Marketers and website owners have been continuously hearing for many years that voice search is the future of online search. That future is right here. According to reports, 71% of consumers prefer using the voice search feature more than typing text into the search box. 40.2% of Americans are already using voice search features. Over 66 million American households are expected to have a smart speaker in 2022.
Voice search is already big and if your SEO efforts have not kept up with it, this is the time to optimize your website for the future that is already here.
Find and use mid-tail and long-tail keywords instead of short keywords. With voice search, even long-tail keywords may fall short. It is recommended to target your audience’s questions. When people make queries using Google Assistant, Alexa, or Siri, they are all in the form of questions. Use questions and full phrases normally used during human conversations. There are powerful keyword-finding tools to help you find the most relevant, high-volume queries.
It is recommended to create a FAQ section on your website to boost voice search SEO.
Every day, almost 50% of voice search users are looking for information about local businesses. This means voice search is more local-friendly, requiring you to get your voice results on the top. The Google My Business profile is available for free and is easy to create. Once you sign-up for your listing, you will have a powerful SEO asset.
It is also important to localize your experience by relying on marketing metrics and targeting the right areas. It is recommended to use the following steps to optimize for local search:
Voice search displays the top search results. This also includes Position 0. So, it is no longer enough to be number 1. It is important to know that over 40% of voice search results are from featured snippets.
Featured snippets are there to answer questions right within the search results, without the need to click through a website. What voice search does is to ‘speak out’ the featured snippet result to a searcher. If you have created a FAQ page, it will address most of these requirements. Both voice search and featured snippets like short and brief answers to questions asked by users.
It is highly likely that you have a wide range of visitors who can speak multiple languages. You should create content that they can search, find, and find useful. When it comes to voice search, your content translations need to be perfect. Whenever a voice assistant reads your content, your website should sound to be an authority source. It is further recommended to follow Google’s guidelines for the management of multilingual websites.
Voice search is different from standard SERPs in that it is focused on a single website for querying.
27% of global online voice search is made on mobile devices. If your website is not optimized for mobile, searchers are going to land on other websites. The following are important for mobile SEO:
A helpful and informative video can be a better answer to a query than a piece of text-based copy. You may already have videos that are helpful to your target audience or you can create new ones. Videos are also useful for voice search.
Google is now capable of isolating sections of a video relevant to user requests. However, it is important to ensure such videos rank high. You can make your videos rank high and appear in voice search using the following tips:
While using these strategies, it is important not to fall behind on regular SEO. Focusing on creating high-quality content and using traditional SEO strategies also tends to work well for voice search SEO. This is the reason websites with higher rankings, higher social engagement, and high domain authority tend to rank better in voice search.