Stop me if you’ve heard this before: tales of voice assistants giving directions to the trendiest veterinary practice whilst being asked for takeout cuisine options. Voice search was the gawky newcomer in school, all parts quirky and semi weird: thought of as clunky and of meagre stock by most consumers. That may not be the case anymore.
With tech behemoths putting up gobs of financial and technical capital in R&D as far as enhancing the performance of voice companions, tech firms are anticipating monolithic gains from making substantial inroads in the voice search landscape. Markedly, with noted high volume sales of smart speakers and voice search integrated mobile devices.
Voice queries are expected to constitute an ever-growing segment of total online searches well into the 2020s and beyond, with notable survey data showing that the use of voice search among all significant demographics is projected to rise as well.
Here are some ways you can optimize voice search for your website:
- Enhance Mobile User Interface & Load Times
- Typical Optimization – Long Tail Keywords
- Use conventional language patterns
- Establish Situational Relevance with Schema Mark up
- Optimize Metadata on Your Site
- Include FAQ pages
- Use Keyword Research Tools
Enhance mobile user interface & load times
Ostensibly, the continued evolution of voice search has made the mobile front even more critical. Over half of all the 3.5 billion daily queries made on Google in 2017, north of 20%, were performed through voice search. In light of which, the marketing infrastructure is beginning to take seriously the implications such volume of search queries made via voice companions has through the lens of SEO.
With a large proportion of voice searches done in transit, it becomes even more pertinent to strategically gear your content for mobile devices such that it can rank higher on voice search listings. To this end, there’s one handy test you can use to gauge your website’s mobile compatibility. The compression of images and JPG files reduces loading times. Moreover, you’d be better placed to eschew the use of a Flash plugin as it lacks support from a number of mainstream mobile browsers. Consequently, when queried, your website will poll higher than most. However, this may require you to find tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights that are very useful for monitoring page speed issues. Moreover, they provide recommendations on ways of solving them.
Voice search has a unique draw from conventional type queries with its ease, greater personalization, and mass appeal. Consequently, it has become imperative that marketing agencies understand their effects on their SEO projects. Keeping your eyes peeled on the latest trends gives the advantage of positioning your online portfolio to stay ahead of the curve and improve your click-through rate and subsequent conversion.
Topical Optimization – Long Tail Keywords
With voice search being engulfed by the wave of mainstream appropriation, shorthand keywords are losing relevance and significance. Type search is shorter, terser as compared to longer phrases and conversation syntax-based format of voice search. Nobody tells Siri, “Life, meaning” when stuck in unending traffic. The goal is to reconstitute old, primarily short keywords into a prompt ready voice search sequence. “Siri, what is the meaning of life?”
The rising notoriety of voice search has prompted a concerted need to incorporate conversational, long-tail keywords in the pursuit of SEO optimization. For this reason, you should have keywords that describe your product features and benefits as detailed as possible and involve proper phrases or sentences.
Use conventional language patterns
Nobody speaks the way they type, particularly when looking for something on the web. Conventional language signals intent more purposefully. When you speak, it’s more likely that you’ll use the complete question. For this reason, it is growing more important for voice search and SEO to pick up on users’ natural speech patterns.
Continued under the hood tweaking of voice search programming has seen the word error rate post a consistent decline from above 20% to a lowly 8% and falling still. So yes, keep trying to find Greece’s most beautiful grease, or perhaps whether whales frequent the coast of Wales. You might find out. Voice companions are getting better at telling what’s what. Marketing strategies in voice search SEO are primed to change to reflect this.
Establish Situational Relevance with Schema Markup
Getting up to speed with schema markup is of paramountcy. A search engine augments and assists in processing the context of the content in your portfolio. This helps you list higher in regular searches and aids in your relevance attribute with regards to particular queries made using voice search.
Optimize Metadata on Your Site
Ascertain that things such as sitemaps and brick & mortar locations are available to user and search engine traffic on your site. Moreover, ensure your Google My Business profile is requisitely filled with your details, including description, working hours, name, address, and phone number. Voice search traffic and indeed all search traffic usually look for this information.
Include FAQ pages
Make certain that your site has a web page that answers as many potential queries about your product or business as possible. Typical voice queries take the way of ‘5Ws & H’. Who, what, when, where, why, and ‘how.’ Ergo, your web page can sustain a high rating with search engines because people will have immediate needs that can be satisfied by concise answers streamlined by the presence of a FAQ page. Begin every query with those adverbs, and proceed to answer them conversationally.
Use Keyword Research Tools
Popular ones such as Rank Tracker have autocomplete features that help you to finish out your query and provide different form fill alternatives that you might not have contemplated asking. The questions should be predicated on your FAQs list to aid your search engine ranking further.
In Summary
Voice search is poised to be one of the new faces and frontiers of SEO on all levels. The optimization techniques heretofore mentioned are proper steps in catching and riding this growing wave to the fortunes of an unknown tomorrow. That gawky newcomer has just become captain of the football team and is taking the prettiest girl in school to prom. Best get on with the program.