Voice searches are growing fast and people are using smartphones, smart speakers and car speakers to find answers to their queries. People looking for quick answers to their questions typically ask their smartphones. Smart speakers are used in the comfort of the home to find songs, ask for help in their plans and more. People use car speakers while driving asking for directions or the best stores.
If you do not optimise your website for voice search, you could lose out on sales. Voice search uses an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system to transform voice signals into text. This technology allows you to use your voice to search on smart devices.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is used in personal voice assistants for audio quality and voice control. NLP (Natural Language Processing) is used to better understand the questions of the users.
Voice search
People mostly use mobile for voice searches and it is also the biggest reason why voice searches have become popular. You can find affordable SEO services to optimise your website for voice search.
As soon as the device has an input it will first detect the language in which the query is asked. The keyword in the query will be found and the query is answered. Some of the devices with screens will display the result while some will speak back to the user.
Voice search optimization
- While using voice search people use a conversational and more natural tone. They are most likely to use long-tail keywords in the query. You should find and use conversational keywords. The queries mostly use words like ‘How’, ‘What’, ‘Where’, ‘When’ and ‘Why’. The filler words are also used to make the query more conversational. You can use tools like Soolve and AnswerThePublic to find your keywords.
- In voice search the users are looking for answers to fulfill a particular need. The voice search results mostly come from featured snippets. To answer the queries you can create an FAQ page on your website. You should answer the questions conversationally to make them appealing for voice search. Make the answers detailed but short as voice search answers tend to be shorter.
- As most of the voice searches are done on mobile you should optimise your website for mobile. Your user experience should be consistent regardless of how your users engage. You should use a responsive web design, create content that is readable on mobile, optimise your images and place CTAs at the top of the page.
- Most of the voice searchers look for local business information. Voice search is local-friendly and therefore you should get a Google My Business listing. Create a listing and fill out all the required information correctly.
- The voice search picks the top search result to answer the spoken query. Therefore it is better to be closer to the #1 result. You should improve your overall SEO efforts that cover backlinks, user experience, technical SEO and local search.
- Schema markup helps search engines to better understand your content and select what is relevant to the user’s question. You should use schema markup.
- The main key in voice search is being conversational. You should use natural language when you create and publish content. You should find out what conversational style people are using, what type of questions are asked the most and what type of answers are best suited to these queries.
- Websites that take longer to load are abandoned quickly by visitors. Website loading speed can impact the bounce rate therefore you should optimise your website for speed.
- Voice search results get many likes and shares from social media like Facebook, Twitter and others. The more you engage with your users the more will find you through voice search.