The Ultimate Voice Search Optimisation Guide

24 May 2023 / Search Engine Optimization

In today’s world, digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant have become an integral part of our lives. With the rise of these digital assistants, voice search is becoming increasingly popular. According to Google’s statistics, 41% of adults (and 55% of teens) use voice search every day. Voice searches constitute 20% of all Google mobile queries. As a result, businesses need to adapt to this changing landscape and optimize their content for voice search to ensure that they can be found by consumers using voice assistants. 

What is Voice Search Optimization?

Voice Search Optimization is a type of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that focuses on improving the visibility of a website or web page in voice search results. With more and more consumers using voice search to find products and services, businesses that don’t optimize their content for voice search risk being left behind.

Benefits and Best Practices for Voice Search Optimization SEO:

One of the main benefits of voice search SEO is that it helps businesses to rank higher in voice search results. Another benefit of voice SEO is that it helps businesses to provide concise and clear answers to common questions related to their business or industry. In addition, voice search SEO can help businesses to improve their website speed. Finally, SEO for voice search can help businesses to improve their local SEO. 

Let’s dig a little deeper into this. Let’s discuss the benefits and best practices for voice search optimization SEO that can help businesses improve their chances of being found by consumers using voice assistants and stay ahead of the competition.

1. Embrace natural language: Optimizing for voice search requires a slightly different approach than traditional search engine optimization. When optimizing for voice search, it’s essential to focus on natural language keywords and phrases. Voice search queries tend to be more conversational and long-tail.

For instance, a voice search query may look something like this:

“What is the recipe for making Butter Chicken?”

Hence, including natural language keywords in your content can help you rank higher in voice search results.

2. Aim for featured snippets: Another important aspect of voice search optimization is to focus on featured snippets. Featured snippets are the answers that appear at the top of search results pages, and voice assistants often read out these snippets in response to voice search queries. To optimize for featured snippets, you need to provide concise and clear answers to common questions related to your business or industry.

3. Speed up your website: In addition to natural language and featured snippets, website speed is also crucial for voice search optimization. Voice search results typically load faster than traditional search results, so slow-loading websites may not rank well in voice search results. To improve your website’s speed, you can minimize image sizes, enable caching, and compress files.

4. Utilize schema markup: Another tactic that businesses can use to optimize for voice search is to add schema markup to their website. Schema markup is code that you can add to your website to help search engines understand your content better. Adding schema markup to your website can help search engines identify the relevant information on your site, which can improve your chances of ranking for voice search queries.

5. Claim business listings: Claiming your business listings on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, and Bing Places is another important aspect of voice search optimization. Claiming your business listings can help your business appear in voice search results. Make sure your business information is accurate and up-to-date on these platforms to improve your chances of appearing in voice search results.

6. Create a FAQ page: Creating a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page can also help you optimize your content for voice search. FAQ pages provide concise answers to common questions, making them ideal for voice assistants to read out loud in response to voice search queries.

7. Prioritize local SEO: Finally, local SEO is critical for voice search optimization, as many voice search queries are location-based. Make sure your business information is accurate and up-to-date on local directories, and include location-based keywords in your content to improve your chances of appearing in local voice search results.

By following these tips, businesses can optimize their content for voice search and improve their chances of being found by consumers using voice assistants, ultimately helping to increase their online visibility and drive more traffic to their websites.