According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, one-fifth of total search queries are voice searches. In other words, 20% of people around the world prefer voice search over normal searches. Right now more than 40% of adults are already using voice search.
This is because of applications like Siri or Google Assistant where smartphone users can physically ask questions to their phones.
According to ComScore by the end of the year 2020, 50% of all searches will be via voice. Hence businesses and bloggers simply can’t afford to overlook SEO optimization for voice search.
In this article, you will learn various types of voice search queries, their attributes and 6 SEO tips for voice search. 0000
4 Types of Voice Search Queries
You can broadly divide voice search queries into the 4 following categories.
· General Information
More than 30% of voice search is regarding general information. They are regular information that people search in Google on a day to day basis.
· Personal Assistance
27% of searches are regarding personal assistance. These are queries that can help individuals immediately.
· Local Content
22% is regarding local content. They might be searching for things like local restaurants, shopping stores, cab services, etc. 90% of the local queries come from a mobile phone.
· Fun and Entertainment
Remain 20% of searches are fun and entertainment related like movies, dating, games etc.
So this gives you an idea of what type of voice search queries people are performing, it helps you to create SEO optimized content accordingly.
2 Features Make Voice Search Queries Different from Regular Search Queries
Before applying any SEO strategy you need to learn 2 features of voice search that are different from regular searches on Google.
· Users Are Looking for Quick Results
Generally, people who do voice search are looking for immediate results. Their queries are for personal assistance like asking for directions when they are driving a car.
Other use of voice search could be callings someone, read texts etc. These searches are usually made by people who are teenagers or young individuals below 30 years.
Hence to leverage this for SEO purposes your website must be optimized with content that can answer user’s queries quickly.
· Usually Voice Search Questions Contain More Words
A Second most important attribute of search quires is they tend to be longer sentences with so many extra words.
The reason is while writing search queries you keep it short to reduce physical effort but while speaking you can utter words at a length.
A regular search can just be a phrase while voice search is a full sentence containing a question.
For example, for a regular search, you will type “best restaurants in Delhi” however for voice search you will ask “Which are the best restaurants in Mumbai for having Dinner?”
Hence you have to optimize your website content accordingly.
6 Simple Yet Effective SEO Tips for Voice Search
Once you know the basic characteristics of a voice search now you can implement the following 6 SEO tips on your website.
· Creating Q & A Based Content More
Create blog posts which answer questions asked by the voice search queries. As I said earlier voice searches are long sentences with questions like what, why, where how etc.
You have to dedicate an entire blog post for such queries. Merely creating an FAQ page is not enough especially if you want to beat the competition.
Answering people’s queries with a blog post not only helps ranking high but also very profitable for your business. Your content must be written about how a customer describes his/her problem.
Creating blog posts addressing customer’s concerns increases the odds of your website ranking high in search results.
· Local SEO, Use My Business Listing on Google
As you learned earlier voice searches are very local. Hence your website must be optimized for local searches.
Your “contact us” information becomes very important here. You can include your business’s information in the site’s footer written in text.
Give your address, phone number, a Google map locating your workplace with a dialog box below.
Optimize content on your website for local keywords. You also need to claim your business for Google My Business Listing. This will help customers to locate your business through your website.
Always describe your business and products in more than 500 words.
· Target Featured Snippet
People who perform voice searches are looking for immediate results. And the best way to do that is by optimizing your website for Featured Snippets.
A featured snippet contains answers which are very concise and specific. Answers which are written in the form of lists or points are more likely to rank your website for Featured Snippets.
Create content that extensively uses bulleted listings and tables.
· Structure Your Content
Although this is general SEO practice, and it applies for voice search SEO too.
The data about the information on your website also known as metadata is very important for voice search optimization. The source code of your site contains this metadata that helps search engines identifying your content on the internet.
The schema or source code can be used to include codes that will make your content more dynamic and real-time. You can include contact information, address, and directions in your schema to make sure that a search engine identifies your website.
I know for a newbie this may sound a little bit technical and it may take some time to learn all these technical things but if you want to learn it fast then go for an online or offline digital marketing course.
· Building a Mobile Friendly Website/Blog
Most of the voice search queries are going to come from smartphones. Hence your website/blog must be mobile friendly.
You can use various themes and plugins to optimize your website for this purpose. In fact, now a day WordPress themes are already optimized for mobile phones.
You can also use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool for testing your website for mobile friendliness. They will also give you suggestions so that you can make the necessary changes to your site.
A score above 70 is good enough for your site being called mobile friendly.
· Improve Site Speed
Last but not least is improving your website’s speed. A webpage that loads in 1 second is 4 times more likely to rank high than a page that loads in 5 seconds.
Hence site speed matters a lot, especially for handheld devices.
So these were 6 SEO optimization tips for voice search. They are very simple to learn and implement on your website. If you optimize your website for voice search then you will see a 40%-50% hike in traffic within a few months.
Great articles, first of all, Thanks for writing such lovely Post! Earlier I thought that posts are the only most important thing on any blog.