Whether it’s through Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Google, voice searches are now a commonly used method to make a quick query. According to DataReportal, just under a third (30%) of global internet users aged 16-64 use voice assistants on a weekly basis. Not only are lots of users turning to voice assistants, but they’re using it regularly, too.
For search engine professionals, this of course means that voice search needs to be incorporated into your strategy. The way users search with their voice is a lot different to when they’re using their keyboard, so your SEO strategy needs to be different, too. That’s why we’ve rounded up the key considerations for SEO professionals when optimising for voice search.
Long-tail keywords
A core part of optimising for voice search, as in any SEO strategy, is the keyword research stage. The keywords used in voice searches tend to be different to traditional ones, as they’re usually longer and closer to the way people naturally speak. For example, they might search by saying “What takeaways are near me?” instead of “Takeaways near me”.
For this reason, long-tail keywords tend to be the better option for pages you want to optimise for voice search. You’ll need to consider this when doing your research, so make sure you incorporate them into your strategy for the key pages you’re looking to optimise for voice search.
Create an FAQs page
As you might have noticed above, voice searches are also more likely to be phrased as questions. This means picking out question-based keywords to optimise your site for, and a great way of doing this is by creating an FAQ page. This allows you to quickly answer all of the key questions that are being asked by your target audience in one place.
The other reason this works is because it gives your content a better chance of appearing in the featured snippet, and it’s this content that’s often provided first when users make a voice search. Google loves content that answers the user’s query in a concise manner, so providing this on an FAQs page could help it get picked up and displayed to voice searchers.
Make sure you optimise for mobile
Google’s mobile-first indexing practice means you should already be prioritising your mobile site above all else, but it’s especially important when optimising for voice search.
It’s thought that a fifth of mobile searches are done using voice search, meaning a large proportion of the traffic you receive from voice search will be directed to your mobile site. If it’s a broken, clunky, disorganised mess, you’re not going to hold on to those visitors for very long. In order to convert these users to sales, you’ll need to make sure your site has a responsive design that’s mobile-friendly and easy to use.
Keep down your loading times
This is an important rule for optimising in general, but it’s essential in voice search. Users expect sites to load near-instantly these days, so they won’t hang around long if your page gets slow and laggy when they click on it from the search results. Afterall, there’s a string of other websites sitting around yours in the search results that could load quicker, so why would they?
Addressing this could be something simple like removing unused code or checking the images on your site, but it could make a big difference, so try not to overlook it when perfecting your site’s performance.
Learn more
For more news and insights about the world of Google and SEO, read more over on the It Works Media blog, or check out some of the tips on our free resources page. Alternatively, get in touch with our team of specialists, today, to find out how we can improve your site’s SEO performance.
