Hey Google: Tell me all about SEO and voice search

Voice Search and SEO

Voice search is one of the most discussed topics in the SEO industry.

The number of people choosing voice search over keyboard searches is increasing each day.

The question is:

Do you know the SEO and voice search tactics to optimize your website for better voice search results?

Well, you’re going to learn those tactics in this article.

But first, let’s discuss:

Why Should Voice Search Be a Part of Your SEO Strategy?

Let’s take a look at a few statistics:

• 41% of adults and 55% of teens use voice search more than once a day (Google).
• When given a choice between typing and voice search, 57% of users choose voice search (Microsoft).
• 20% of all mobile queries are voice searches (Google).
• 75% of U.S. households will have smart speakers by 2025 (voicebot.ai).

These figures show how drastically people are converting to voice search.

According to Wordstream, voice commerce sales are predicted to reach $40 billion by 2022.

This shows that people use voice search not only to get information but to spend money as well. So, as a business owner, you can’t afford to ignore voice search.

With the importance of SEO and voice search in mind, let’s discuss five tactics that you can use to optimize your website for voice search.

5 SEO and Voice Search Tactics

Create content for users

This one is obvious, right? Actually many websites don’t follow this rule. Their content is either very hard to read or optimized to manipulate higher search engine rankings.

If you are not creating content for your users, you are making one of the biggest SEO mistakes.

Instead, you should keep searcher intent in mind while creating your content. Your goal should be to create content that will give people answers about whatever they are looking for online.

The language people use in voice search is the same as they speak. It is more conversational and less robotic. So when it comes to SEO and voice search, one of the best practices is to optimize your content around conversational keywords.

For example, instead of using the keyword “best restaurants in New York” in your content, use “Which restaurant serves the best dinner in New York?”

After creating content around search intent and using conversational language:

Optimize Content for FAQ’s

Question keywords are growing significantly each year.

And Google has to answer these questions. So it heads to FAQ pages.

Why? Because it’s easy for Google to pull out the information from the Q&A format as compared to scanning the whole webpage.

When you create these FAQ pages, your chances of getting in Google’s Answer Box increases which is a dream come true for many content marketers.

If you don’t want to create separate pages for a particular topic, it’s okay. You can add answers to these questions in the subsections of your articles. Make sure that the title of a subsection is a question.

Let’s move onto our third tactic which is:

Optimize for mobile users

The number of mobile devices is increasing each day. That’s why you can’t forget mobile users while creating your website and content.

But why SEO and voice search is important for mobile users?

That’s because most voice searches are made on mobile devices when people are on the go. You can ask yourself: which one would you choose to search for your query when you’re outside. Your mobile device or laptop? The answer must be mobile device.

Simply put: mobile is the future of search.

In order to optimize for mobile users, you should follow these simple steps:

• Build a responsive website using CSS3 media queries.
• Optimize for Google’s mobile-friendly test.

After optimizing for mobile users:

Improve your website loading speed

We’ve all been to that website which takes 5 minutes to load. Seriously? 5 minutes.

Imagine you want to make your favorite dish but you don’t know the recipe. You search on Google to find out the recipe. Now, would you wait 5 minutes for a website to load to find out the recipe?

No, you move onto the next website.

That’s why the average voice search result page takes 4.6 seconds to load which is 52% faster than the average page.

Improving sitespeed is a complex topic and requires a separate article. For starters, you can follow these steps:

• Compress the size of images on your pages.
• Clean your HTML, CSS, and Javascript code.
• Upgrade to a premium hosting or dedicated server.

The final tactic is:

Optimize for local searches

This SEO and voice search tactic is especially for local businesses.

Suppose you run an Italian restaurant. There are two ways customers can find you on Google.

1. They search “Italian restaurant in [your city name]” or something close to that. If you have optimized your website around those keywords, they will find you easily.
2. They search “Italian restaurant near me.” Near me searches have gotten a lot of traction in the past few years. Claim your Google My Business Listing if you want those people to find you who use “near me” keyword.

While creating your business listing, keep these things in mind:

• Provide accurate [NAP+W] information. [NAP+W] is the abbreviation for name, address, phone number, and website.
• Make sure to include area code in the phone number.
• Add some pictures of your business to add credibility.
• Choose the right category. If you choose the wrong category, you might disappear from the voice results completely.

It’s Your Turn Now

Whether people search through typing or voice, it’s your job to optimize your website for the best user experience possible. That will ensure higher Google rankings.

We have discussed the importance of voice search and learned 5 tactics to optimize websites for better voice search results.

Which SEO and voice search tactic are you going to try first?

Is it optimizing content for FAQ’s?

Or are you going to create your profile on Google My Business Listing?

Let us know in the comments!