How to Optimize Your Site for Voice Search?

It is the 21st century, and our technology is continuing to develop beyond our ancestors may have predicted ages ago. Among these advances, search marketing is seen to be improving rapidly. Before, we had to type what we need to look for through a search engine. Now, thanks to voice search, we could easily find what we are looking for without even typing anything. All we need is to talk to our handheld gadgets. We could quickly ask Siri the names of the best hotels if we are out of town. Or we could just tell Cortana to look for a file on the computer.

Voice search platforms are digital assistants that have radically changed the way we search for content. In 2015 alone, search for virtual assistants like Siri, Google Voice, and Cortana has jumped from statistical zero to ten percent of overall search volume around the world. The amount is 50 billion that’s performed by voice search in a month.

At the vantage point of SEO or Search Engine Optimization, how will this rapid surge of voice search affect the industry? For every SEO professionals, it is important to archive the skill of doing SEO for voice search. And they have to learn such skill fast.

It is worth noting that voice search is becoming more famous in the industry. According to a study, around fifty percent of all searches will already be performed via voice searches. This means that text searches will be used less regularly in the future. Moreover, another study shows that 28 percent of users find voice search as a more accurate manner of searching than typing text. These data raise the question, how could the concept of SEO compete in the changing industry?

For starters, it is significant to learn how to optimize your site – which employs SEO – for voice search. There are various ways to do such. By doing so, you do not only provide a means to attract more visitors to your site, but you also help increase your traffic leads. In this article, we are going to talk about ways on how to optimize your website for voice search.

1. Use a lot of microdata

When using the voice search option, most users will frequently reference microdata such as phone number, price, and location, among others. By creating a comprehensive sitemap for your website, you could make the information as mentioned earlier easily retrievable for digital assistants.

2. Use commonly used words

When you are trying to optimize your content for voice search, you have to use the words and phrases that people often say when they are asking a legitimate question. For example, you could ask, “What are the colors of the rainbow?” or “Who is Neil Patrick Harris?” Its important to such questions need be found in the first paragraph of your content, more accurately in the first sentence.

3. Create a longer sequence of words

Search algorithms are already much more accurate than before. This means that focusing on a few keywords in your content will not already guarantee a safe spot in the recommended results when using a voice search. It is then essential to focus on creating a long sequence of words. Try to think of a phrase that a person would use in everyday conversations. By making your content more human, you could make your content more visible. For example, instead of including the word, “Philippines,” repeatedly, you could combine other words to make it more natural. You could use keywords such as, “Tourist attractions in the Philippines,” or “Philippines travel ticket.”

4. Use keyword variants

Speaking of keywords, you may also want to use keyword variants for voice search. This means that your keyword research will be quite challenging. One of the ways on how to do this is by creating an FAQ page where you would answer several questions that are commonly asked by potential customers. You can gather these frequently asked questions by collecting the queries asked in customer service, via email, or when in conversation with customers. As mentioned earlier, it is better to humanize the keywords. List down the phrases that they use verbatim. These phrases could be the exact words that people might use in voice searches.

5. Optimize snippets

Your content should be designed to optimize for snippets. Voice search assistants such as Siri and Google Home are gathering quick answers for this. Concise yet substantial, your content should answer the questions in such a way that they would be useful enough to your customers. A post that could be snipped is typically short yet digestible, and even logical and factual.

6. Use trigger words

Another way on how to further optimize your SEO-based content for voice search is by using trigger words. It is worth noting that more than twenty percent of the featured snippets are usually triggered by the top 25 words. The top trigger word is “how,” followed by “what,” and “best.” You should then focus your content on these words.

Final thoughts

The manner of searching has rapidly developed from a traditional textual search. With the impending increase in voice search utilization, it is essential to keep up with this change by optimizing your content well. Try different methods that are presented above and stick to the technique that would best fit your situation.