Do you want to know how to optimize the content of your website for voice search? If you are still confused then do contact Digitalmarketing agency for better guidelines.
For years, the use of voice search and voice assistants to answer questions has been raised. According to Google, 20 percent of all mobile search queries include voice searches, and the number of voice searches is increasing day by day. You can join SEO Community to get updates on voice search.
Speech recognition technology is getting better: Google’s technology is now 95 percent accurate.
However, for most SEO agencies and consultants, not many things are changed like optimizing content for a new search form i.e, voice search.
Now is the perfect time to pay attention to voice search and start incorporating SEO strategies that can increase chances for you to appear in voice results.
Gary Vaynerchuk agrees with this point. From his book, “Crushing It”:
It’s called “Voice-First,” and anyone currently building a personal brand needs to learn about it quickly and early.
Its platforms are the equivalent of Malibu properties that have yet to be discovered, such as Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010, and Snapchat in 2012.
Voice search and personal voice assistants like Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, Google Home, Amazon Echo, and the Apple HomePod made changes in searches. You can consult Dubai SEO Company for more assistance.
Instead of typing in a search phrase like “hairdresser Valencia”, people using voice search can ask a question as if they were talking to someone else: “OK Google, where should I go to get my haircut done?”
If you ask Alexa what’s going on today, you can listen to your custom flash briefing that contains information like the local weather forecast, local highlights, what’s on your calendar, and other things that Alexa already knows you care about. It is a great time saver.
The Use Of Voice Technology And The Number Of Growing Devices
I remember when I received one of the first Amazon Echo devices in the mail in 2014.
It was supposed to be a Christmas present for my children, but I got it in my hands and it ended up in my room, where it has been used as an alarm clock, music player, audiobooks provider, music radio, and a weatherman.
And also it served as a device that answers many questions like “Alexa, tell me the phone number to order Domino’s pizza?
There are many search assistants in the market like Amazon Echo (Alexa), Apple’s HomePod, and Google Home, but you will find many new emerging players too.
I recently saw the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker in a store. It also consisted of Microsoft’s Cortana virtual assistant to answer questions and manage smart home technology to streamline tasks.
I’m sure more will come to the market soon. According to ZDNet reports, Alexa will be added to Acer, Asus, Hewlett Packard (HP) personal computers (PCs) and laptops. This could make Alexa a major challenge for Cortana.
Google Assistant is available on 400 million devices (such as Android smartphones, Google Home, and other tablets). According to Forrester, the use of smart devices will continue to grow.
As a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, are you ready to try to make it possible that your content appears in voice search results? Voice search is here.
This time is best for a voice search. And voice search is our future. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors then this time is perfect to start optimizing your content for voice search.
Voice Search Keeps Growing
According to ComScore, half of the smartphone users use voice technology and one user in three uses it daily.
As an SEO specialist, you need to understand some of the search strategies that can help you rank for voice searches until voice search volume keeps increasing.
By understanding these strategies and using them effectively on your site, you can be the answer to a question in the voice search bar.
Here are some tactics that will help you become the answer to a question in voice searches.
Voice Search Optimization Basics
For those who’re working hard on voice search, there’s a lot of competition there so you need to plan differently.
For example, unlike typical search queries performed on your computer, voice search queries are longer than text queries. They have three to five (or more) keywords in length.
This means that you need to change the way you do keyword research and think about long-tail keywords.
Voice search queries also ask a specific question and often use keywords like who, how, what, where, better, why, and when. Use these words in your content.
Best Practices In Voice Search
Make sure that your site and your content comply with the best practices related to SEO. It includes optimizing your web pages for:
- Page speed
- Mobile compliance
- Digestible content that grabs the audience’s attention.
- The natural language that responds to user questions.
- Optimization of local pages through Google My Business and other online directories.
- Solid hierarchy of centers
- Site authority
- XML sitemap
- Navigation
- Local reviews
- Images with alt tags
- Respond to criticism
- Secure the website by installing an SSL certification (it means correctly installing the SSL certificate).
- Schema markup
- And many more!
Voice Search And Featured Snippets
When searching for something on Google, search results may appear with a highlighted snippet box at the top of the search results. This featured snippet is intended as a quick answer to your question
The featured snippet typically includes a summary of the response taken from the website, a link to the page the information came from, the page title, and the site’s universal resource locator (URL).
Sometimes you will find the snippet below the first result in the SERP. Sometimes the snippet just shows an answer with no further information. This type of featured snippet usually appears when the answer is a known fact.
These top-ranking featured snippets are the holy grail of SEO and are often referred to as “zero position.” Why? The reason behind this, i usually appears above the ads position.
Appearing in the voice snippet ad increases your chances of appearing in voice search results.
You will often hear terms like rich letters, answer charts, rich snippets, and other variations. All of these terms may confuse you. Google is working on removing these terms. Now Google calls everything a “rich result.”
Anatomy Of A Featured Fragment
To rank your web pages for voice search results, you need to understand some of the main things that Google and Bing are looking for when searching for the best answer to respond to a busy voice search engine.
You might be curious about how a website is ranked in a snippet on some keywords. This is all about a real SEO plan that needs to be implemented.
- Write a page on a specific topic.
- Create content that answers a specific question.
- Look for the questions that you will be able to answer in great depth.
- When optimizing voice search, search for longer, long-tail keyword phrases.
- Use keywords like “how”, “what”, and “best”.
- Understand your customer’s intent and optimize the content on your pages for each stage of your customer’s journey.
- Use conversational language-write as if you are talking to a friend.
- Use headers (H1, H2, H3, H4).
- Make sure that you use unique title and description tags on each page. Use keywords in those tags.
- You have to use keywords at the front of the first sentence/paragraph.
- Use keywords in the page URL.
Optimize For The Types Of Questions People Actually, Ask
It is important that you use SEO related best practices when writing any content.
When you search for “how do you respond to negative reviews online”, you will most likely see a featured snippet. Clicking on the link will take you to the website highlighted in the snippet.
How Featured Snippets Are Born
By looking at the blog post, the source code of the post, and the featured snippet itself, you can “deconstruct” it to learn how Google created a featured snippet from it.
When someone does a voice search for “how to respond to negative reviews online”, Google first looks at the title of the blog post.
Google then looked at the page’s keywords, content, title, description, and URL and saw that all of them directly matched the question the search engine was asking.
Google then saw that there was a clearly defined H2 tag structure in the blog post that made it easy to take the main points about what to do in case of negative comments online. It took those H2s out and turned them into a numbered list in the featured snippet.
SEO Tools Help Increase The Chances Of Becoming A Featured Snippet
Some of the more advanced SEO tools can help optimize your pages to increase your chances of appearing in featured snippets. For example, SEMrush can help you find competitors with featured snippets, and Moz Pro also has a featured snippet search and tracking tool.
Schema Markup And Voice Search
I’m saving the best for last! Schema markup is probably one of the most important components that you can add to your site to help it rank in voice search.
Now, I know that many SEOs are reluctant to even think about adding schema to their site because they are uncomfortable with the code, but it is time to get over the fear. Schema is important!
Schema markup is a global standard vocabulary that search engines agreed would help them better understand the content of a web page. With the proper structure of the markup scheme on your site, your content will be optimized for voice search.
In the simplest terms, Schema tells search engines what the page is about, make it your business address, your business hours, a service page, or a page about a product in your eCommerce store.
Including Schema on your site helps search engines to give a boost by making it very clear what your pages are about. When you place Schema Markup on your website, Google will allow voice assistants to automatically search for the marked information.
Now, just like any SEO strategy, voice search is competitive, and there is no easy answer than this to get the top spot. You have to make your website and its contents the best on all fronts.