Okay Google, how do I optimize my website for voice search?
There are 3.5 billion search queries on Google EACH DAY. 3.5 billion searches for a number of queries waiting to be answered. In the SEO world, keywords, content, backlink strategies and all the other SEO strategies have been optimized for desktop and Google searches, but voice searches changes the game a bit.
What are the necessary changes a company needs from Colorado SEO experts to start ranking on Google and voice search results?
Why it is growing so quickly?
The biggest reason that people are using voice search devices over computers or their smartphones, is because it is faster. It is 3.7 times faster to ask Google or Alexa questions than to type in the question. The faster the searchers the faster the answers that searchers can achieve.
A great example is cooking. (We love to cook and eat stick with us.) If someone is searching for the best granola recipe while their hands are sticky, they will not be reaching for their smartphone. The person will simply say. “Okay Google, next step” or “Okay Google, show me the ingredients again.”
How did Google or Alexa find them “the best no bake granola recipe”? The first results that are optimized, have conversational content and is mobile friendly!
How to optimize
Conversational content
Our Colorado SEO experts want everyone to think about this: how do you talk to someone versus typing into Google? A searcher is more conversational in their approach with asking Google Home to search for their answer.
Where can this conversation content be added? Inside the current content on a client’s website and featured snippets. It is estimated that 20 percent of all voice search queries are triggered by the content in the featured snippet. Google themselves state that this is the most occurring point of how their voice search finds the answers to search queries.
What is a featured snippet?
The content that shows when you search for, “featured snippets in Google” is underneath the title and is the featured snippets. These snippets summarize the content of that service page or blog in less than 60 characters!
If no content is added to this snippet, Google will pick the first 50 to 60 characters themselves to represent the overall summary of the page.
Why does all of this even matter? This is because how the feature snippet shows in Google is what will be read back to the searcher.
FAQs
As stated above, voice search is more casual and laid back than other searches, the goal is to answer questions.
The ability for searchers to ask Google Home, the questions need to be answered with concise and clear answers. This is the most important content factor. The average search result for voice search is about 29 words. What does this mean?
Less can be more with voice search. It is imperative to have a FAQ on the website with keywords to ensure that this page is ranking for voice search!
Mobile-friendly
On July 1st, Google released a statement that all websites who were responsive and optimized for mobile would outrank others on Google. A website that has yet to be optimized for mobile will be indexed, but will be indexed after other websites who are optimized for mobile. This means make sure your website is optimized, like yesterday. However, this does not affect old websites as of now. So, any new websites HAVE to be optimized, there is no question.
The first reason is because consumers are using their smartphones more often to search on Google. It is estimated that about 35 percent of smartphone users have never used voice search but are considering it in the future.
Local ranking
The first thing for this is to create a Google My Business listing. This is what will show in voice search before other results. It is IMPERATIVE to fill out the listing to the best of your abilities, which means including the following:
-
Location
-
Hours
-
Phone Number
-
Website
-
Business categories
-
Area codes
“Near Me” searches have increased by 900 percent since 2017, and because of the rise in voice search, local search has never been more imperative for the success of a business. Our Colorado SEO experts have recommended that businesses create a Google My Business page from day one and let our experts know if they are local or national.
This way a SEO strategy that be created dependent upon national and local keywords and long-tail keywords.
These are the beginning strategies that can be set into place for a company searching to rank with voice search. For more information, contact the Colorado SEO experts for more information.