Voice search is the future and not a too distant one. If you are not already using voice search SEO content to rank for voice search you could be missing more than 25% of your market.
The stats from Google say that over 27% of people are using voice for mobile search. Furthermore, Nielson reports that 25% of all homes own a smart speaker. It is evident that after the pandemic, “low-touch” society will help reduce the spread of such infections. This implies that we can expect the popularity of voice search to grow, especially at places like schools and offices.
Ranking your content for voice search involves understanding how people use voice to search differently. A major part of voice search optimization is to include the queries that people are most likely to ask. Add a mix of primary keywords and semantically related keywords along with some other tools and it must not be hard for you to rank your content for voice search.
What makes voice search different?
The subtle difference between the voice search and web search can be easily understood by examining how we use the devices like Google Home, Amazon Alexa or Siri app. We search differently when we speak to these AI-powered services than what we type.
Let’s understand with an example, if you are searching for a pizza on Google on your phone, you might type “best pizza Pasadena, CA.”
But if you are just sitting in your apartment enjoying fun time with your friends and you decide to order pizza, then you will most probably ask, “Alexa, where’s the best pizza near me?”
This is not just a random behaviour but the changing pattern of how people are getting adapted to voice search. In a market study, Hubspot found out that since 2018 there has been a 150% growth in search phrases like “near me now”. This explains that web searchers are now understanding the concept of geo-targeting.
To rank better in voice search, your focus needs to be on local search and the queries your customers are most likely to ask.
How questions can help rank your pages
The goal of every Google update ever is to make search more efficient such that the searchers must find the most relevant services and content. This is what content marketers need to keep in mind that when they search solution for how to optimize for voice search that keeping content relevant with high human value is the key.
Google has only one job, to map the searcher’s entered phrase with his intent and give the most appropriate results for the same.
With the proliferation of the voice search, people are asking more questions to find the services or content they need. After the 2018 major Google update, the search giant has been delivering results base on the questions people ask.
If your content has to rank higher in the search engine result pages, it has to inevitably answer the important questions people ask about your business.
Search by voice is easy to conquer when you optimize your webpages with commonly asked questions and their accurate answers.
How to Find the Right Questions to Ask
For voice search SEO, you might run into a wall trying to find the questions to answer in your content. Fortunately, many tools can help you get the right questions to ask.
Some of the tools that you can use are;
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool
- Ahref
- Quora
Let explore how these technologies can help you determine what questions people are asking Google.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool- While there are many powerful SEO/SEM marketing platforms like Ahref and SEO Moz but they are paid ones, you can use Google’s Keyword Tool for free. It is a free tool that will provide you with most frequently searched phrases and questions. It also provides you with metrics called Keyword difficulty or KD. It tells you how hard it may be to rank for a question.
Quora – An authoritative, crowdsourced question-and-answer website, Quora is like a free library to check out what questions people are asking related to a specific topic. You can browse questions related to topics here. Quora is also the place site to gauge the popularity of a question.
You can also build authority for your brand by answering questions on Quora and adding links to your website.
Ahref– Hands down one of the most efficient content and keyword explorer tool, Ahref is a mean machine to fine keywords and content ideas. You can directly analyze your competition for the keywords and content they are ranking for as well find the backlinks to their top-ranking content.
Using Questions in Your Content
As we mentioned, voice search optimization becomes easier with the implementation of questions and also shared how you can find what questions to ask.
Now, the next step is to include these questions in your content. Voice search SEO is about understanding to include questions in your content in a subtle manner. For this you can:
- Use questions as subheads (H2 headers)
- Add a FAQ page to your side
- Also, add a frequently asked questions (FAQs) section to the end of each article and provide answers
- Try to work out a Q&A session with a thought leader in the organization
You must always add clear and concise answers that may help you earn the highly coveted answer box on Google’s first page.
Using Local Search to Rank for Voice
The difference in voice search is that it mostly involves people searching when they want to make a purchase, book a seat in a restaurant or find things near them. In a survey involving smartphone users, it was found that 82% had done a “near me” search.
Based on the survey the most searchers had the following intent:
38% were searching for personal care items
41% were looking to buy clothing
50% wanted a bank
56% were looking for entertainment
84% sought food
As it is evident that smartphones, voice searches and “near me” queries go hand in hand, for voice search optimization it is important to optimize for local search.
As a content marketer, your responsibility will be to identify regions to rank in. For instance, if you are creating content for a local business like a pizzeria, you will have a small neighbourhood to focus on. But if your client is a large-scale entertainment venue or shopping centre, your focus must on broader reach.
Conclusion
Once you have started with voice search optimization, you will have to continually modify the results. Keep a look at your competition and how they are doing for voice search.
For checking the results for your voice search SEO, test on all platforms including Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana.
For now, ranking for voice search remains challenging as only the top three results stay relevant for the voice search.
We have provided you with the closest strategy for how to optimize for voice search. However, make sure that you do not discount on other SEO efforts trying to optimize for voice. It’s an overall strategy that will yield highly profitable results.
