Voice Search Optimization: Top 10 Strategies to Rank Better

SEO TECHNIQUES FOR VOICE AND IMAGE SEARCH

Voice and image research has been growing more and more in recent months. So it is important that you apply good SEO practices to achieve the results you want in front of search engines.

Why Voice Search Optimization is Important

• 31% of smartphone users worldwide use voice tech at least once a week. (Source: Statista, Location World)
• The total voice searching user base among US adults is 42.7%. (Source: Voicebot)
• Half of all online searches will be voice-based by 2020. (Source: Comscore)
• By 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen (Source: Gartner)
• 82% of voice assistant users worldwide use them to seek information. (Source: Statista)

Still not convinced? From 2016 to 2018, one can only expect them to get bigger and better in 2019. People in all age groups are using personal assistants –

10 Voice Search SEO Techniques & Tools to Power up Your WordPress Site

• 66% of Millennials use voice-based searches in their home
• Around 32% of Millennials have used the voice-based search on a smart speaker
• Top activities vary by the device used
• Millennials are more likely to shop and research products than they are to buy

Why is Voice Search Getting Bigger?

Imagine you are in the kitchen preparing a new dish and get confused with the recipe steps. Like everyone else, you probably don’t want to use your smartphone with your not-so-clean hands.

Think of something that can help? You can undoubtedly use your voice search assistant to repeat the whole recipe to you and proceed with your cooking merrily.

There are dozens of situations and examples like the above one where voice search saves the day for us.

Some prominent reasons as to why voice search is slowly becoming the talk of the town are:

Voice Search is Faster and Easier 

There is not a shadow of a doubt, that voice search is faster than traditional methods of searching for a query; this is what makes it the number one reason for people adopting the trend.

Voice search: how it works and tips for optimization

Today, we’re going to talk about SEO for voice and image search. To understand, it is important that you pay attention to the points that we will address. With new technologies and user behavior – who wants more and more practicality and speed in their daily lives – search engines need to adapt to changes in society.

Voice search, for example, falls within these requirements, it is something that is being used a lot and already interferes in the ranking of searches. This type of search can be used both in browsers, as in Google Chrome, for desktop and mobile, and by personal assistants such as Siri (iOS) and Google Now (Android).

Google is now able to better understand what users are searching for by speaking. It is now possible to interpret the search intent and the context behind that phrase. Therefore, following some SEO tips to improve your voice search is critical.

Here’s how to do it:

it is common for people to use longer sentences in this search and not so much robotic terms as in written research. So it’s ideal to use more long-tail keywords;

• use Google My Business to provide data such as your business’s address, phone number, images, and hours of operation. Thus, you are more likely to appear in local searches and in searches related to the services you offer;
• create content that encompasses users’ most frequently asked questions. For this, you can use studies from your team, such as the most frequent questions that appear in your business’s Customer Service or check in Google Search Console the keywords (of the “question” type) that most bring traffic to your site;
• optimize your content to appear in Google’s zero position. This is because, in voice research, it is common for robots to read exactly this material.

1. Optimize for Rich Answers

A SEMrush voice search study found that “70% of all answers returned from voice searches occupied a SERP feature (with 60% of those returning a Featured Snippet result).” The odds are most smart devices with voice search capability will give out a similar answer to particular queries, and the answer is principally a rich answer for the question.

2. Re-Imagine and Restructure Your Content

With voice search being a lot more conversational than traditional searches, we all need to analyze our content and its structure again. The goal should be to include succinct questions and answers to improve the content layout and make it more voice search-friendly.

Backlinko’s study says Google prefers short, concise answers to voice search queries and the typical voice search result is only 29 words in length. The SEMrush voice search study for Google Assistant found “Text length of the answers returned was nearly the same for every device (around 41 words on average).”

These are valuable insights about how our content should be structured to rank better for voice search results.

Include Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs) on your product pages and blogs as they include question keywords, and are quite short as well. Both these factors are prerequisites for voice search ranking. The FAQ-style format makes it easy for Google to pull content from your website and display it as a rich snippet.

Using pointers to break your content into small fragments is another voice search best practice and helps in better ranking.

3. Use Conversational Language for Content 

Being conversational is a primary characteristic of a voice search query, and we need to take leverage of this. The more we use robotic language in our content, the fewer chances we have in appearing in voice search results.

We can benefit hugely from using natural language in whatever we write and publish on the web. When there is the use of natural language, there is a lot of scope of matching as a result of verbal questions.

Understanding the searcher’s intent is critical if you want to know how people are asking verbal queries. You need to study and anticipate the query style that people use while using voice search.

• What type of question keywords are people using?
• What is their conversational style?
• What type of questions are being asked the most?
• What type of answers are best suited for these queries?
• What answers are performing well and being displayed as voice search results? 

Data-driven insights with answers to the above questions will let you have an idea of what people want when they search verbally.

4. Target Long-Tail Keyword Phrases

Yes, voice searches are longer than searches on a keyboard due to their conversational style. On top of this, we all know that Google is fond of long-form complete content. We cannot prepare content separately for each and every voice search term, but we can surely include all terms in a full-fledged post.

Content creators can use this by developing long-form content including all long-tail keywords which appear in vocal queries.

5. Improve Loading Time of Your Website 

Despite being such an essential factor for voice search, this one often goes unnoticed. But that doesn’t lower its significance a bit.

Websites that take longer to load are abandoned very quickly compared to those that load quickly. Website loading speed has a direct impact on bounce rate and hence, should be optimized at all costs.

To add some necessity, Google released its Speed Update, which emphasizes optimizing website load times. When it comes to voice searches, the rules are pretty much the same. Voice searchers need immediate results, and if you have a slow website which takes an eternity to load, your content won’t be used to answer verbal queries.

Here is a checklist of the do’s and don’ts for good website loading speeds:

• Use compressed images and videos on your site.
• Use “async” and “defer” to reduce JavaScript parsing.
• It is advisable to use CSS3 and HTML5 frameworks given that they load mobile web pages quickly.
• Minify Style Sheets and JavaScript and lessen HTTP requests.
• Reduce redirects and the number of plugins you use.
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

All in all, slow page loading speeds can affect both your website’s bounce rate and conversion rate.

Google Page Speed Insights and PingDom are good website speed test tools, and we ought to use these to optimize our site load times.

6. Pay Attention to Mobile

All the big announcements at Google I/O 2019 were either directly related to mobile or tools related to mobile. Google emphasizes mobile experience and vows to make it better day by day.

Mobile easily beats other devices when it comes to voice search queries because most verbal questions are being asked on mobile. You should be well prepared to deliver an amazing mobile user experience.

Creating mobile-friendly content with a mobile-first approach is key, and we need to pay heed to some ways to achieve that:

1. Build a mobile-responsive website.
2. Run a mobile-friendly test for your website and optimize accordingly.
3. Your website should be crawlable to ensure visibility and exposure to your content.

Mobile is the future of search, and that includes vocal queries as well. Being ready with a mobile responsive website is an SEO best practice which shouldn’t be ignored.

7. Leverage Google My Business Listings 

We are already aware that people use their voice for “near me” searches. The factor that determines whether we rank for these searches is our Google My Business listing.

A Google My Business listing is a way to let Google know that your business is located at a particular place. When someone asks Google to display similar businesses in that area, your business could rank for that query.

Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) must be included in your listing. Moreover, choosing the right business categories and providing area codes is vital. You can also add posts with special deals, news, or updates to make your business stand out.

So if you don’t have a Google Business listing yet, it is high time you do so. Improve your local SEO, and you will see the positive results straight away.

Another way to rank for “near me” searches is to target local keywords and gain higher search rankings. Embedding structured data using Schema.org for better performance in search engines is highly recommended.

8. Answer The Public

SEO Answer the Public

Answer the public will help you get questions about any specific query or topic. You can get most of the relevant questions your users can ask. It will give you questions starting with who, what, how, where, what and many more.

For example – I searched “SEO” and got questions that started with

• Without – SEO without backlinks, SEO without content, SEO without a plugin, SEO without keywords, SEO without WordPress
• Near – SEO near me, SEO jobs near me, SEO services near me, SEO courses near me, SEO agency near me, SEO coaching near me
• To – SEO to-do list, SEO to increase traffic, SEO to my website, SEO to do, SEO to WordPress, SEO to HTML website
• With – SEO with HTML, SEO with Yoast, SEO with python, SEO with vuejs, SEO with Shopify
• For – SEO for social media, SEO for Squarespace, SEO for Instagram, SEO for dummies 2019, SEO for Etsy, SEO for blogs, SEO for youtube, SEO for WordPress, SEO for WordPress
• Can – can SEO youtube, can SEO help your business, how SEO can grow your business, how can SEO improve sales, how can SEO be done in the easiest way, can SEO be automated
• Is – SEO is dead, SEO is dead in 2019, SEO is a waste of time, SEO is fun, SEO is important, SEO is free, SEO is dead and other lies, SEO is easy, SEO is overrated, SEO is not important

As you can see, you will get a detailed list of questions and these will help you get an idea of voice search on SEO topic.

You can optimize the content accordingly. Voice search typically involves asking questions and this tool is a pretty good starting point to get started. You will also get keyword + related keywords with your queries, I got 520 keywords with SEO query.

9. The Holy Grail of ‘W’: Who, What, Where, When, Which, Will & Why

Most of the voice searches involve answering questions. The more your content focused and involved with answering these questions the more successful it will be.

Google featured snippets typical has an FAQ question section and your content will do well in that area as well.

10. Keep Q & A Content

You should have Q & A section inside your content to get listed in voice search. Your content can be small snippets of questions that are typically asked in voice search and you answer them accordingly.

Chances content from the Q&A section can get listed in Google’s “People Also Ask” section.

Image search: how it works and tips for optimization

Image search, on the other hand, is already growing considerably and, increasingly, search engines are improving to offer good results to users.

It is common for one in three searches on the internet to be by image. That is, it means that there is great potential there! The images are combined with its content as an additional source of traffic, in addition to helping to contextualize pages and also to viralize them.

Write down a few tips to optimize image search on your pages:

• name the file explaining the content in it and separating words by dashes. Enter the keyword and do not put accents or other symbols. Example: how-to-do-digital-marketing-strategy;
• the ALT attribute also needs to be filled in following the same idea of ​​explaining what is in the image and containing the keyword. But here, it is not necessary to separate the words or disregard the accents – in addition, this attribute is great for accessibility, helping people with visual impairments to understand what is going on in the photo or, for when the image does not load in the site;
• you can also add captions to provide more information to readers. In addition, Google uses them to understand the context there. Enter the keyword you want to rank, add information that completes or explains the content;
• pay attention to the weight of the images, they must be light to help with the loading time of the page, improving the user experience and helping to rank the content;
• the same goes for dimensions. Give preference to 1366 x 768 (16: 9) and 4: 3 (720 x 480) or numbers close to those when resizing files;
  clean the image’s metadata, that is, the information contained in it, such as size, date it was taken, among others. This helps to decrease the size of the files. You can find this information by clicking Properties> Details> Remove metadata;
• pay attention to the format of the photos. The most suitable is JPEG, but others like PNG, MBP and GIF also work. TIFF and Raw, for example, are already examples of formats that are not accepted and do not appear in Google Images;
• avoid using texts within the files. Search engines do not recognize this content, so it is not a ranking factor. In addition, this can get worse in terms of accessibility and user experience.

Did you like to know more about SEO for voice and image search?

Using SEO techniques for voice and image research will be very useful in your strategy. This is because, as you have seen, these practices help to better rank your pages on Google and make organic results grow.

That is why it is important to pay attention to the points we have mentioned here and check if you are optimizing for voice and image search correctly.

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