More and more people are inclining towards voice search because it is convenient and takes less effort to generate a search. Nowadays, it’s now more accurate and intuitive; you can get your voice assistant to read the headlines of a newspaper, play music/podcast, give an update about the weather, and much more with ease! Almost every smart device now has voice search assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant), and they are getting popular too.  

With the increase of voice search, websites need to be optimized accordingly to become more visible. If your website is not optimized for voice searches, your site will not be future-proof; the chances are that you are missing out on a lot of traffic. So, it’s high time to rethink SEO for voice search, keep up with the trend and get the desired traffic. Most SEO service providers or full-fledged digital marketing agencies offer optimization services for voice search. Below find the SEO best practices for voice search that will get your site more traffic.  

1. Answering the 5 Ws   

When voice searching, users ask questions like ‘where is the nearest ATM?’ or ‘what is today’s temperature?’. Your content should address these “W” questions “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why.” and meet the 5W search intent adequately. Alexa and Siri are programmed to provide answer-like responses to all requests, so keep the answers straightforward, brief, and conversational to be more relevant to voice searches.    

2. Optimize with longtail keywords 

Longtail keywords help optimize websites for searches; it’s also applicable for voice search. Voice searchers want precise answers to their questions so that they don’t have to waste time researching. If your website is optimized with longtail keywords, it will be easy to find the exact answers to the questions, ranking you high on search results. Forbes recommends keeping your responses limited to 30 words or less for a better result.   

3. Create conversational and voice-search friendly content   

When people search by voice, they make queries more conversational than while typing. For conversational queries, the format of the answers should be in a conversational tone. For optimizing a website for voice search, the content should be easy to read for an automated voice to interpret it clearly and reflect natural human interaction to human queries. Better to use informal and conversational tones while constructing the answers.  

4. Optimize for local search   

When users do voice searches, they mostly ask for real-time information based on locality. So, optimizing local search results will bring much better results. It’s essential to produce locally relevant content that responds to your people’s local demands. Optimizing local search is crucial if you own a business or offer services based on an area. 

5. Use structured data   

When people search for specific information such as operating hours, contact information, address, highway directions, facts, figures, etc., Google presents that information promptly. So, organizing data and content helps the voice assistants identify the answers and respond quickly. Schema markup, also known as structured data, is a way to organize data for search engines to retrieve information, recognize data and respond to queries rapidly.   

6. Ensure Google My Business Listing   

If you are a service provider, make sure that your business is listed on Google accurately. The common questions by the people will be regarding phone number, address, working hours, etc. Google must have precise information on these facts to identify and provide the relevant information to the searchers.   

7. Include mostly asked questions by voice searchers   

Create a FAQ section that includes the most asked/searched questions. Optimize your site for voice search by developing informative content that addresses those questions that will help you attract traffic. So, when a user asks the same question, the voice assistant answers quickly and gives a faster response. It contributes to a better user experience, and the appropriate content solves the audience’s issues, so your website gets more traffic.   

8. Optimize keeping customer’s devices in mind  

These days, most searches are done on mobile, whether it is voice search or search by typing. So, websites must be mobile-friendly to remain visible. People are making more queries using mobile devices to get information. Ensure that the information and directions to your business location, including XML sitemaps, are included in the website so visitors can get exact information on your place conveniently.  

9. Reduce page loading time 

A fast-loading page helps the voice assistants crawl and find the answers from your site. The speed of loading time is essential for optimizing a website; it’s also relevant for optimizing voice search. Removing the unnecessary plugins and cookies and avoiding redirects will make the site more SEO-friendly for better voice search results.    

Voice search has been on the rise for a few years. It revolutionized the way of searching information on the web. Tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have optimized their algorithms for voice search. To help you rank better for voice search, we have mentioned ways to optimize a website for voice search. I hope it works for you. Thanks for reading! 

AUTHOR BIO

Peter Cello is the SEO Team Lead at Akash Digital, a growth-focused digital marketing agency. He has more than 20 years of experience in web development, digital marketing and SEO. He is passionate about driving digital transformation to startups and small-to-mid-sized businesses through end-to-end digital marketing solutions.