Voice search is a growing trend, and optimizing for it can help you reach more potential customers. As per a Google report, 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile, and the trend is to grow.
It is becoming popular as people become more comfortable with using voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Optimizing your website for voice search can help you reach more customers and get more traffic.
Voice search is different from regular search because people use natural language to ask questions. Because of this reason, you need to optimize your website for long-tail keywords that people are likely to use when searching by voice.
Here are five ways to optimize for voice search:
Understand Your Type of Customer
The first step to optimizing voice search is understanding your target customer. When you know who your customer is, you can better understand what they're looking for and how they're searching for it.
For example, if you're a B2B company, your customers are likely to search differently than if you're a B2C company. B2B customers are usually more research-driven and looking for specific information, while B2C customers are more likely to look for general information or make a purchase.
Focus on Conversational Keywords
One way to optimize for voice search is to focus on conversational keywords. These are the keywords that people are likely to use when speaking to a voice assistant, as opposed to the more formal keywords they might use when typing out a query. For example, someone might say "What's the best Italian restaurant near me?" rather than "Italian restaurant".
Make sure to include these conversational keywords in your website content and in the metadata (such as the title and meta description) of your site. Optimizing for conversational keywords will help ensure that your site comes up when people search for your products or services.
Build Pages That Answer FAQs
Another tip for optimizing your website for voice search is to build pages that answer frequently asked questions (FAQs). People often use voice search to ask questions, so it's important that you have pages on your website that answer those questions. According to Perficient, 55% of users do voice searches to ask questions on a smartphone.
You can use tools like Google Trends, SEMrush, and Google AdWords Keyword Planner to find out what questions people are asking. Likewise, you can also use Google search results to see what questions people are asking about your topic. Once you have a list of questions, create dedicated pages on your website that answer each one thoroughly.
Provide Context with Schema Markup
If you're hoping to be found through voice search, providing context with schema markup is important. Adding schema markup can help search engines better understand your content and match it with the user's query. For example, if you have a recipe site, you can use schema markup to tell search engines about the ingredients, cooking time, and other relevant details.
Optimize for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are brief answers to questions that appear at the top of search engine results pages. They are drawn from the content on a website and provide searchers with quick, concise information. To optimize for featured snippets, businesses should focus on creating clear, concise content that directly answers questions searchers are likely to ask. The content should be well-organized and easy to scan, as people are more likely to ask shorter, simpler questions when using voice search.
Conclusion
Voice optimizing your website is important because it is becoming more and more popular, and if you don't optimize your website, you could be losing out on a lot of traffic. By following the tips above, you can make sure your website is ready for voice search.