Google Voice Search Optimization Tips
Google Voice search is on the rise in popularity with a stunning 71% of people claiming to rather use Google Voice assistant to search for something than physically typing in a query. And it’s no surprise as most smartphones now come with voice assistance that allow users to simply ask Siri or Use Google assistant to search the web. It’s time to now make your websites optimized for these voice searches to prepare for the massive amount of people using this voice search in the future.
It’s important to understand the differences between spoken and typed searches that will inevitably cause different search engine results. You need to watch out for your competitors as they could be optimizing their website for voice search and have a better advantage over gaining your potential customers. If you want to continue ranking high in search results you need to start optimizing for voice search today. We will give you 6 pointers to start doing on your site now to optimize for Google Voice search.
The History Of Google Voice Search
It wasn’t that long ago that Google required users to call a phone number from your mobile device and speak your search query. Google Voice search has evolved tremendously since the early days of the voice search program that date back to 2010. It was originally only in English and now today there are over 60 languages that are supported by Google voice search. We saw back in 2013, with the Hummingbird update, that Google search results for both typed an spoken search phrases changed a lot. Google updated their algorithm to emphasize a user’s natural language processing that aimed at trying to understand a user’s intent and the context of the search query. Since then, searches have returned more relevant answers in the results.
What’s The Purpose Of Optimizing For Google Voice Search?
Although it’s still relatively, new most SEO experts have different opinions on voice search optimization best practices, however there are a few things that they all agree on. The main takeaway is that most SEOs say that there is very little difference that you can do to optimize for voice search that is different than regular search engine optimization. Also, most would advise against allocating a substantial amount of resources into voice search optimization.
The Basics Of Voice Search Optimization
Obviously typed in searches will return different results than a voice search. This means that optimizing your site for regular searches will not always look the same as optimizing your site for voice search. The most concerning thing about Google Voice search is that when a person using a mobile device conducts a voice search, they will only get one top result. This one top result is called position zero, and everyone wants it. Interestingly enough, by 2020, half of all searches online will be conducted by voice. And even more interesting, this translates to half of your potential customers not seeing your website even if you’re in spot #4 in the search engines results.
Six Tips To Help You Optimize Your Website For Voice Search
- Use Featured Snippets
You should be familiar with what a featured snippet is by now if you have worked in SEO for a while. Featured snippets are the result that appears on the Top of the search engine page results page and is basically Google pulling the most relevant content about the search into a box. Featured snippets are so important because up to 30% of 1.4 million search queries tested On Google contain them. So, you can be assured that if the results include a featured snippet the Voice Assistant will pull the answer from there. This means make sure you are ranking featured snippets of your site. - User Intent
User intent is something that you have a great understanding of as it’s the foundation for most SEO. When you choose keywords to rank for, you need to figure out what the user intent of these keywords are. This simply means is the phrase a user is typing into Google have something to do with buying or is it a question to get more information. User intent is not always expressed though. Google is still trying to perfect their algorithm to deliver results based upon user intent. So, you need to help Google out by creating content that considers user intent in order to enhance the relevance of your pages to specific search queries. - Long Tail Keywords
Most of the time when a user conducts a voice search they speak as if they’re talking to a human. This means that there’s going to be a lot of long tail phrases entered into the search box. Like in regular SEO, using long tail keywords is a great practice to help rank your content. Long tail phrases are usually less difficult and have much fewer competition which means you’ll have higher chances to rank at the top of the search results page. - Website Page Speed
Page speed is becoming increasingly more important whether or not your website will appear in voice search results. The whole idea of a person using voice search is to speed up the process so obviously when they visit a website they are not going to wait a long time for it to load. Google knows this and won’t include websites that have slow loading pages in the voice search results page. So, page speed optimization is a huge priority for voice search optimization. A great first step is to analyze your current website speed with the page speed insights tool. It tells you if your sites current loading time is fast enough and even suggest how to make it faster. You should also note that mobile speed is way more important than the desktop speed for voice search optimization. - Structured Data
You should know what structured data is by now but to recap its basically code added to HTML markup and used by search engines to better understand your websites content. Search engines well crawl your site and read your content more efficiently by using structured data. with schema markup you can better control the way you provide information about your brand and the way Google interprets it. Implementing structured data results in rich snippets, which are known to increase click through rate drive traffic and bring you competitive advantages. Having this structured data can also help your pages appear in featured snippets and consequently in voice search results. So, if you do everything correctly and produce content interpreted by search engines as highly relevant, you’re snippet will become featured. - Local SEO
A recent survey found that 58% of consumers use voice search to find local businesses. This isn’t surprising since most people use voice search when they’re walking or driving somewhere. Mainly though people use voice search to discover where they should go. People who search for best hamburger in DC are looking to discover hamburger places near them, so if you own a hamburger shop in DC then you want to include your city when optimizing keywords. This is also true for states, neighborhoods, and even countries where your business is located. Even more important people conducting voice search will likely use the phrase near me. This means that it’s even more important to have a Google my business page optimized with your business listing information, so that you can appear in these near me searches.
In Conclusion
Voice search is already used widely and will only increase in the years ahead. Business owners who already are taking steps to optimize their website for voice search will improve their content visibility significantly, as Google voice search results increasingly narrow results to only top pages. Although it seems like most aren’t optimizing for voice search at the moment, it’s wise to stay ahead of the curve and optimize your business website using these six tips to ensure your business secures position zero in the Google voice search results.
