According to Garter’s report, 30% of the web browsing sessions will be without a screen. In other words, using voice search. And why not? The ease of extending web experience to activities like driving, cooking, walking, socializing, exercising, operating machinery, etc. is something we all have been longing for.
Assuredly, voice search is here to stay, and not just a wave of future. A lot can be attributed to the way society has developed itself into a result-driven community. Users want to seek information at their fingertips with minimal efforts. And thanks to technology, all you got to do now is to ask a question to smart devices and get the search results conveniently. In this scenario, if your website doesn’t meet up the user’s demands, well, it might cause you a lot in terms of user base, and therefore, RoI.
Experts at Martello are here to help you with the same. Here are top recommendations for the year 2019 and get your website ready for the flood called voice search queries.
But First Things First, What the Hell is Voice Assistance?
Well, have you ever asked a question to an expert friend? While you end up finding yourself in the pool of information, it is the most convenient and most accessible option to update yourself.
The same goes for using the voice assistant. You can directly call out to your voice assistant anytime and get the entire information without having to key in anything. Some of the notable examples include names like Amazon’s Alexa, Windows Cortona, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant.
You can refer to it as a voice assistant or a digital assistant that operates like a human. They adapt themselves to recognize your voice commands and convert verbal commands into text searches, followed by exploring answers on the internet and present them in front of you. Not only this, they are capable of understanding the user’s intent and track the context of questions while searching for the answers.
One of the studies claims that 60% of the searches are done using mobile devices. Additionally, according to Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google, 20% of these searches are voice searches. That is, one-fifth of the mobile phone users search account to the voice search.
Well, with the combination of these statistics beside others, it is apparent as to how voice searches will inspire great innovation tomorrow.
How to Optimize for Voice Search?
Here are top recommendations that you can consider to get your website ready for the Voice Search era:
#1. Take Care of Your Website’s Loading Time
Well, well, well. According to the surveys, the pages that load in 4 seconds are more likely to work well with the voice search. You might wait for a second or two to let your website load and desired results to appear. However, the same is not a case with the voice assistants. They require your pages to load faster so that it can quickly look for your answers and present them before you.
#2. Include FAQ Section to Your Website
With voice searches, a user is more likely to search for “What are web development services?, or Which are the best mobile app development companies?”, Rather than the conventional search approach. In other words, voice search queries generally take up question format. The best way to target such keywords is by incorporating an FAQ section on your website.
Taking up question/ answer format, these pages ensure that your webpage lands amongst the top-ranking pages in the voice search results.
#3. Get Your Website the Necessary Security Certificates
Voice assistants look for reliable sources to get the information you need. To ensure that your website finds its place among the search results, you might want to invest in an SSL certificate. Go for HTTP links rather than HTTPS, and a part of your job is done. Take steps to upgrade your website’s reliability.
#4. Use Brief Answer Snippets
Brief answer snippets make your website an excellent source for the voice assistants. A good answer snippet is short and precise. Make sure they contain 30 words at the max with easy words which can be pronounced effortlessly. Well, we are not saying so, Google’s ranking factors do. Check them out here.
Additionally, snippets should have an explanation that does not require a visual to elaborate. Taking care of these points in your answer snippet ensures good voice search
#5. Work to Boost Your Website’s Authority and Weave Your Content Around Questions
We all know Google is fond of high domain ranking. It is assumed that a website with high domain ranking is highly authoritative and will undoubtedly provide better answers. Moreover, a page with great social shares indicates valuable information. This makes it pretty apparent that high DA websites are considered to be a cool source of information for the voice assistants. However, you can add to the value of your content by weaving it around questions. For instance, instead of searching for “Venice to Rome”, a user is more likely to search for “What’s the route to Rome from Venice?” In addition, make sure to add worth to your content by increasing the word count. Average word count for voice search page on Google is 2,312 words. The Key Here is High word count, Great keyword strategy, and Effective use of conventional language.
#6. Optimize for Mobile
Most of the voice search queries are entered via mobile devices. Thus, it is obvious that optimizing for voice search requires you to optimize for mobile devices. This includes mobile-optimized content and layouts in addition to the website loading speed on mobile devices.
#7. Use Semantics to Structure the Content
Try using structured data markup to ensure that search engines understand and crawl your data more efficiently. Keep content up-to-date and find an answer to the user’s questions as soon as possible. Try doing this with effective use of structured data markup language while targetting long-tail keywords. Results will follow.
#8. Focus on Natural Speech
Voice recognition devices are designed to process natural language. At least that’s what trends say. A user would speak to the digital assistant similar to how they’ll talk to another person. In other words, as already emphasized, voice search queries are more conversational and tend to be longer than the text-based queries.
#9. Bonus
As digital assistants and voice search continue to evolve, understanding the way search engines deliver predictive answers to commonly asked questions is very crucial. Making your content visible will require you to adapt to the marketing strategies and produce responses across a variety of formats including traditional texts to modern voice search. Therefore, make sure that while strategizing voice search SEO, you emphasize on conversational intent and natural language processing.
Conclusion
While voice search is still in its infancy, marketers must stay updated on the trends. After all, it has come a long to advanced digital assistants who are capable of learning from speech patterns and how the user interacts with them. Not only does it require innovative minds to brainstorm on new ways to utilize the data but to deliver accurate voice search results on multiple devices.
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