Voice search has been gaining momentum in recent years as voice assistants have universally improved and people interact with search on a wide variety of devices. Around 27% of smartphone users prefer to do voice searches rather than text searches, with around 20% of all mobile searches being voice searches.
With voice search becoming more prominent, your content needs to be optimized to rank well everywhere, including voice search results.
Here are a few things you can do to optimize content for voice search.
Include Question-based Keywords
Most people use voice search to get quick answers to questions. Because of this, you’re more likely to rank in voice search results if you optimize for common questions people are asking.
Question keywords are long-tail keywords that usually start with words like who, what, where, when, why, and how. They tend to use natural language because the person is speaking the keyword rather than writing it out in short form to search for an answer.
You don’t have to make question keywords your main keywords. Instead, you can sprinkle them in as secondary keywords throughout your content. This is also helpful for generating ideas for other types of content you can link out to, such as YouTube videos (which also need some SEO help).
How to find question keywords
You can get a range of question keywords by either using your normal keyword research tool or checking related searches.
Most keyword checking tools will provide a list of alternate keywords related to whatever you’re searching. Even Google Keyword Planner does this. Check this list for long-tail keywords that are asking questions related to the topic you’re covering.
You can also check related searches by typing your main keyword into Google and looking at the “People also ask” section. This will show a variety of questions people ask related to that keyword, all of which can be used as long-tail keywords. Click on a few of the most relevant questions in the section to get even more related questions.
Using accordions for question keywords
An easy way to include more question keywords in your content is to add an FAQ section to your content. These work best when you’re adding a significant number of questions to the page. Accordions declutter the page and give the reader more options for how they’ll interact with your content, including only reading answers to questions they care about.
When you’re optimizing for questions, provide a concise answer to the question that gets to the point directly without beating around the bush. These are the kinds of answers that rank better and are more likely to wind up in position zero.
Write Conversationally
Formal writing has its place in professional niches, but conversational writing wins for most simple keywords, including voice search results. Conversational writing is friendly, open, and casual, making it easy for everyone to understand, even if it’s read out by a voice assistant.
Conversational writing isn’t necessarily chaotic or super informal. Instead, it:
- Includes contractions, pronouns, and regularly accepted slang
- Tells a story
- Uses simple words
- Addresses the reader directly
- Has shorter paragraphs and sentences
- Shows the writer’s personality
- Sticks to first and second-person POV, not third-person
- Speaks in active voice more often than passive voice
- Asks and answers questions
It takes practice to write more conversationally, but it’s worth it if you’re going for voice search ranking! Plus, conversational writing may also help you with traditional SEO as well, making your content more readable and useful overall.
You can also sneak CTAs into conversational writing without making it stand out too much. Take some inspiration from these tips about email CTAs, since there will be a lot of similarities between the two.
Think Local
When answering voice search questions, local results will be prioritized if the question is at all location-based. If you’re targeting a specific area for your SEO, make sure you’re including that local area within your content so that search engines know that.
Local SEO is super important if you’re looking for physical customers to come into your location. If you’re not including your location in the content you’re publishing or on your website pages, you may be missing out on traffic that should be reaching you.
It’s simple enough to add local SEO into your mix. You don’t need to spam your location everywhere. Just include a few references to location, including all the areas you serve and where your business is located. Make sure it fits naturally into your content.
A good example of adding location keywords into content is adding location-based questions into your FAQ section in an article. Answering these kinds of questions can help you bring in more local traffic without interfering with your normal content.
Seek Out Position Zero
For most voice searches, the content in position zero is used to answer the question. Position zero is content Google uses at the top of a search results page to provide a quick response to a search. This is officially called the featured snippet. It appears before any other results at the very top of the page.
While you can never guarantee a position zero result, you can improve your chances by doing a few things:
1. Focusing on longtail keywords
Long-tail keywords tend to be more specific, so choose keywords that match well to your niche and the topic you’re covering in your content.
2. Answering questions with a short paragraph
The best length for an answer to make it fully into a featured snippet is 50 words or fewer in a single paragraph. Make sure your target keyword is included in the answer.
3. Using proper page structure
Structure your pages well with proper headings, subheadings, and keyword placement to help search engines go through and find relevant content easily.
4. Directly asking and answering questions
If you want to make it into position zero for a specific question, include that exact question in your content with a direct, concise answer.
5. Targeting non-competitive keywords first
Ranking well for non-competitive keywords can help you build up more domain and page authority to rank for more competitive keywords later.
Improving these areas of your content will give you a better chance of ranking at position zero, allowing your content to be used as the answer to a voice search question.
Prioritize Fast Site Loading
Google has been gradually increasing the importance of user experience as a ranking factor. If your website loads slowly, you’re far less likely to rank well and very unlikely to get the top spot for voice search.
Webpages that take a long time to load make for a bad user experience. Ideally, a webpage should take 2 seconds or less to load. This is true for both mobile and desktop users. If yours is taking longer than that, you need to work on load speed.
You have control over most of the factors that go into page load speed. Here are a few simple things you can do to improve your page load speed on your website:
- Optimize images to 300 KB or less (large images no more than 1 MB)
- Limit plug-ins and other third-party apps
- Avoid redirecting from another page whenever possible
- Choose a reliable, fast website host
- Use “lazy loading” for images, videos, and additional content
Outside of these things, there are a lot of more technical things you can do to improve page load speeds by cleaning up code and changing how your website is cached and loaded. Unless you’re familiar with what you’re doing, you may want to consult a web management expert to help you so nothing on your website gets broken in the cleanup process!
With more people using their phones and other mobile devices to search online, ranking for voice search is more important than ever. Following these steps can help you rank for voice search and improve your SEO overall.
