Initially, voice search began with Apple in 2011, when Siri was released. However, today voice search is commonplace, and day by day its user base is mobile app base is growing rapidly. According to Google, voice search so hot right now!!
Based on search rates, 55% of teenagers and 41% of adults were already using voice search on Google with the help of a voice search system. As more gadgets are reliant on voice, so website owners are also focusing on voice search while creating content for Search Engine Optimization. If you worked on voice search for your website then you can easily provide an answer to users’ needs, which will definitely help to increase traffic to your landing pages. Every searcher is a hunger for faster answers and the voice search serves this need and is an attractive alternative to a web search.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the optimization of web content for more visibility and higher ranking on various search engine results. SEO is very crucial for your website to drive traffic and convert sales. In driving traffic and converting sales, contents are very important. Contents, in this case, include videos, audio, images, and web pages. For example, you can optimize your content for YouTube SEO by optimizing your metadata, content description, playlists, etc, for more visibility on YouTube search.
What Is Voice Search?
You must have been seeing people speaking to their smartphone devices and getting voice responses from those devices. That is more like what you can do with voice search. But hey, what is voice search?
Voice search is the use of speech on smart devices to either give commands or ask questions. The smart device then performs the required task or returns the appropriate answers to the searcher’s question. The device returns the result to a search by reading it out and leaving a link to where the answers are extracted from.
Voice search is a technology that allows you to speak to your device rather than typing in order to perform some tasks. People use voice search to check the time, read messages in their inbox, check the news, get weather updates, view locations, get the direction of location, etc.
Voice search work by processing the searcher’s speech (human speech) after first transcribing it to text form, analyze questions and commands, then connect to search engines, websites, Wikipedia, and other data sources for the information or answers to the questions or give commands, and then finally returns the processed information back to the searcher.
Now that we have answered the question, what is voice search? Let’s look at some of its importance.
How to Optimize Voice Search for SEO in 2020?
As we all know, Google has already indicated that voice search is a rapidly growing form of search by 2020.
Are you prepared for this unstable shift in SEO?
As a digital marketing expert, your primary goal is to get relevant traffic and leads for your products or services. Have a look at the below example of how keyword strategies vary:
On the desktop you may search with:
“Best Italian restaurants near me”
As soon as you search with the above phrase, local listings, their ratings, location, and reviews will guide you to where you will get Italian dishes.
Now imagine we were getting up in the morning and asked our voice search system.
OK Google – where’s the best Italian restaurants near me or Hey Siri – Find an Italian restaurant near @street
These questions are longer and broadly similar. Always, remember that complete and conversational language requires its own content and no doubt it also helps to extend with the mobile app to most other searches because the most type of search possibilities will get covered in the same.
The biggest question is: How to create a content and SEO strategy for voice-based search? Here we have mentioned some tips that can help you optimize for voice search.
List your Business On Google: Voice searches are local in nature. If your Google Business Listing is up-to-date then it can helpful for you to increase your chances of showing up in search results when a search is done according to your local business, location, or category.
Focus on Content of Answering FAQs: Content should be answering questions like “Why”, “What”, “How”, “Where”, etc. You FAQs should be a conversational to answers all type of questions directly to searchers.
Optimize Local Searches: Most of the voice queries are location-based and indirectly they look for location-based content. So, try to use phrases like “near me” “near at” phrases.
Develop Content with Informal Tone: When users search for content on any device or desktop they write short and bullet-pointed phrases. For example, if users wanted to find the best Italian restaurants on the mobile apps, they could type “top Italian restaurants” into Google. But if they used voice search they must say “Which are the top Italian restaurants in the world?”. It will be helpful for search engines if you include long tails keywords in your content because that sounds more natural.
Use Structured Data Markup: Structured data markup defines more specific information about your website and makes it easier for search engines to accurately index your content and understands its context.
The Importance of Voice Search
Voice search is much more convenient than typing. It is also swift. It is easier to say, hey, Google, give me weather reports. Siri, add Gucci skirts to my list. Alexa, who is the president of America? I bet you it will take more time if you had to type out those questions and commands to get results from any search engine than using a voice search technology. Also, it requires minimal effort from the user to get the best results.
More people turn to use voice search to stay safe from the harmful effects of using their eyes and fingers on their mobile devices and computers. Therefore, optimizing for voice search will require you to present your content and information in ways optimized for voice search.
It is easy to use. Children use it, adults use it, and even old people use it for their daily searches. Using voice search makes the demand for literacy before using your mobile devices to search on the internet making it excellent for search engine optimization.
How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?
One big question that so many website owners are asking is how does voice search affect SEO?
The way we interact with our computers is fast evolving from just typing down what we want to search for, to actually talking to our devices and getting the answers to our questions. That is how convenient voice search is.
It is essential to know that the results on featured snippets are greatly influenced by the voice search. And interestingly, when Google places you on the featured snippet, you would undoubtedly get organic traffic on your site. Voice search has made that possible for us.
Research shows that the data for most research on the internet begins with question-based words like how, when, why, where, and what. This goes a long way to increase the relevance of this technology and why websites who want to get a good ranking on Google and other search engines must optimize their content for voice searches.
Also, most people on the internet use voice search to search the internet, and Google has found it necessary to prioritize voice search engine optimization (SEO).
What Is Voice Search Optimization?
Similar to search engine optimization, Voice search optimization is simply the process that allows your web pages to always appear in relevant verbal searches. This means that a voice search optimized web page can return results for voice searches by reading them aloud to the voice searcher through a smart device or simply telling you the results found on third-party pages.
Voice search affects SEO when your website pages are not optimized for voice searches. Take the following steps to optimize your website for voice SEO..
Research and Use Voice Keywords
Start from quality research and aim for the following:
- Long-tail keywords.
These are keywords that seemingly complete a question. Voice search users use this approach a lot so give long-tail keywords priority.
After you have gotten the right long-tail keywords, use them in your content.
- Filler Words
Always remember that voice searches are similar to everyday natural style of conversation, so fillers’ use is inevitable. Get keywords that are conversational in nature. Some examples are, the, I, for, so far, in the, on the, and the, with, etc.
- Question Keywords
Also, go for question keywords in your research—keywords like, why, how, where, who, what are some perfect examples.
For your website to have a successful search engine optimization status for voice searches, the categories mentioned above of voice keywords search must be prioritized in your
voice keywords research.
One of the things you are most likely to learn from your research is getting voice search keywords to create formatted question content on your website. For example, your articles’ titles will be in question formats just as it is with a voice search. Therefore, the titles of your content will be like, why do people cry? When will the world come to an end? Why do people fall sick? Etc. by structuring your content in this format, you are optimizing it for voice search. Google loves it!
Consult A Voice Search Optimization Expert for Advice
Voice search and voice search optimization is not a common marketing tool, so you will need all the help and expert advice to take advantage of your website’s search engine optimization tool. By visiting a voice search optimization expert, you will be able to find relevant answers to your questions, including when and how to use it for organic SEO and business growth.
Create Mobile-Friendly Content
How mobile-friendly your website is can affect your voice search SEO Mobile-friendly is voice friendly and vice versa. Most people on the internet use their mobile devices. Most voice searches are also mobile users. This means that you should design your content to be mobile-friendly. Everything from the website to the contents should be mobile responsive. This will ensure that your website gives a refreshing user experience and will be ranked high by Google search engines. Mobile-friendly websites and content are suitable for voice search optimization.
Optimize the Loading Speed of Your Web Page
No one wants to be waiting for some time before a web page loads and reads out the content to them. Thus, slow loading pages will prompt users and customers to abandon your product and give you a low rating on Google. That would not be good for your search engine optimization as well as voice note optimization. To optimize your web pages for good speed, you can do the following,
- Optimize the images and videos on the page and compress them to smaller sizes for faster loading speed.
- Remove unnecessary JavaScript code.
There are some JavaScript tasks that CSS3 and HTML5 can take care of; in such cases, you don’t need those JavaScript codes.
- Do away with unnecessary Plugins.
The use of too many plugins for WordPress websites makes loading speed to be slow. You must minimize the use of plugins to increase the page loading speed of your website.
Enable Business Location
Let us say you run a restaurant business and someone is looking for where to stop by and have a launch. The person uses voice search and requests for restaurants that are closer to him. In this situation only, restaurants that have included their website will return due to the searcher.
This is a local business SEO strategy that is very efficient for connecting businesses and leading them to their business locations. Here are three ways to do this.
- Optimize your business by using Near me Adword campaigns and the Adword location extensions for these optimizations’.
- Use the rich media
One of how voice search functions to produce an accurate result is to take the user’s context at the time and location of the voice search into consideration before returning the results. Therefore, you must make sure to provide all the relevant information on your content. Using images embed YouTube videos, etc., will all help Google crawl and fetch accurate information for the users.
Voice search optimization is still a mystery to many businesses, which only makes now the best time to take advantage of the feature and gain all the ranking and traffic that you can get and grow your business ahead of your competitors. The number of people using voice search is on the increase. Indeed, voice search SEO is the new future for web searches and operating intelligent devices.
Key into Future Voice Search Developments
Voice search and voice search optimization are some of the new technologies that are still evolving. Many more upgrades will be made soon as there are still many more voice search strategies to be explored for an excellent user experience. Top tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are already investing in research and developing new voice search features on smart devices.
People already use voice search widely and its popularity is also growing in the coming year. So, the end conclusion is – if you invest in voice search optimization then it will definitely help you to improve brand awareness, online purchases, and revenue. By optimizing your site for search queries, you will actually improve your overall SEO strategy.
Therefore, it is recommended that you constantly update your website with the latest strategies in order for your business to keep up with the trend and for continuous growth. Also, make sure to implement all the necessary points raised in the article for your voice search optimization
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