyword variations as possible.
Use a tool like Answer the Public for finding the right keywords.
This tool will provide you with many keywords that will dig you deep into searcher intent. You can also find search queries using the search console tool. It will help you get and idea of how to develop your long-tail keywords.
After having a list of keywords, you can create the pages to target those long-tail keywords.
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Create Content Considering User intent
User intent is all about the reason “why a person typed that query.”
Sometimes the intent is clear, but sometimes it isn’t. Consider the intent of users creating your site’s content. This way, users will find your page relevant for specific voice search queries.
Since the voice search queries are mostly in question format, the title of your content should be in question format, and the content should be in the answer format.
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Featured Snippets
Featured snippets appear at the top of Google search results. They matter a lot in voice search results. To optimize your pages, the goal is to have them appear in featured snippets because the voice assistant pulls the answers from there.
So, if you want to rank for voice search results, you should focus on creating such content in featured snippets with the hopes of showing up in Google search results.
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Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
As you know, most of the voice searches are done through mobile devices; therefore, make sure to optimize your website fully for mobile devices.
If your website is fully optimized, then there is a good chance that your website will appear in the top voice search results of Google.
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Structured Data
Another great way you can use customer data to inform your SEO efforts is to create a FAQ page that focuses on the long-tail phrases. Try to group general questions on the same page, and write as long as possible.
If you need to make a few pages to sound more natural, continue with that approach. You want search engines to have the best opportunities to attract answers/information from your site, so anticipate direct, long-term questions.
At the beginning of each piece of content, you also have to add some quick answers to meet Google’s rich snippets requirements. Like this article, for example, when we kick things off by asking “What is voice search optimization?”
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Page Speed
Ensure that the page loads fast, because this factor will influence your page’s appearance in voice search results.
Page speed optimization is essential for voice searches. Analyze your website speed using the PageSpeed Insights tool.
This tool will help you evaluate your website’s current speed and give you suggestions to make it faster. Mobile speeds are critical for your success, and people searching on mobile devices are looking for answers extra quickly.
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Local SEO
According to a bright local report, 58% of people use voice search to search for local businesses.
For example – people using voice search to discover “restaurants near me” or “pizza near me” or “pizza for home delivery.”
Use local keywords and optimize your website for local searches so that they appear in voice search results. The search robots use the business citation information, and to get the data from the business listing, you have to create a Google My Business page for your business.
Add all the information about your business and make the profile fully optimized.
Final Words
People have used voice search broadly – and its popularity will only grow dramatically in the coming years.
Website owners who have started voice search optimization will significantly increase their content visibility because the sound search results are increasingly narrow for the top page.
Follow the tips in this post to ensure you are one step ahead of your competitors when it comes to voice searches.
If you are still not sure about the implementation of this technique, then take the help of someone (or a group/agency) offering professional SEO services.
Experienced SEO experts will help you optimize your website for voice search and give a boost to your search results.
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- How To Optimize for Google Voice Search? - January 21, 2021
