Thanks to the enhanced abilities of voice recognition technologies and the growing number of people being able to interact with them with the use of smart speakers, voice search has become a crucial part of digital life. Although exclusive to a small percentage of users, when safeguarded by passwords, today’s voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri are changing many searchers’ habits of interaction with search engines. No longer searching with manual typing, this hands-free searching demands that businesses find new means of appearing where users still are searching. Soon, over half of all searches will be done via voice. How can you optimise for the change?
Typically, voice searches are longer than text-based searches because they sound more conversational in nature. User queries are often phrased as questions so the same keywords that were effective before voice search is the same as identifying peaks in the Niederberger et al. approach.’ Several other reports have analysed the rise in conversational keyword phrases. However, it’s not just about keywords when it comes to voice search. If users are asking questions, then the experience – answer or otherwise – needs to be different from a traditional search engine results page (SERP). So voice search optimisation will need to address some new challenges for businesses: using the right conversational keywords, answering user questions, and delivering an overall richer user experience. In the following paragraphs, I’ll discuss the most recent voice-search optimisation sciences, and explain how businesses can adapt their content approach for a voice-first world.
Understanding the Rise of Voice Search and Its Impact on SEO
Step 1: Understand why voice search is a top trend for SEO If you’re not yet familiar with voice search, here’s the short of it: more people are asking for things online, using more natural language, and now they are able to do it hands-free, speaking directly to a device. In the era of smart devices and virtual assistants, searching the web has never been so easy or accessible and, as a result, voice search is growing in popularity. This means that SEO strategies now have to adapt to better cater to the conversational focus that has become a key feature of voice search. A voice search often ends up on a device as a longer and more natural phrase, compared with a standard search keyword.
There’s another emerging challenge for those trying to optimise their listing among the others from voice-activated queries. For this, search engines have to start dealing with much more natural-language processing (NLP) for interpreting user intent. The more complex and nuanced questions people ask, the more likely they will get a more nuanced answer, relevant and sounding like something a human would say. This, according to one report, ‘has led to businesses creating content that attempts to predict long-tail, conversational queries, and answer them in depth’ and ‘the end of short-tail keywords is fast approaching’.
Adapting Content for Conversational Keywords
This is one of the best strategies for optimising content for voice search. Humans speak differently than they type. Because users speak words into a device, our subconscious makes us take on a more natural conversational tone. Often, when people use voice search, it’s as a full question, rather than as individual search terms strung together. For example, a typed search for a restaurant might be ‘best Italian restaurant New York’. But a search through voice could be: ‘What’s the best Italian restaurant near me in New York?’ Because our brains don’t formulate voice search the same way we do typed search, this means businesses have to make sure their content answers questions or phrases the same way they’d phrase these things in everyday conversation.
Businesses preparing content for these sorts of query-based conversations should endeavour to make their content easily accessible, as they may answer the question directly and in-depth somewhere on their site. Clearly defined FAQs on a key landing page is a great way of answering any questions a user might put to a voice search specifically. Content should also feel conversational – Wordtracker’s Content Analyser tool examines how the human-sounding parts of a page sound like a human saying that sentence, and reports a percentage score to help with gauging content quality. A more conversational tone will help in terms of how people arrange and search for content on sites. If you build your web pages with headings and subheadings matching the sorts of questions voice searchers might ask, your site will be more likely to engage users in a productive way, and also rank highly for those specific voice queries.
Utilizing Schema Markup for Enhanced Search Visibility
A useful strategy to optimise for voice search through structured data or schema markup. Schema markup gives search engines more context about the content on a page, which can then inform rankings in search. For voice search, it’s especially important to use schema markup as this is the best way to give search engines added context to queries and answers when they’re answered by voice. Schema markup also increases the likelihood that your content will be quoted as a featured snippet, which is often the source of information that’s used when a virtual assistant responds to a voice query.
This allows business owners to specify if they are closed, when they are open, where they are located, what their products are, and many other elements. The benefit of these additional details is that search engines will be better equipped to answer specific questions from the actual user. So, for example, as a pizza place, if your calorie information is listed in schema, and someone asks for the calorie count of a cheese pizza in their region, your listing will have a much greater opportunity to show up at or near the top of the voice search results! Second and equally important, by using schema markup, your content will tend to return more structured, or concise, answers. While this doesn’t necessarily have a direct impact on voice search opportunities, it does play a significant role in shaping the way search engines perceive the data providing more top opportunities for any type of search. Various research has shown that how a search query is worded and structured will greatly shape which content appears first in organic rankings. By using structured data, you significantly improve a business’s chances of showing up as a featured snippet at the top of the search results, often appearing on page one and ‘above the fold’ by the first search. This is phenomenal for users, because featured snippets elevate your SEO and provide clear answers to the search query, which will ultimately elevate your business’s ranking on search engines, draw more users to your website, and increase overall engagement, or your Click-Through-Rate.
The Role of Local SEO in Voice Search Optimization
The importance of local SEO can not be overemphasised, especially as more and more people use voice commands to find services in their area. Voice commands are often phrased as local queries – they will say things like ‘near me’ or ‘in [a specific city or neighbourhood]’. A potential search might sound like: ‘Where is the nearest coffee shop?’ Yours should be the answer they get to that search if you do local search optimisation correctly, and if you do that, you’ll be helping them find your business in person, immediately. Make sure your business is listed on Google my Business and in other comparable venues.
The local SEO efforts for voice search will push your business to make sure that all the location-based information is consistent and updated. Your address, phone number, business opening hours must be making visibility to users and search engines. Optimising your business for local searches requires a focus on what people in your location are searching for. Adding local content in the form of blogs or service pages can also create more local relevance for your business. This too is an integral local search ranking factor for voice searches. Hence, the businesses trying to optimise their website for local searches will define better chances of featuring in location-relevant voice searches.
Optimizing for Mobile and Page Speed to Enhance User Experience
Naturally, considering that the majority of voice searches are done through mobile devices, making your website mobile-friendly is part and parcel of voice search optimisation. Mobile-friendly sites ensure the best user experience when your pages are accessed via mobiles. And this, in turn, impacts your ranking. And because voice search users often need a quick answer to a question, your page speed will have a huge impact on retaining those users and giving them information quickly. If users have to wait for ages for your page to load, that will just lead to a high bounce rate, which, in turn, will impact your SEO.
In order to boost the mobile friendliness of your website, think about reconsidering its design on sites such as WPTemplate.com. A responsive design will mean a website which can adapt to different screen sizes, ensuring that your site displays properly on every device. In addition, optimising the size of the images and scripts on your pages will help to increase page speed and display your content faster. There are tools you can use to test your website, such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. By utilising mobile optimisation and fast page speed, you will increase your ranking on mobile search results and ensure a more positive user experience. This will also make it easier for voice search engines to provide the results you want.
Creating Content that Targets Featured Snippets and Quick Answers
Perhaps the most valuable position in voice search results is ‘Position Zero’, formerly known as the featured snippet – the short response that appears at the top of Google’s search results, and that is spoken by your voice assistant in response to your query. By designing your content to answer questions, and structuring it to answer those queries in a way that stands out from other search results – bullets, tables, short paragraphs – you can improve your chance of being selected as a featured snippet on the page.
Also, voice search answers tend to be pulled from content that answers questions in a few, short sentences. Long-winded explanations won’t fare well over content that answers the question right off the bat, followed by a bit more context to support it. Focus your web content for business on ‘how-to’ guides, lists and articles that make for an easy pick to convert into a featured snippet. Targeting this snippet will bump you up on the ladder to being featured in voice search responses.
Conclusion
As voice search continues to grow, businesses must evolve to meet the changing dynamics of how users search for information. Adapting content for conversational keywords, utilizing structured data, optimizing for local and mobile search, and targeting featured snippets are all essential strategies to maintain visibility in voice search results. The conversational nature of voice search presents unique opportunities for businesses to engage with their audiences in more meaningful ways, providing direct answers to user queries and enhancing overall user experience.
In this new era of search, businesses that prioritize voice search optimization will be well-positioned to stay ahead of the competition. By embracing these techniques and continuously adapting to new search trends, companies can ensure they remain relevant and accessible to the growing number of users relying on voice search.
