Optimizing Your Website For Voice Search

website optimized for voice search

Voice Search Is Taking Over

The ways that people of all ages use their devices to browse the internet is becoming more and more streamlined each day. One of the more recent developments in internet searching technology is voice search. What was once exclusive to Apple users with Siri, has now become more widely available among multiple platforms including Google Voice Search. As of 2014, more than half of the teenagers, and over 40% of the adults living in the United States had used voice search more than twice daily, and that number is bound to increase as the technology becomes more accessible across more devices. With this in mind, the main question for business owners and digital marketers alike become how best to take advantage of this technology in terms of gaining more business.

Think How You Would Perform A Voice Search

To get started on optimizing your website for voice searches, it is important to become familiar with how people tend to use voice search. For the most part, people use voice search to learn about a place or business in their area that they intend to visit. A voice search along those lines may sound like “coffee shop in Vancouver” or “cafes near me”. In both cases, making sure your website as well as your Google My Business listing is up to date with your location information. That way, a Google Voice Search will be able to correlate the searcher’s location with your listed address.

Include Long-Tail Keywords

Basic search engine optimization involves adding specific relevant keywords to your website that will be associated with the keywords someone types into a search engine. This will allow your website to appear as a relevant result in that person’s search engine query. This works well when people type their searches, because they don’t typically type out an entire phrase when searching for a specific item, location or piece of information on Google. People don’t usually use short form when they use voice search however, which is why it is important to keep long-tail keywords in mind when you are optimizing for voice searches. For example, it is good enough for text searches to have keywords like “on-page SEO” on your site, but for voice searches you’ll need to consider how people actually speak. This means that you should include long-tail keywords as well, such as “How can I improve my website on-page SEO?” Try thinking of the way you use voice search to give yourself an idea about what to include as long-tail keywords for your site. Another way you can get started on expanding your long-tail copy is by checking your Search Console reports on Google Analytics, which show you exactly what terms and phrases people use to find your site via Google searches.

Add Diverse and Detailed Content

A great way to increase your site’s search rankings across all search methods including voice search is to make sure your site is easily navigated and understood by Google. You can do this by beefing up your site’s microdata, in order to better feature vital info such as your phone number, hours of operation, your address and even directions on how to get to your business or storefront. Also, by incorporating Q&A style content to places like your blogs and product pages you can seamlessly improve your site rankings across multiple search platforms and methods. This is because you will have made it far easier for Google to establish your site’s relevance with even the most obscure queries.

Improve your Mobile Website Site

Since voice searches are almost exclusively used on mobile devices, you’ll want to make sure once someone has landed on your mobile site, they’ll want to stay there. Google has recently determined that mobile bounce rates are nearly 10% higher compared to desktop rates, which suggests that more site owners need to improve the interface of their mobile site. In order to make sure you have a mobile friendly website, you can use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to find out where you can make improvements. There are also some basic things you can do from the start to keep your site mobile friendly, such as improving your site’s speed, creating more simplified site copy, and even moving buttons and links on your site further apart to make it easier to click on a mobile device screen. These are fairly simple ideas, but they will definitely go a long way towards helping you keep people browsing your mobile site once they’ve arrived there.

If you would like to learn more about the ways you can keep your website streamlined and user friendly, the digital marketing experts at Stigan Media are here to help. Our team is ready to help find the SEO solutions you are looking for when it comes to creating and maintaining a digital presence that will help your business grow. You can find us via Facebook and Twitter to get updates about all the latest tips and trends in the digital marketing world, or you can contact us directly via telephone or our website to set up a consultation to find out what we can do to help improve and expand your company’s digital presence.