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We’re approaching towards the end of 2020, and if you already don’t have a strategy to optimize your content for voice search, then you won’t be able to up your game.

Voice search optimization is something every other top SEO companies is aiming at.

Having a casual conversation might have been awkward in the early 20s, but now it’s trending, and businesses (despite their size) must leverage it.

Today, people like you and I are engaging with your tech gadgets, watches, and voice assistants to get responses, gain knowledge, and even handle a few tasks smartly.

The acceptance of voice technology is alluring, hands-free, and FAST. People are able to multitask while doing voice searches.

Fun fact, while writing this piece of content, I asked my Google Home Assistant to share the latest statistics on ‘Voice Search.’ Here’s what it said:

“Google reports that 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile.”

Especially during the pandemic, several reports suggested people turning to voice search as their primary option to search for something online.

Beyond mobile phones, the usage of smart speakers is expanding as well. More than 49% of Amazon Echo and Google Home users find them a necessity as per a survey.

As users’ dependency increases on voice searches, we must understand the technology to top the voice SERPs results.

Hence if voice search optimization was not on your business SEO strategy yet, it’s time to make some room for it.

Read on to learn about the sure-shot Voice Search Optimization success strategies.

5 sure-shot Voice Search Optimization success strategies

Without wasting much time and efforts in explaining the importance of voice search in your SEO plan, let’s begin with the strategies to optimize it.

Focus on Persona-Based Content

Mark the difference between your potential consumer and consumer persona.

To understand a user persona, you need to understand your potential consumer habits, behaviors, and choices. Based on this research you must create and optimize your content.

Voice search is all about context, relevance, and brevity.

To optimize your voice search content, you need to add the following bullets to create persona-based content for the online user:

  • Framing detailed answers to frequently asked questions by the users

  • Putting up the answers in the most concise and clear language

Yes, the need to create compelling yet concise answers is what you need to focus on.

To realize the above pointers, you can take frequently asked questions as the headline or sub-headline of your content. Remember to write a concise answer immediately after the headline. Further, elaborate on the answers with multiple subheadings in detail.

What’s the reason behind performing the above strategy?

Well, Google’s ranking algorithm is fascinated by rich and robust webpages. It further picks up short and sweet information available at the top of the page under its voice search criteria, which is further eligible for becoming a featured snippet on the first SERP.

Optimize for Conversational Keywords

You might be aware of the short tail and long-tail keywords. Voice searches are mostly based on long-tail keywords only.

When discussing voice searches, you must note that the focus must always be kept on ‘Natural Phrases.’ So, if you’re to work on optimizing your content for voice searches, make sure your marketing team or SEO agency is paying attention to conversational long-tail keywords.

Example: how to select plant seeds or how to select plant seeds in Winter

You need to conduct proper research initially to determine what questions are most searched or asked by your users to present them with an apt answer.

Understand Your Potential Consumer

If you think that optimizing for voice search is just a game of a few long-tail keywords and high-quality concise content, you’re wrong.

Google, with its every update, has intended to be more user (searcher) specific. Hence, voice search algorithms not only focus on users' search query keywords, but they also use location and several other data points to understand the context of a search performed by them.

Therefore, it becomes critical for marketers to dig deep and understand consumer behavior properly. Make a note that every consumer might have different intent of voice searching, some may do it for acquiring knowledge about the topic, and some might perform it to make a purchase.

Optimizing content as per the intent of your potential customer must be your SEO agencies goal.

Play Around With FAQs

Most voice searches are bound to begin as a question with Who, Why, What, How, Where, and When.

Keeping this in mind, it becomes imperative to base your SEO strategies around boosting your content for such frequent queries. This can be realised by creating a FAQ page or a dedicated section on your website where frequent user queries are answered.

However, the answers must also be framed in a conversational tone to make it eligible for the top result in voice searches.

Not to forget, if you’re to create dedicated FAQ sections or pages on your website, your overall SEO efforts must also be top-notch.

Concentrate on Local & Mobile

Just like mobile searches have outnumbered web searches, voice searches in future will take over both of them. But for now, we’re breathing in a mobile-first world, where users are performing voice search requests from their smartphones.

Mobiles are an easy device to perform on-the-go local searches as well. Hence, businesses (especially eCommerce) must optimize for ‘near me’ types of mobile searches.

Last but the least, it’s vital to focus on improving and boosting load time and page speed on mobile.

Conclusion

The age of technology is all set to grow and advance, so is voice search. You might have understood the need to optimize your SEO efforts with voice searches.

Millennials and Gen Z are tech-savvy and are bound to leverage the most out of voice search. It’s clearly going to witness a rise in the coming months and years.

It’s high time to ask your SEO agencies to adopt the above strategies in your SEO efforts, as when it comes to voice search, the top-ranked on the first page takes it all.