Ways to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

Hello this is Monica Thomas the SEO & Search Marketing Manager for medresponsive.com

This week’s “Five Minute SEO” podcast will cover Ways to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search.

In general, speaking something naturally is much easier than typing.

Voice search and Google assistants are increasingly replacing typing when it comes to searching for something online. Voice search allows users to search the internet using their voice rather than typing their queries in the search bar. This kind of search is made possible by digital assistants such as Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and Cortana.

Google Home and Google Assistant in many instances read out verbatim the content of featured snippets. Many of the same strategies used today to gain top rankings or featuted status in search are also applicable in a voice context.

How important is voice search today?

Voice search is more popular than ever, and not paying attention to new guidelines for handling voice search queries can greatly affect your website’s SEO.

Search using spoken queries differs from search using written ones, therefore you need to optimize your site to incorporate the new SEO voice search guidelines.

Optimizing for voice search is similar to optimizing for local SEO. Researchers indicate that those that are ranking for local queries will also be found in voice search results. By focusing on areas such as reviews, local social profiles and unbranded keywords, brands can achieve improvements in their local rankings generally and also in appearing in the search results for voice searches.

Consumers favor voice assistants for general web search

People use Voice Search for a variety of reasons including getting directions while driving, finding a service, getting information on a condition or finding a solution to a problem.

Here are some of the things you can do to optimize your website content and social profiles for Voice Search:

First, Check your website’s speed

As voice search mainly happens on mobile devices, there is no doubt that your site has to be mobile-friendly and should load easily. Google voice search favors websites with better loading speed.

Next, make sure that all the images on your site are optimized and files are compressed.

Also, reduce your server’s response time. Most mobile users will leave a page if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds.

Secure your site, as secured websites dominate Google’s voice search results. The HTTPS protocol makes certain that your website can be trusted and that it complies with all the rules of the good online practices.

Create snippets

Featured snippets can impact voice search to a great extent. There are three types of snippets -paragraphs, lists and tables. Of this, paragraphs are reported to make up 81 to 82 percent of all featured snippets.

Forbes recommends including a concise summary of main content above the fold under 29 words, to optimize content for an identifiable featured snippet.

Add FAQs

Informative FAQ pages can rank for voice search queries, as users need an answer for their questions. While text search mostly includes one to three words, voice search is longer and more conversational. Instead of focusing on a single head term for FAQ content, it is ideal to incorporate long-tail queries and related keywords.

Optimize landing pages

Adding landing page with details such as pricing, hours, and location, as well as detailed information about the services or products help searchers to get answers to any type of questions they may ask. The more detailed information included in the content, the better chances the page will hit enough match criteria to show up in the SERPs for long-tailed search queries.

Write suitable blogs and other content

Research a list of FAQs relevant to your services and try creating blog posts that can answer your customer’s questions.

Meeting your voice search optimization requirements can often be tricky and time-consuming. The Web Design and Search Marketing team here at MedResponsive can help you with any of your web design or internet marketing needs. Please contact us via phone or email with any questions. Have a great day or evening! Thank you for listening!