If your SEO strategy hasn’t yet included voice search, you may be in problem. This is high time you need to adopt voice search optimization being an important strategy. The world is evolving at faster pace. People are actively involved in conversations not only with human but gadgets too. We can find people interacting with different gadgets and receiving responses.
The fact is that traditional search is being wiped out gradually by voice searches. It’s estimated that over 55% of searches being made are via voice search. Furthermore 40% of US users prefer voice search to ask questions. The takeaway is- voice search is turning into one of the fastest-growing types of search.
Voice Search Optimization Best Practices
Website content that’s optimized for voice search will always have an edge over the competitor in terms of visitor traffic and ranking. The article looks into multiple ways to create a solid and result oriented voice search content strategy.
Know Your Customer:
Like you religiously dive into data, location, and other metrics to formulate your standard search optimization strategy, voice search optimization as well requires in-depth research.
Marketers have to look into different factors to understand consumer behavior and different consumer insights. This is way useful to unearth many things about how your customers using voice search and what are the types of voice-enabled devices being used.
Turn Focus on Conversational Keywords:
The way you used keywords so far will be changed a bit with voice search. Now you have to be more inclined towards conversational keywords especially with voice search optimization. Short term key phrases won’t be of much help.
Marketers are required to use natural phrases while optimizing the queries for voice search. In this scenario, conversational long-tail keywords can be a game changer.
Focus on More Personalized Content:
When you’re creating content focused at voice search it should be aligned with brevity, context, and relevance. This content may be slightly different for the content written for your usual SEO strategy.
The content aimed at voice search optimization should have detailed answers to common questions and must answer questions in a clear and precise manner. Content must address your customer’s pain points. Whether it is voice search or a standard search strategy, only content rich and value adding webpage appeals to Google’s ranking algorithm.
Build FAQ pages for Conversational Queries:
Voice search queries generally starts with adverbs like “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why,” and “How.” A user that asks question needs an immediate answer. To answer these questions and provide precise answers you should create FAQ page and start your questions with these adverbs.
Now, write answer in a conversational tone using natural language. Furthermore, for best results, ensure that your website’s technical elements are free from glitches and your website loads fast.
Target Local and Mobile Users:
People are now more interested in shopping using their mobile phones. It’s estimated that over half of the product searches made by the users are via mobile phones. And most of those searches are related to the local stores, vendors and shops.
When optimizing for voice search, make sure you focus on both mobile devices and local queries. Be ready for providing users distinct mobile and desktop experience. Focus more on “near me” kind search queries.
Restructure Your Content:
As voice searches are getting more conversational marketers have to work more on restructuring of their content. This is actually helpful in making content more voice-search friendly. When it comes to voice search, short and concise answers are the key to right answers and improved engagement.
If you’re selling things, add FAQs on your product pages and blogs. Include keywords in the content. Google really loves FAQ-style format pulls content from website to present as a rich snippet.
Enhance Your Google My Business Listings:
Since voice searches include “near me” queries, your Google my business listing plays an important role hear. Technically a Google business listing is a way to tell Google that you conduct your business at a particular place. When a users searches Google to find similar business in that area your business could rank for that query.
So if you haven’t yet claimed your business listing, get it now to make it to voice search results. It’s also recommended to target local keywords in order to gain higher search rankings.
Focus on Content Readability:
Besides precise and well structured content, it’s also important to focus on content readability. Try to write a readable content that users can easily read and understand. Quality content with high levels of readability helps in ranking your content higher. Don’t use technical jargon while writing content. Additionally, use a natural and simple writing style to improve readability at scale.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.
