A Quick Guide to optimizing your website with voice search

How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

In ancient times, when robotics was new to the world, talking to a robot was no less than science fiction and fantasy. But, in today’s era, asking a voice assistant has become so common that you will end up using their services for finding the nearest bar, restaurant, park, and even your socks (joking!). Life has become so dependent on robot assistants today, which makes it quite evident that voice search is the future of online searches.

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You might have often heard people saying Hey Alexa, play my favorite music or Hi Siri, tell me some five-star hotel names or any other random query. Voice searches have become quite popular today because you do not have to take the pains of typing your query and can go hands-free even to seek answers to your quests. Moreover, talking to voice assistants seems more like talking to someone in real.

It is believed that 71% of people use voice search compared to regular typing search, which is predicted to increase in the coming days. So, how do you get those audiences on your website when they say OK, Google? “By voice search optimization.” Read on to find out how voice search technology can help and the best practices to get your website optimized to voice search:

What is Voice Search Optimization?

Voice search optimization can be thought of as a process that aims at improving the online presence of businesses by incorporating techniques that can help you appear on the top pages when a user does voice searches. The primary motto of such an optimization technique is to get selected by Google voice assistants when a user reads aloud a question to get answers to his/her query.

Why is voice search optimization the need of the hour?

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As laymen, we all know that implementing SEO techniques can help you gain a top spot in Google ranking. Thus, it is easy to get a question hitting our minds as to why there arises a need for voice search optimization when SEO techniques are enough to handle all the requisites of landing on top pages. Well, the answer is that though SEO has the powers of higher rankings, voice search has some additional powers that can get your website additional benefits. When explaining why voice search optimization is necessary, For a more in-depth look at SEO techniques, Shopify SEO Guide – A Complete Checklist for Website Owners.

Voice searches are casual and interactive and are more closely related to how we talk regularly to our friends or anyone in the world.

For example, when we have to search for a restaurant nearby while typing text, we will write a phrase that ends with “restaurants near me.” On the other hand, while performing a voice search, we would rather say, “What are some good restaurants near me,” or “Name some good restaurants near me,” or anything similar. With voice searches becoming more popular, search engines are also now focusing on picking longer sentences and conversational sentences for producing results.

Moreover, the algorithms are also being updated, keeping the users’ search intent as central and aiming at decoding the user queries’ underlying meaning. This aids in producing relevant answers to the voice queries. Thus, it has become vital for businesses to include more conversational content that proves to be relevant for voice searches. Failure to do the same and transform your website into a space that adapts to the latest changes can result in a backlog and refrain your website from ending up at the top spot.

Best Practices for voice search optimization

With Alexa and Siring battling to gain a dominant spot as the major voice assistants, Voice searches have become a pretty common practice and are all set to go a long way. Such searches can escalate your online presence and also earn you some traditional SEO benefits. Here, we pen down how voice search practices can help:

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1. Use a conversational tone at your power

Voice searches are prone to be in a conversational tone. Thus, writing your content with a conversational and chatty approach is always a good idea to rank higher in voice searches. Avoiding too much technical language and focusing on incorporating a casual touch adds value to the content, but make sure that you do not compromise on the quality.

Such content written in a casual and approachable tone appears to be more authentic and assures easy readability and understandability to the readers. Such writing styles stand to be more relevant for voice searches, and thus, integrating words like I, you, me, us, we, etc., can help in supporting the mission of achieving a conversational tone.

2. Ensure that your website is mobile-optimized

In today’s era, more than 50% of internet users gain access to the internet facilities using their mobile phones. Hence, it is easy to conclude that your website should be mobile-optimized to end up in the searches of internet users who wish to seek an answer to their queries. It helps you stay ahead of the competition and offers better conversion rates.

Also, it is believed that 27% of mobile users who use the internet over their phones prefer using voice search. In order to enhance the user experience and rankings, it is imperative that you embrace mobile-friendly and responsive designs for your website. Such an approach also offers high-end loading speed and can get your readers accurate data within minutes, which may also increase the chances of your content going viral. In the part about mobile optimization, Mobile optimization is a critical aspect of web design. Learn more in our article on signs that your website desperately needs a redesign, 11 Signs Your Website Desperately Needs a Redesign.

3. Usage of Schema Markup

Schema Markup is structured data and is a language or, you can say, a semantic vocabulary code that is used by search engines for reading and understanding the content available on the website. Schema Markup is a code that is added to the HTML of the websites that attains more detailed results such as business information, working hours, contact information, pricing, address, reviews, and a lot more.

Schema markup is not visible to us humans but helps the bots to gain a better understanding of the content you post on your website. It helps in recognizing and categorizing the content, which can further bring the best results not just for voice searches but your regular SEO, too. When discussing the importance of Schema Markup To understand how structured data can enhance user experience, read our post on the distinctions between web design, UX, and UI design.

This yields better search results and more clicks. It is because search engines are more prone to find such websites relevant, paving the way for such websites to appear on the top pages of Google and better chances to show up in Voice searches.

4. Up your game for earning Google-featured snippets

Google Featured Snippets are short texts that you might have seen appearing at the top results of Google search pages. These snippets have the power to answer the queries of the user in a short and quick manner. These quick answers are actually pulled off from the content of websites that appear on Google pages. It can appear in any layout and design, such as a paragraph, bulleted list, or any other format.

So, what you can see is a short answer followed by a link below that leads to the website of the business, as you see in the “People also Ask” segment. These snippets help the users instantly get answers to their queries and are specifically helpful for users searching on mobile phones.

How can featured snippets help?

If your website is able to capture such a snippet place, your business is prone to witness a traffic boost and can bring success. Additionally, when people do a voice search, if there persists a featured snippet that has answers to the user query, the Google Assistant will deliver the snippet as the answer. Thus, every business should aim to capture featured snippets to increase click-through rates, traffic, and conversions.

5. Keep your site fast

In today’s fast-moving world, your website should also load up with lightning speed. A speedy website can prove to be a game changer and should load within a span of two to three seconds. If the time taken to load the website page exceeds the specified time, it may affect the user experience and also downgrade the performance of your website.

You might be wondering why the loading speed of a website matters. It is because when an internet user hits a website and it does not display its content with a Husain Bolt speed, there are chances that the user may simply give up and jump to another website for details that can open as quickly as a wink. Nobody likes waiting, and people do not hold their patience while surfing the internet.

Why fast speed websites?

On the contrary, when your website follows the express mode, the users are likely to stay on your website for longer. Hence, a speedy website is the magic ingredient for your website success story. It not only gets you better rankings on Google but also makes the users happy, and there might arise a chance of converting your audience into customers.

Just like being mobile-optimized is essential for your website, page load time also forms an important parameter that has a direct relation to your website ranking. After all, nobody likes to waste their time on a website that runs slow, and Google makes sure that it can help its viewers happy by ranking those websites on top that load within seconds.

6. Emphasize local SEO

Local SEO helps enhance local businesses’ visibility, especially businesses with a physical presence. Local SEO stands to be vital for businesses that require targeting nearby potential customers to gain conversions for their business. Also, this strategy takes the lead as one of the most productive strategies in optimizing your business for voice searches.

Local SEO can be enhanced in multiple ways, the best one being creating a Google profile for your business. This helps your business gain a better online presence when your audience makes searches using keywords like “near me.” Such keywords can help your profile show up in your business landscape and give the users a better idea about your place of business, working hours, and other contact information.

Local SEO increases your visibility in the local market, and you are more likely to show on top if your local SEO game is well executed. But, make sure that your business is updated from time to time and provides correct data about your business. It is because your Google Business profile, many times, is the only way your target audience can get to know about you and hence should be accurate and error-free.

7. Focus on long tail keywords and keywords with questions

Voice searches are prone to be lengthy in comparison to regular text searches. Such searches tend to be more specific and longer. It is because when we speak, we tend to elaborate in detail and have a tendency of using longer sentences and bigger questions.

Also, if you see it from the other angle, you will notice that when we have to write, the chances are we will feel too lethargic to write longer sentences, while when we have to just say it loud, we can go on and on until and unless we hit a site that can solve our queries. This is because speaking requires less cognition in comparison to typing.

How can you gain an upper edge to optimize your website for voice search?

By the “usage of question keywords and long tail keywords.” Long tail keywords comprise three to four words and play a vital role in keyword optimization. They have the power to pull in high traffic owing to their ability to be more closely related to user queries and also reduce competition for your website to rank higher.

Practicing such a technique can get you traffic from the audience who end up making specific and extended queries. You can also consider including a FAQ section in your content that is inclusive of the commonly asked questions in concern with the products and services offered by your website to attain better results.

So, get started by searching for questions such as what, where, how, when, etc., and include the same in the subheads of your content to give satisfying answers to your audience. Also, you do not just have to follow your instincts to come up with the most probable question keywords. There are many keyword research tools; people also ask sections and related searches that can help with such a move. It can help you get relevant question keywords to aim at your best to gather an audience on your website.

How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

What is Voice Search Optimization?

Why is voice search optimization the need of the hour?

Best Practices for voice search optimization

1. Use a conversational tone at your power