Voice assistants are pretty much capable of any task they are alloted with, you name and they can do it. There’s Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Cortana and many more. AIs are used to process the language, consult the search engine and answer with the best result available.
One of the many things is their ability to help customers by assisting them in finding answers to questions. Whenever any user opts for the voice search, they can find the resource and have it read out aloud. This makes voice search an important part of SEO as it presents businesses with endless opportunities.
If your website isn’t well-optimized for voice search then the chances are you are losing your potential for traffic. In the U.S. 40.2% of people use voice search and 58% of people used it to find information about businesses. Voice search is a real institution with a huge potential to help your SEO strategy. Google and other search engines are invested in knowing how well the pages are optimized for voice search. The same knowledge thereafter reflects on SERPs.
There are elements that need understanding for your website content to show up in voice search. You need to optimize your website for voice search as well as for keyboard searches to rank well. In case of genuine inquiries, the voice assistant goes through organic content to find the answer. The answer is mostly a snippet from the higher ranking pages, optimized for voice search.
Moving ahead, the question is, in what ways can your business optimize its pages for voice search? To do so, start by adding different strategies to your traditional SEO.
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Conversational Keywords:
When people use voice search, it’s more like they are asking a person. This means they will use words that are used generally in a conversation. This element should reflect in your SEO strategy. Look for keywords that are conversational and are directly relevant to your product or service.
To find these keywords, look into the records of customer queries on customer support or social media. Tweak the previous content by transforming existing keywords into sentences. AnswerThe Public is also a powerful tool that you can utilize to learn about the keywords used.
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Mobile-friendliness:
Many voice searches take place using a mobile device. It is crucial that your strategy aligns and works for the mobile users. Mobile version of your site is now assessed before indexing your website by Google’s web crawlers.
This means, your initial step should include ensuring that the website’s mobile version works well. After that formulate a SEO voice search strategy.
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Schema Markup:
Schema markup allows search engine bots to find the most important and relevant piece of information on your website. This is to enable voice search to understand your information & data and thereafter present it.
Google released a beta version, called Speakable, of a voice search schema. Markups allow Google to understand the finer points that you want to highlight on your page.
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FAQ as a Guide for Content Creation:
Voice search is used with actual sentences rather than individual words or phrases. These sentences usually start with Interrogative words like, “what”, “Where”, “how”, “when”, and “who”. FAQ is a great resource for conversational keywords.
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Long-tail and Question keywords:
It is common for voice search to involve longer queries in comparison to text search. Users tend to speak more detailed search queries. This means, focusing on long-tail keywords is a great way to optimize your pages and ultimately increase the conversion rate.
SEO is all about establishing yourself as a trustworthy and reliable business in the particular industry, meaning showing up in someone’s voice search is definitely a goal you should have. Keyword research in this case is a creative task as it will require you to deep-dive into a customer’s mind. Voice search is not a new upcoming technology but is definitely a tough element to optimize in your SEO.
For another article, do check out – TikTok SEO – Is it worth investing in
