by admin - 2 Jul 2021

Voice search is one of the fastest-growing trends in the current times. With the advent of digital voice assistants, a new era of voice technology has evolved. What seemed to be a sci-fi movie fantasy has transfigured into a reality, making our daily tasks easier. Imagine while driving a car and you want to search for a location. How difficult it would be to open your phone, type in the location and perform the search! Contrastingly, how easy is it to open the voice search, say it aloud whatever you wish to search and get the results? At least 20% of searches on Google are voice-oriented, and that shows how lucrative it could be if you’re able to rank your content on voice search. Have you incorporated voice search optimization in your SEO strategy? You cannot afford to miss out on this lucrative opportunity that can bring you tons of traffic and leads. Let’s find out the benefits of voice search optimization and how it boosts your visibility online. 

WHAT IS VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION? 

When you write a blog or a piece of the website content, you perform SEO to rank it higher on SERP to boost your online visibility and drive increased traffic. Conventionally you optimize your content to rank higher on text searches. But when you optimize your content to rank it higher for voice queries made using digital assistants, it is known as voice search optimization. It’s the same procedure of incorporating specific keywords and use of other SEO tactics with a slightly different approach.  

WHY IS VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION NECESSARY? 

1.RISE OF VOICE ASSISTANTS & VOICE SEARCH 

Siri, Alexa, Google voice assistant are no strangers now; they have indeed become a family. Right from playing music to handling the connected appliances of your house to answer your voice queries, these digital assistants make mundane tasks easier and time-saving. In 2020, though pandemic had impacted every industry, the global sales of smart speakers reached an all-time high. Nearly 4.20 billion voice assistant devices were in use in 2020 worldwide, and the number is expected to rise to 8.40 by 2040. To make your content compatible with voice queries, you must perform voice search optimization. When the number of voice searches is rapidly increasing, it is necessary to perform voice SEO. 

2.ACQUIRE DOMINANCE IN SEARCH RESULTS   

People these days have become so busy that they wish to find answers to their queries instantly without having to waste the time. Multitasking is something common with people these days, and hence voice searches are making things easier. While driving or cooking, it’s a little difficult to unlock the phone, open the search engine and type the query and keep checking the search results one after the other to find the exact answer for the query. But with voice search, people get to listen to the accurate answer without toggling between the various search results. However, there’s a tricky challenge to it as voice search presents only one result, and hence you cannot afford to rank second or further. The content must be optimized properly to acquire the top spot and be read aloud by the search engine. 

Apart from the voice search results, for the conventional text searches also Google displays featured snippets that are regarded as #0 search result as it is well segregated from others and stand at a top driving maximum of the traffic. The featured snippet is also read aloud by Google, and hence if your content is voice-search optimized, it can potentially rank on #0. 

3.BOOSTS YOUR LOCAL TRAFFIC 

Most of the voice searches are done for local listings, such as to find a particular store nearby or café or anything present in the geographical radius. Hence if you’re looking to expand your customer base, start with voice search optimization for your content, such as ranking your business for local voice search results. This will bring in more local traffic to your business as well as increase your sales and help you stand out from the competition. 

4.BOOST YOUR E-COMMERCE SALES 

It is seen that people perform a maximum of voice searches when they are in the buying or consideration stage of the sales funnel. Hence if you own an e-commerce store, it could bring lucrative sales opportunities if your business appears in voice search results. 

5.STAND OUT OF THE COMPETITION 

Voice search optimization is comparatively new and probably unused by most of your competitors. While you try to outperform your competitor’s traffic, include voice SEO in your strategy to drive increased traffic.  

STEPS TO PERFORM VOICE SEO

Optimizing your content to rank in voice search results could bring you several benefits but require your efforts to make the content voice-friendly. The following steps can guide you to perform voice SEO. 

1.Streamline a Conversational Tone in Your Content 

When people search for something in their voice, they use a conventional tone rather than the language used while doing a text search. Hence make sure your content is in the simple daily use language that people normally speak instead of including those fancy words and phrases. Voice commands and voice technology works around Natural Language Processing, and hence it is better to use natural language rather than dressing up your content with fancy words. 

2.Target Long-tail Keywords 

While typing a query, the main focus of people is one on the specific word, but in a voice search, they ask for something in a complete question. For example, assume someone wishes to buy homemade chocolates, they would type in homemade chocolates for a text search query, but for voice search, they’ll speak out, “Where can I buy an assorted collection of homemade chocolates nearby”. If you target long-tail keyword like ‘assorted collection of homemade chocolates, you can probably make up the search results. Thus targeting long-tail keywords from your niche brings you increased relevant traffic with a higher rate of conversion. 

3.Optimize for local search 

As already mentioned above, most of the voice searches happen for local search results and shopping, thus optimize your content to rank for the local search results. Leverage the benefits of Google My Business listing for tapping on local search results. 

4.Include Interrogatory Words & FAQs 

Most of the voice searches include interrogative sentences and words, for example, someone searching for homemade chocolates using the text, “homemade chocolates” will get results like homemade chocolates recipes, homemade chocolates store, homemade chocolates to buy nearby, etc. But when using a voice command, they search “Where can I buy homemade chocolates from?” Thus users are very much specific while performing voice search as they wish to receive only relevant answers. Along with long-tail keywords, include a few interrogatory words in your content. 

Have an FAQ section on your site that brings direct answers to the common questions. It not only makes it easy for Google to find answers on your webpage for user’s queries but increases the probability for you to rank on featured snippets too, thus driving increased traffic.  

5.Schema Markup 

It is seen that the maximum of the voice search results includes the web pages that have a schema markup and structured data. Schema markup includes the details about your webpage that helps search engines like Google to understand what your page is about. Only when the search crawlers understand the content on your webpage, the page gets ranked for relevant search queries. Hence do not miss out on the schema markup for your web pages. 

6.Reduce the Website Loading Speed 

The loading speed of the website is one major factor for it to rank higher on SERP. No one wishes to wait long for results, and on average, a person waits only for 2-3 seconds for a website to load and leave if loading time extends. Hence Google looks for a relevant result with the least loading time to be present in voice search results. Optimize and compress the images on your web pages to reduce the loading time. 

Voice technology is the present and the future, and hence it is profitable to leverage the voice search ranking by performing voice search optimization. If you wish to outperform your competitor’s and boost your marketing strategies, make voice SEO an indispensable part of your marketing plan. If you’re looking to leverage the benefits of voice search SEO and amp up your marketing plan, connect with Entitledarts at https://entitledarts.com We help businesses to boost their sales and bring a 360-degree digital transformation with cutting edge marketing and branding strategies.