If voice search optimisation isn’t part of your SEO strategy, it’s time to fix that. Here are six tactics to optimise for voice search today and beyond.
- Understand Your Type of Customer & Device Behaviour
- Just as voice search algorithms use data and location to understand our searches, marketers have to dig deeper to understand consumers and their behaviour.
- Real-time data and research on consumer insights can provide useful information into how different people use voice search and on what type of voice-enabled device.
- Focus on Conversational Keywords
- While I don’t believe that short tail keywords will ever disappear entirely, they aren’t really relevant when we consider how people naturally speak. More than ever, marketers need to focus on conversational long-tail keywords. It’s essential to work out what questions you need to answer.
3. Create Compelling Persona-Based Content
Brevity, context, and relevance are essential when optimising for voice search. What might be different from your usual SEO strategy is that now you also need to pay special attention to:
- Creating detailed answers to common questions
- Answering simple questions clearly and concisely
Create rich, captivating content that answers your users’ most common questions and solves their pain points.
A good strategy that’s already been adopted successfully by many websites is to:
- Create content or a webpage with a headline that asks a common question
- Immediately after the headline, provide a short answer or definition to the question
- Use the rest of the page to provide further detail on the topic
The significant thing about this strategy is that the rich, robust webpage ultimately appeals to Google’s ranking algorithm. In other words, Google loves it and will put you ahead!
At the same time, the short-and-sweet information at the top of the page is optimised for voice search and might even become a featured snippet.
- Provide Context with Schema Mark up
Get acquainted with schema mark up, if you aren’t already. Use schema to mark up your content and tell search engines what your site is all about.
This HTML add-on helps search engines understand the context of your content, which means you rank better in typical searches, and more relevantly, in specific queries made through voice search.
Google understands language by utilising schemas, and they can be a great way to add more information to your website, so you’re ready to answer questions.
According to Milestone Marketing research, based on 9,400 schema deployments, they found significant gains of +20-30% – with an average of:
- 40 schema types
- 130 attributes and properties
This is the kind of information mobile users and voice searchers will most often be after.
- Build Pages That Answer FAQs
When voice searchers ask a question, they typically begin it with “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why,” and “How.”
They’re looking for answers that fulfil an immediate need.
To answer these queries, make a FAQ page and begin each question with these adverbs.
Then answer them conversationally to appeal to voice search.
From a performance perspective, make sure your website is technically sound and includes schemas. Ensure navigation and informational structures are easy to find, and your page loads quickly.
- Think Mobile & Think Local
We are shifting to a mobile-first world where devices are mobile and people are on the move.
As a result, it is important to remember that mobile and local go hand in hand, especially where voice search is concerned.
- Mobile devices allow users to perform on-the-go local queries.
- Voice search, in turn, enables users to ask hyper-local questions.
Make sure things like directions to brick-and-mortar locations and XML sitemaps are readable to visitors and search engines on your website.
Also, create different experiences for desktop and mobile users. What I mean is, optimise for “near me” type searches on mobile.
Voice Search Optimisation Moving Forward
Many that grew up in an age where technology couldn’t talk back still have a certain stigma attached to talking to our phones. It feels strange there isn’t another human being listening to us.
Younger generations don’t have that same hesitation, and most feel “tech-savvy” using voice search.
Voice search is clearly on the rise, and we’d be foolish to ignore this trend in the SEO industry.
It’s time to stop thinking about it and optimise for voice as it is a winner-take-all search result.
If you need help with your Voice Search Optimisation please contact us on info@www.future-marketing.co.uk or visit our website www.future-marketing.co.uk
