6 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

“Hey, Siri: How do I optimize SEO for voice search?”

Talking to our computers instead of typing seems like science fiction, and not long ago it was. But now it’s part of our everyday lives, and it’s something internet marketers are going to have to adjust to.

Here are some tips for optimizing SEO for voice search.

Use Natural Language

When using voice assistants, people tend to ask longer questions instead of just typing a few words. Because of this, you will want to target long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are, as the name implies, longer keywords.

For instance, a normal SEO keyword might be “Japanese restaurants,” while a long-tail keyword would be, “What Japanese restaurants are open now?” People are more likely to ask longer questions while using voice search as opposed to typing.

The website Answer the Public will give you commonly asked questions around a specific keyword. This can be a great SEO tool for finding long-tail keywords. Also, Google has a “People also ask” section. Type in a question related to your industry, and Google will suggest related questions. For instance, if you type, “How do I optimize for voice search?” Google will suggest, “How do I improve Google Voice Search?” as well as other questions.

Get Listed online

If you’re a local business, you want to get listed online. Thing about how often people ask their phones to take them to the nearest gas station or burger joint. If you’re not listed on different online databases, voice search devices won’t know you exist. And make sure your information is the same in all listings.

There are more online databases than just Google My Business. In fact, there are dozens of them, and Horton will get your business listed on over 70 of the best.

Local Focus

According to Single Grain, a high percentage (22%) of voice searches are for local information, so one good way to optimize for voice search is by producing local content. Even if your business isn’t local (if it’s entirely virtual), you can still produce local content for wherever you’re based as a source of traffic.

If you need help with local SEO, read these suggestions.

Make Your Device Mobile-Friendly

An astonishing 64% of Google searches are done by mobile, so it’s critical that your website look good on a phone. It’s actually more important for your site to be mobile-friendly than desktop-friendly.

This is especially true when optimizing for voice search, which is more often done on phones than on desktops. Google provides a test to see if your website is mobile-friendly.

Page Loading Time

According to the above article from Single Grain, your rank on Google is influenced by how long it takes your page to load. This is also true for Google Home, Google’s voice assistant, so optimizing for voice search involves getting your website to load as fast as possible.

One way to do this is through Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). A CDN essentially stores parts of your site on different servers around the world. That way, if someone on the opposite side of the planet tries to visit your site, the signal won’t have to travel as far.

Horton will set up CDNs for your company so that your website will load faster. Call us to learn more. Also, you can use Pingdom to test the speed of your website.

Structured Data

Neil Patel recommends using Schema markup, also known as structured data (an important part of SEO). According to him:

“It does not affect the rankings directly, but it can give you an edge over your competitors. Essentially, it is metadata — data about the information on your site. It goes into your site’s source code. The visitors do not see it, but microdata helps search engines to organize and classify your content. It is an underutilized strategy because it requires work.”

Also, make sure to send a sitemap to Google Search Console so that your pages will be easier for Google to crawl.

Let Horton optimize your website. We are a digital marketing company near Nashville, TN. Our team will do SEO, content writing, logo and web design, apps, marketing, and more.

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