14 Tips To Optimise For Voice Search

There are many voice searches happening everyday and you can grow your organic traffic by optimising for voice searches. Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri are being widely adopted. You should make voice search optimization a part of SEO strategy.

Consumers looking for services or information use spoken search commands and they do not have to type their search into a browser. You have to make sure that your site ranks high for voice searches as well.

These are a few voice search optimization tips:

1. Most of the mobile and voice searches are location based and you should optimise for local search results. For this you must update your Google My Business listing. Create good content that answers location based queries. Enter the accurate details about your business in your account. This is the right information users are asking for and this is a quick way to give right answers to the users questions.
   
   Local optimisation for voice search
   
   Most of the voice searches consist of ‘Near me’ queries. The searches are for local businesses and information related to them.
   
   You should make sure to add the right direction to your business and ensure that the XML sitemap is readable by the search engines. You can target local keywords to improve your rankings.
   
   
2. Use long tail keywords and common phrases that people use in conversation while creating content for voice search optimization. Create location-specific content for the areas you want to target. This way you will have more chances of appearing at the top of the voice search results.
   
   
3. People use conversational language while searching using voice assistants. They use longer and more specific search phrases. Therefore you should focus on conversational long tail keywords.
   
   Keyword research for voice search optimisation
   
   When you converse you use the entire question rather than just a few keywords. 
   
   You should find the question you need to complete to give an answer. Create simple, clear and concise answers to the questions. For voice queries, website optimisation is a must.
   
   
4. Use Schema markup to tell search engines what your site is about. Create FAQs that read as conversation and structure them correctly on your website to appear in snippets from Google.

4. Most of the voice queries have terms like ‘who’, ‘what, ‘how’ and ‘where’. You can build content regarding the most commonly asked questions about your brand / products / services. The content should reply to these questions of the consumers. You can anticipate the questions the users may have. The questions should be answered conversationally to make them appealing to voice search.
   
   Structuring content for voice search
   
   Users are looking for answers to their questions. You can make the FAQ page and answer the questions one by one.
   
   
5. You should understand your consumer and their behaviour. Voice searches use data and location to understand the search context. Research on consumer insights can help you to understand how people use voice searches and what type of device they use.
   
   Understanding user behaviour in voice search
   
   You should do research on your target audience and the questions they typically ask. 
   
   
6. For SEO for voice search you will have to create content which has detailed answers to common questions. The answers should be clear and concise. Create rich and compelling content that answers the users questions.
   
   You can create content with a common question as the headline and provide a short answer immediately after it. You can use the rest of the page to provide elaborative details. This type of rich page appeals to Google’s algorithms. The short answer at the top can be optimised for voice search and it can appear in snippets.
   
   
7.  For voice searches mobile and local go together. People use mobile to perform local queries. You should create different experiences for desktop and mobile users. Optimise for ‘near me’ types of searches for mobile.
   
   Optimising websites for voice search
   
   Voice search helps users to make local queries. Voice search is faster than the traditional methods of typing in a query. You should optimise your website for mobile and improve your page speed.
   
   You can add schema markup to your website to know what the content is about. This will help you become relevant in the voice search queries.

9. Many voice searches are for local information so you should focus on local SEO. Create content for your local area and use local keywords.
   
   
10. Users searching for local business look for operational hours, contact information, address , directions and more. You can use microdata to ensure that search engines find this information.
    
    
11. For voice searches it is important to keep the keywords simple. When people ask questions they do not go into details and the software also will not recognize anything complex. Be simple for effective SEO.
    
    
12. It is important to know where the target customers come from and what language or dialect they speak. The keywords should be optimised for specific countries and regions.
    
    
13. Another thing to consider is how people pronounce your brand or offering. It can affect brands with creative or ambiguous names.
    
    
14. In voice searches the focus is on the speech patterns and they will include idioms that will differ as per region, country, culture and industry.

Technical optimisation for voice search

Voice search works through the automatic speech recognition system which transforms the voice signals into text.  Your brand should optimise for voice search strategy. The different voice assistants available are Amazon Echo, Google Nest and more.

Improving voice search user experience

Natural Language Processing helps in understanding the questions and the commands given by the user. You should try to create content using natural language as this will improve the chances of matching as an answer to a voice query.

You should understand the search intent and study the query style that people use in voice searches. This will help you know what people want when doing voice searches. 

Monitoring and analytics for voice search

To measure voice search performance you need to understand how the voice search users behave. You can use tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics and Google Trends to analyse voice queries, voice impressions and voice click-through rates. You can use tools like Moz, Semrush and Ahrefs to monitor your voice search rankings.  

Voice search and voice-activated devices

Voice searches are processed by four major voice assistants: Google Assistant, Siri, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana. The data source depends on the platform running the voice search. Optimising your website for these platforms will help you to rank higher in the voice search results. Optimising for Google Maps and Yelp may be part of an SEO plan.

Conclusion

Voice search is becoming popular and you should optimise your website for voice search.